Bible Quote by Ellen F. Davis

““At this point it may be helpful to remember the distinction that the narratologist Gérard Genette makes between story and narrative.46 A literary narrative may differ in many ways from the story it tells (regardless of whether the story is construed as fictional or true). For example, the order in which events are narrated may differ from the order in which they occur in the story. A narrative need not tell all the events of the story, while it may recount some events a number of times — from different points of view (whether of characters or narrators), from different temporal junctures within the story, conveying different information, highlighting different aspects of significance. This important distinction between story and narrative may help us see that the plurality of narratives in Scripture — many of which recount the same events differently and none of which tells the whole story — is not in principle an obstacle to seeking in the Bible a single coherent story, which all the narratives together tell and each partially tells.””

— Ellen F. Davis