Storycraft and Bible Study


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The Bible is a collection of stories, poetic and wisdom literature, and prophetic writings. From the first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, through the following thirty-five books of narrative history, poetry, and prophecy one finds what is called “torah,” which means “instruction,” in Hebrew rather than “law” per se. These historical and biographical narrative materials are believed by many to be the oldest collection of stories in the world. Following this ancient literary tradition is a collection of writings called the New Testament. There are four narrative writings called Gospels with a book of early church history attached to them. There also
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exists a collection of letters written during the period of the historical narrative called Acts of Apostles. Even though these writings are considered “sacred literature” they are literature none-the-less; and as literature they are best studied as literature; or more specifically, narrative compositions or “stories.” In this course the student is introduced to the discipline called in academic circles “compositional analysis,” but culturally called the “art of storycraft,” the tradition of the making of stories, the telling of stories, and the interpretation of stories.

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0.Storycraft and Bible Study
1 Stories and Storytellers
2 Gospel as Story
3 The Stories of Jesus
4 Doing a Story Analysis
5. Look at Your Fish
6. Finding the Literary Features
7. The Composition in Outline
8. Analysis Worksheet
9. The Meaning of It All
10. Application of the Stories to Our Story
11. Stories of Jesus in Mark
12. Stories of Jesus in Matthew
13. Stories of Jesus in Luke
14. Stories of Jesus in John