Biblical narration

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Biblical narratives , also called Bible stories or biblical stories , are more or less free retelling of biblical material, either orally by a narrator (for example in a narrative tent at church conventions ) or traditionally as reading from biblical collections of stories, often in simplified language in so-called children's Bibles .

Some biblical stories have become proverbial in common parlance or are used in established idioms , such as the Solomonic judgment , the dance around the golden calf , unbelieving Thomas or torrential rain.

Nico ter Linden was a well-known biblical storyteller. Reading from his book "Joseph, the Dreamer" in the Christ Church Mönchengladbach 2016

Topics and content

While biblical prehistory and God's dealings with the people of Israel are in the foreground in Bible stories from the Old Testament , in biblical narratives that draw their material from the New Testament , events around the work of Jesus Christ are usually the focus. The biblical stories also include the numerous parables that Jesus used to tell his listeners.

There is a wide range of human experiences, insights, and emotions in biblical narratives .

Misconduct is not glossed over, but disclosed. Bible stories know no taboos , whether it is murder, adultery, lying, fraud, intrigue, theft or rape. But even when people change for the better by showing repentance or repentance and receiving forgiveness of their sins , this is accurately reported.

The biblical stories illustrated by Kees de Kort are considered classics.

Bible stories retold

The rendering of biblical stories has a long tradition in religious education in families and in worship. In many Christian families children are read from children's Bibles and the children experience different Bible stories when they attend children's services or Sunday school . Giving away books with biblical stories on the occasion of First Communion , on children's birthdays or at Christmas is a common practice. In religious education , too , especially in elementary school, elementary knowledge of the Holy Scriptures is imparted by reading and discussing biblical narratives . Readings of Bible stories often form the basis for sermons in church services.

In the USA, the Network of Biblical Storytellers (NOBS) was founded in 1977 , which is dedicated to the training of professional narrators of Biblical stories. There are now offshoots of this network in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and Singapore. In Melbourne, Australia, The Backyard Bard theater company specializes in telling biblical stories on stage.

Understanding literary narrative styles in the Bible

For many practicing Christians, the "inerrancy" of the Bible is very important. Problems can arise when individual features of biblical narratives contradict the knowledge of natural science or archeology. Individual Bible Students resort to sometimes bizarre natural attempts to explain biblical narratives, e.g. B. Lightning ice on the Sea of ​​Galilee , so that Jesus could seemingly walk on the water, or interpret the reports of the Flood as a local tsunami .

The advocates of the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation are of the opinion that literary genres such as myths and legends are also used in the Bible to express the mystery of God's salvific work on people and in the world. The Roman Catholic Church has made this hermeneutic its own in the Apostolic Constitution Dei Verbum : The “ truth ” of the Bible is not always or only the historical correctness and factuality of what is presented, but rather “the truth is presented and expressed differently in Texts of historical, prophetic or poetic kind in various senses, or in other forms of speech. ... If one wants to understand correctly what the holy author wanted to say in his writing, one finally has to pay close attention to the given environmental forms of thought, language and narration that prevailed at the time of the author, as well as the forms that were then were common in everyday human traffic. "

Jesus of Nazareth and most of his audience were Jews . Jesus preached within the framework of the Jewish people's imagination and consciously placed himself in the traditional context of the divine election of the people of Israel: "Do not think that I came to abolish the law and the prophets! I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. " Mt 5,17  EU He spoke in parables and referred to motifs from the Jewish Tanach such as Adam and Eve ( Mt 19.4  GNB ), Lot and his wife ( Lk 17.28-32  GNB ), Moses , Solomon or the queen of Saba ( Mt 12.42  GNB ) as well as events such as the Flood and Noah's Ark ( Lk 17.26-27  GNB ), the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or Jonah in the belly of the great fish ( Mt 12.40-41  EU ) related.

Knowledge in the population

Adoration of the Shepherds, painting by Giorgione , ca.1500
Lot flees Sodom, woodcut from Schedel's world chronicle , 1493

The best-known biblical stories include:



While the knowledge of many biblical narratives in Christian countries was practically general knowledge for centuries , this knowledge has declined sharply both among adults and among children and adolescents in recent decades, although the range of available Bible translations and children's Bibles available in bookshops has steadily increased Has.

In two representative surveys conducted by the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy in 1995 and 2005, only half of those questioned knew more than 7 of 19 known Bible stories. 24% had no knowledge of the Bible at all. The biblical stories were little known, particularly in eastern Germany and among young people. Reasons for this are an increasing distance from the church and alienation from Christian traditions among many people, the growing number of people leaving the church, but also the strong increase in competition from a wide variety of media and entertainment offers.

In Italy in November 2005, the lack of knowledge of the Holy Scriptures worried a group of Italian intellectuals around the writer Umberto Eco and the philosopher Gianni Vattimo so much that they wanted to use a signature campaign to emphasize their demand for the Bible to be included more in school lessons again because The ignorance of biblical narratives has an increasing "negative effect on the understanding of art, music, literature, politics and economics".

Biblical narratives in art

Biblical narratives form the motifs of numerous artistic processes, including in the fine arts , literature or music , and were the basis for numerous film adaptations of biblical material .

Examples from the fine arts

Deluge fountain in the Coburg rose garden
Simson fountain in Gera
The Last Supper , painting by Leonardo da Vinci , 1494 to 1498

Examples from the literature

Examples from music

The history of music is inextricably linked with biblical narratives. Whole genres are mainly dedicated to this subject area: oratorio , chorale , motet , mass , requiem . In addition to explicit church music , all text-bound musical forms also include biblical narratives, including biblical allusions in popular music, such as Jesus in pop music .

Selection of biblical stories in the Old Testament

Adam and Eve (Spanish book illumination, approx. 950)
Cain's fratricide in Ulm Minster by Hans Acker , around 1430
Friedrich Overbeck : Sale of Joseph to the Egyptian dealers
Philipp Veit : Joseph and Potiphar's wife, 1816–1817
Peter von Cornelius : Joseph interprets the Pharaoh's dreams
Moses and the Ten Commandments , painting by Jusepe de Ribera
Balaam and the Angel , painting by Gustav Jaeger, 1836
Ruth in the field of Boaz, painting by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld , 1828
Delilah shears Samson's hair , copperplate engraving by Master ES
Ceiling fresco in the hostel wing of the Pfarrhof Frauenberg an der Enns : The Solomon judgment
Elijah is fed by ravens , painting by Gillis van Coninxloo , late 16th century
Defeat of Sennacherib before Jerusalem, Peter Paul Rubens , 1st half of the 17th century
Jonah Preaching to the Ninevites , by Gustave Dore
Daniel in the Lions Den , painting by Briton Rivière, 1890
  • Jerusalem and the temple will be destroyed

Selection of biblical narratives in the New Testament

The wedding at Cana, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld , 1820
Peter von Cornelius : The wise and the foolish virgins , oil on canvas, 1813-1819
Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem , lithograph by Otto Speckter
Giotto di Bondone : Jesus drives the traders out of the temple
El Greco : outpouring of the Holy Spirit
The conversion of Paul as interpreted by Caravaggio
Apocalyptic lamb on the book with seven seals, Johann Heinrich Rohr, around 1775
Johannes looks at the visions of Revelation on Patmos, altarpiece by Hans Memling

Quotes

  • Without their knowledge, it is impossible to understand how Europe became what it is. Even the great creations of European literature, music and painting are hardly accessible if you don't know anything about the Bible ... Those looking for answers are not infrequently shocked by the radical absolute claim that the God of the Bible makes to his believers and are still amazed stories never heard or long forgotten. One can take these stories for pure fiction, that is, for mere literature from a sinking time. You should know it anyway, because even if it were mere literature, it was at least world literature . Environmentally changing literature. - Christian Nürnberger

See also

Portal: Bible  - Overview of Wikipedia content on the subject of the Bible

literature

Info: More than 200 biblical stories with monochrome drawings and a map section in the appendix, also available as an audio book.

Web links

Info: Weekly moving and extraordinary stories from the Bible, current: Episode 266 - No. 23/2013 from June 2, 2013. Uwe Birnstein is a German theologian and publicist.
  • Marisa Herzog: Stories from the New Testament. In: lehrmittelboutique.net , Lehrmittelboutique.net, Windisch 2010 f. (26 mini-books as free PDF downloads, between 0.5 and 11 MB, accessed on June 12, 2013),
Info: Learning books on Jesus stories with simple text, explanatory drawings and knowledge queries, created 2010–2011. Marisa Herzog is a special education teacher in Windisch.
  • Horst Heinemann (ed.), Gabriele Hafermaas (pictures): The pocket Bible . In: hosentaschenbibel.de , Atelea-Verlag, Fuldatal 2011 (accessed on June 12, 2013),
Info: Presentation of the 4th edition 2011 with freely retold well-known biblical stories: 56 pages, 28 narrative pictures. Prof. Dr. From 1991 to 2006 Horst Heinemann was a professor for Protestant theology and religious education at the University of Kassel.
  • International Bible Society Germany V. ( IBS ): The coolest KiBi. In: combib.de , IBS-Germany e. V., 2003 (accessed June 12, 2013),
Info: 47 stories about the New Testament with illustrations by Dennis Jones as an online extract from the printed edition, which also contains 58 stories about the Old Testament.
Info: Number tables with distribution values.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas E. Boomershine founded the Network of Biblical Storytellers , tomboomershine.org, accessed May 8, 2014.
  2. ↑ The Backyard Bard Theater Company , Australia , thebackyardbard.com, accessed May 8, 2014.
  3. ↑ News Item : Incredible Claim by US Researcher | Jesus didn't walk on the water - it was black ice! In: bild.de , April 5, 2006 (accessed June 12, 2013).
  4. ↑ Second Vatican Council : Dogmatic Constitution " Dei Verbum " on divine revelation , No. 12.
  5. ^ Research group Weltanschauungen in Germany (fowid): Biblical stories. (PDF; 459 kB) In: fowid.de. Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach , December 12, 2005, pp. 1–3 , archived from the original on May 14, 2013 ; Retrieved June 12, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Italy's intellectuals are calling for more Bible studies in schools. In: Kulturnachrichten. dradio.de , Deutschlandradio , November 14, 2005, p. (last section) , archived from the original on July 31, 2013 ; Retrieved June 12, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Cf. Sönke Remmert: Biblical Texts in Music - a directory of their settings. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1996, ISBN 978-3-525-59338-7 .
  8. ↑ Christian Nürnberger : The Bible. What you really need to know. 3rd edition, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag (volume 62068), Reinbek 2006, ISBN 978-3-499-62068-3 , p. 8.