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A Narrative Criticism of 1 Samuel 9:1-21

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To engross oneself in the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures is to be absorbed into a world of literature, a world in which the events of many thousands of years past are relived and re-experienced in the imagination of the reader and of the listener. Within this rich ability to form our imaginations exists techniques and features identified through scholarship and used by authors to evoke, reflect, instruct and suggest this reality into its fullness, and it is the way that these are used in the narrative of 1 Samuel 9:1-21 to which we will now turn our attention. Identified in the NRSV translation of the Bible as the narrative in which “Saul [is] chosen to be King” we find in this text the first story of Saul’s call to kingship and the …show more content…

Identified as consisting of two distinct parts, both an early folklorist story of Saul and a later editorial addition that outlays his path to kingship, the narrative of 9:1-21 is understood to have originally been two distinct traditions of the Saul character that were later merged . Through the retention of this older folklorist element, the author consciously retains the characteristics of Saul that had developed in legend rather than forming a new and, within the greater narrative of Israelite monarchy, possibly more accurate figure. Through this, the author creates an image of Saul as an acceptable choice for king through the evocation of traits considered, within a general ‘folk’ tradition, worthy of a king. This signals from the very beginning of the narrative the author’s intention to establish Saul in a positive light. The effect of this is that when, later in the narrative, he comes to be exposed as the future king, the reader will be more agreeing of the development and more sympathetic to the monarchial system .

Within this folklorist introduction to the narrative, however, also exists a subtle tempering of the editors support of Saul, primarily found in the story of his endeavour to find his father’s donkeys, culminating in a scene at a well (9:11-13). This aspect of the story, the meeting at a well, is a consistent theme throughout much of the Hebrew Scriptures, so

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