Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Ron,

I feel you're making another assumption here, namely that if an author is 
taking on the persona of someone else in writing that they must be 'lying'. 
In our world today, we call it 'fiction', not 'lies', and we often consider 
such literature to be among the classics (e.g., 'I, Claudius' by Robert 
Graves, or 'Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe). There is a difference between 
fiction and lies. Some fiction is lying, while most fiction is simply 
creative writing/expression. Would you call all fiction 'lies'? Jesus told 
fictional tales; would you classify them as 'lies'? If you resort to 'taking 
things at face value', then I'd argue you need to read literature with a bit 
more vigour and rigour, and in fact probably don't use that standard for most 
fictional literature. And, in fact, it would be easy to argue that fiction is 
often the vehicle of truth - in fact, most Christians would argue that for 
Jesus' parables. Literature is not legislation. It is creative expression, 
and authors usually employ their creativity to get their point across. To put 
it in a very crude manner, we often tell 'lies' in order to express the truth 
(can't remember who originally said that).

Your question about whether there is any other biblical literature that 
employs this type of technique reveals another assumption: that you require 
more than one example of it to exist within a confined corpus before you 
believe it might be possible. But what if there is only one example of it in 
the corpus? You are demanding the evidence take a particular shape before 
accepting it as evidence. This, I fear, is not sound methodology, even though 
I understand the sentiment behind it. I realise there is safety in numbers, 
but what are we to do if there is only one example of what you're talking 
about? Something can be legitimately unique.

But, to answer your question, I think there is more than example of fictional 
first-person narrative in the biblical corpus: Daniel 4, and 7-12. But that 
may open another can of worms which I don't wish to open. I fear you may also 
disagree with me on that one, leaving us back at square one.


Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au