Story and Scripture

Chapter TWO LIKE BIRDS HOVERING OVERHEAD:
THE FAITHFULNESS OF THE GOD OF ISRAEL
(v) Story and Scripture

All that we have said so far leads back to a point of enormous importance for our reading of Paul the apostle. The primary way in which scripture itself was seen was not simply as a rag-bag, a miscellaneous collection of texts from which one might summon up a maxim, an example, a historical insight, a ‘type’ or whatever. All of those are of course there in profusion. But they are seen, even sometimes by an allegorist like Philo, and certainly by second-Temple Jews with a reforming agenda, such as Qumran and the Pharisees, in terms of the overall narrative within which the second-Temple reader was presumed to be living. Scripture functioned as the earlier acts in the play in which Essene covenanters, Pharisaic sages, revolutionary leaders and others all assumed themselves to be actors...