How God Forms Abraham to Be a Blessing
Using Formative Narrative Approach and Narrative Discourse Analysis
- Biblical Studies & Commentaries
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2023
FritzSearch.com earns a commission on purchases made through Bookshop.org links.
Publisher's Description
This book aims to understand God's interactions with Abraham in relation to God's command that Abraham "be a blessing" (Gen 12:2d), which is directly tied to God's goal that "in you all the families of the earth will be blessed" (Gen 12:3b). The book proposes a formative narrative approach to examine interactions between character and plot, the movement of plot, and the connection between sequential plots. An analysis of thirteen Abrahamic narratives (Gen 12-22) suggests a classification based on four different types of interactions between God and Abraham, which indicate how cooperation and conflict between God and Abraham advance the narrative's plot. The book then proposes a narrative discourse analysis to examine how Abraham evolved through different stages of the narrative by moving from deviation to cooperation. Detailed analysis of this transformation process reveals three turning points in Abraham's life. The formative narrative approach and narrative discourse analysis proposed in this book can contribute to the analysis of two important aspects of Old Testament narratives: the formation of plot and the cause-and-effect structure in narrative discourse.
Endorsements (4)
“Most enlightening is Qiang Fu’s unfolding of the central theme of Genesis 12–22, God’s command to Abraham to be (with imperative force) a blessing. Through the interplay and flow of pericopae, he shows how the narrative reveals God’s interaction with Abraham, forming him into the agent of blessing he is commanded to be. The pastoral applications to spiritual formation are significant.”
“Beyond isolated episodes, here is a method of discourse that is applied to the entire Abraham story. This interpretive analysis should find its way into the next generation of commentaries and literary studies.”
“Qiang Fu delivers surprisingly new insights into the Abrahamic narrative of Genesis 12–22. Through analysis of the plot and narrative structure, three movements of obedience to God’s commands are contrasted with three movements of deviation. Fu’s rich and personally enlightening exegesis pulls Abraham from an old flat narrative as a hero of faith into the reality of a flawed human through whom God intervened to transform him into a person of blessing. In this process, Fu rescues the imperative phrase ‘be a blessing’ from a formulaic platitude into a dynamic mission.”
See something wrong on this page? Report a problem