41 The Smaller Stories

The Smaller Stories

Within this tradition of telling the large story, letting it point forwards in various ways to its own conclusion, there was a rich Jewish tradition of sub-stories. These can be seen in two forms, which criss-cross and overlap. On the one hand, there are explicit tellings of one small part of the larger story, often extensively elaborated, and designed to function as a paradigm or example of a general principle which may be abstracted from the main story…