Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lee R. Martin" <lmartin AT vol.com>]

Yes, Matthew, I'm afraid you are "over-reading" my question.  Please go back 
and see
the context of my question.  My question had nothing to do with "factual" or
"fictional" from our point of view. Restated, I asked, Are there any 
grammatical or
linguistic clues in the narrative of 2 Sam. 12 that would have suggested to 
David that
Nathan's story was a parable rather than a report of an actual event?  Does 
Nathan
intend his story to be taken by David as fact or as fiction?

Matthew Anstey wrote:

> Gday Lee,
>
> You asked,
>
> >How can we determine a factual narrative from a fictional narrative?
>
> You have strayed into an area of intense debate among philosophers,
> linguists, postmodernists, and a whole lost of other -ists. I doubt that an
> answer could be given until you decide what you mean by 'factual' and
> 'fictional'. "Fictional narrative" sounds tautologous, so I think you may
> mean either nonhistorical or not-purporting-to-be-historical narrative.
> "Factual narrative" is also problematic at face value, since how are any
> facts embedded (or "emplotted" to use Ricoeur's term)  in a narrative, and
> what are facts? Perhaps though I am over-reading your question and you
> simply mean narratives relating to real-world events and narratives relating
> to imaginary-world events. This answer surely relies mainly on the reader's
> prior beliefs as to what constitutes the real-world, so textual markers can
> be misleading. Texts can be presented as real-world-narratives, like Jonah,
> but are dismissed by some because they do not confirm to the principle of
> analogy (ie people don't get vomitted up by giant fish and then sit under
> Mac-trees with Mac-worms). Other texts are presented as rather imaginary
> (either exclusively or partially - eg Gen 3 with talking snakes and whirling
> swords; or Leviathin; Rahab the sea-monster etc) but many take them to be
> historical. Others may also be "possibility-realists" and think for
> philsophical reasons that the imaginary-world (or the world of the
> imagination) is "real" in some way.
>
> This is just a sampling of the issues involved, but I think that your
> question cannot be answered syntactically at all, and semantically it is not
> at all clear what would count as real or imaginary. People tend not to get
> bogged down in the extreme cases at either end (Medusa vis-a-vis WWII) but
> in the middle ground.
>
> With regards,
> Matthew Anstey
>
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--

Lee R. Martin
Pastor, Prospect Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee
Instructor in Hebrew and Old Testament
Church of God Theological Seminary
http://earth.vol.com/~lmartin/