Narrative and history

Thus far I have described narrative criticism in a more comprehensive manner than most NT narrative specialists. In chapter 1 I highlighted how influential literary and narrative approaches to John were becoming, yet I also revealed how lacking they were in the area of literary theory. Scholars such as Alan Culpepper, though their works are ground-breaking and often perceptive, fail to see just how indebted they are to New criticism, and how vulnerable they are to post-New critical critiques. In advocating an anti-sociological form of textual analysis, narrative critics from Culpepper onwards have made a number of errors: they have neglected the social functions of the narrative form; they have consequently neglected the community orientation of gospel narratives, and they have in the process distanced themselves from redaction and sociological criticism (arguably their closest allies). This book is therefore partly an attempt to provide some timely correctives. At the level of the text, I have insisted that we examine the gospels as narrative Christology, and that in the process we make sure that we respect their genre. The gospels are not, after all, modern novels. They are narratives composed according to Hebrew and Graeco-Roman storytelling conventions. At the level of context, I have also insisted that narrative criticism recognizes the social function of community stories, and embraces a more sociologically rigorous form of redaction criticism.