Closure in Biblical Narrative

Susan Zeelander, Ph.D.,University of Pennsylvania, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (2010), lectures at academic conferences and for lay groups, primarily on narrative in the Hebrew Bible. She is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

Academics and lay people interested in the Bible and its narratives; those interested in narrative in general and aspects of closure; those interested in ritual, etiology, and proverbs.

Preface
Notes on Translation, Transliteration, and Documentary Source Attribution

1. Introduction
1.1. Introduction
1.2. The Narrative Endings
1.3. Narratives in the Study
1.4. Closural Devices in the Cain and Abel Story
1.5. The Phenomenon of Ritual as a Closing Device
1.6. Popular and Academic Interest in “Closure”
1.7. Relevant Literary Studies
1.8. How this Book Is Organized
1.9. Appendix to Chapter 1: Narratives in this Study

2. Issues and Methods
2.1. Overview
2.2. Delimiting a Narrative, Using Narratology
2.2.1. Defining a Narrative.
2.2.2. The Beginning and End-Points of a Narrative, and Its “End-Section”.. .
2.2.3. Causal Steps in a Plot—The Kafalenos Approach
2.2.4. The Kafalenos Paradigm
2.2.5. Equilibrium as a Marker of Beginning and End
2.2.6. Using the Kafalenos System to Delimit Gen 23, Abraham’s Purchase of a Burial Site
2.2.7. Finding an Embedded Narrative Using the Kafalenos System: Gen 2–3, The Creation and Adam and Eve.
2.2.8. What Happens after the Transformation
2.3. Alternate Approaches for Delimiting a Narrative
2.3.1. Yairah Amit and Robert Alter
2.3.2. Masoretic Tradition
2.4. Artistic and Didactic Strategy in a Biblical Narrative Ending
2.4.1. Moshe Greenberg and Robert Alter: Close Reading of a Biblical Text
2.4.2. Shimon Bar-Ephrat and Closing Formulas .
2.4.3. Aharon Mirsky and Modified Syntax
2.4.4. Isaac B. Gottlieb and the Ends of Biblical Books
2.4.5. Adele Berlin and “Time-Bridges”
2.5. The Documentary Sources
2.5.1. J and P Endings in the Flood Story: Gen 6–9
2.5.2. Effect of a Source Insertion on the Next Narrative’s End: Gen 12
2.5.3. Addition of an Altar Ritual to a P-Source Narrative: Gen 35:9–15……..

3. Repetition
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Study of Repetition in Biblical Narrative
3.3. Repetition: What It Is and Why It Works
3.3.1. Repetition Defined
3.3.2. Precision
3.3.3. Time
3.4. How Repetitions Contribute to Closure
3.4.1. Truthfulness and the Integrity of the Narrative
3.4.2. Natural Ending Places
3.4.3. Remembering
3.4.4. Iteration: A Type of Repetition
3.4.5. Frames: A Repetitive Structure
3.4.6. Repetition that Does Not Lead to Closure
3.5. Closural Repetitions in End-Sections of the Genesis Narratives
3.5.1. Closural Repetition and the New Equilibrium
Thematic Repetition • Key Word Repetition
3.5.2. Integrity and Truthfulness
Repeated Statement • Repeated Action
3.5.3. Stopping the Forward Momentum of a Narrative by ‘Heaping Up’
3.5.4. Revealing the Author’s Didactic Interests
3.5.5. Aesthetic Repetitions, Including Poetry, and Readers’ Enjoyment
3.6. Conclusion

4. Linguistic Devices
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Summaries: Recapitulation and Didactics
4.2.1. Summaries in Epilogues
4.2.2. Summaries from Different Documentary Sources
4.2.3. Single-Word Summaries
4.3. Unqualified Assertions
4.3.1 Absolute Words
4.3.2. Hyperbole
4.4. Tone of Authority
4.5. Natural Stopping Points and Their Linguistic Motifs
4.5.1. The Motif of Goal Completed
4.5.2. The Motif of Death and Departure and Language Associated with It
4.5.3. Corollaries to Departure: A Return to Someplace; Remaining Someplace
Chart: : y.š.b (remain, dwell) and š.w.b (turn back, return)
4.5.4. Words and Motifs that Mean “End” or “Conclusion”

5. Etiologies and Proverbs
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Etiologies
5.2.1. Introduction to Etiologies in Genesis
5.2.2. Biblical Etiologies: Scholarship
Identification and Forms of Etiologies • Rhetorical Role of Etiologies •
5.2.3. Closural Aspects of Etiologies
Adding Truthfulness • Authoritative Verification • Objective Affirmation •
Prior Knowledge Reaffirmed • Puns and Literary Etymologies • Summary
5.3. Proverbs
5.3.1. Proverbs in the Genesis Narratives
5.3.2. Proverbs: Scholarship
Theoretical Foundations and 1 Sam 10:12 • Biblical Scholarship on Proverbs
5.3.3. Closural Aspects of Proverbs in the End-Sections of Narratives
5.3.4. Proverbs as Closural Devices: A Summary
5.4. Summary

6. Rituals at the Ends of Narratives
6.1. Introduction
6.2. The Term “Ritual” and Its Use in Biblical Scholarship
6.2.1. Overview
6.2.2. Milgrom and Others
6.2.3. Biblical Ritual Using Categories Designated by Catherine Bell
The Process of Ritual • Hierarchy • Verbal Component • Elevation of a Mundane Act
6.3. Literary Function of Ritual in Texts: Studies from the Ancient Near East and Classical Greece
6.3.1. Wright and Ritualized Feasts
6.3.2. Roberts and Culturally Constructed Burial Rituals
6.4. Rituals in this Study
Chart: Narratives with Rituals in Their End-Sections • List: Narratives Where a Ritual Is Not in the End-Section
6.5. How Rituals Are Closural in Their Narratives
6.5.1. Closural Effects of Transformative Rituals
Treaty Rituals that are Transformative in Their Narratives • Other Rituals that Are Transformative in Their Narratives
6.5.2. Closural Effects of Non-Transformational Rituals
6.5.3. Closural Effects When Rituals Establish Hierarchies
International Hierarchies • Patriarchs and the Prerogatives of Monarchy
6.5.4. Closural Effects When the Divine Is Invoked in a Ritual
6.5.5. Closural Effects of the Ritual Discourse: Specific Language and Other Markers
6.6. Rituals That Are Not at the End of Their Narratives
6.7. Summary
6.7.1. Narrative Functions
6.7.2. Stability and Balancing Accounts
6.7.3. Natural Stopping Places

7. Closure and Anti-Closure: Philosophical, Psychological, Experiential, and Psycho-Linguistic Components
7.1. Introduction
7.2.. Closure as a Process
7.3.. Closure and the Integrity of the Narrative
7.4. The Expectation of Closure—Familiarity and Integrity
7.5. The Expectation of Closure
7.5.1. Metaphysics and Psychology
7.5.2. Gestalt Psychology and Its Temporal Implications
7.6. Anti-Closure
7.6.1. Overview
7.6.2. Closed Narratives that Have Anti-Closural Elements
7.6.3. Anti-Closure in the Dinah Story (Gen 34)
7.6.4. The Akedah and Its Unspoken Disquietude
7.7. Closure in the Face of Anti-Closure
7.8. Openness as a Function of the Larger Context of the Genesis Narratives

8. Conclusion and Epilogue
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Conclusion
8.2.1. Closural Conventions
8.2.2. Rituals and Etiologies
8.2.3. Repetition and Other Linguistic Devices
8.2.4. Methodology
8.3 Narrative Poetics and Historical Criticism
8.4. The Question of Intentional Use of Conventions and Closural Devices
8.5. Further Study

Bibliography
Addenda
I. Index of Biblical Narratives, Post-Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Texts
II. Index of Subjects
III. Index of Kafalenos Paradigms
IV. Index of Authors Cited