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Watching a Biblical Narrative: Point of View in Biblical Exegesis

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As the title suggests, Gary Yamasaki, perhaps recognizing that people today tend to watch more stories than they read, explores ways that biblical narratives--like an artfully directed film camera--guide their audiences' views and sympathies with words.

Having carefully read and digested a great deal of technical material, he offers us what Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, a leading narrative critic who has used it in her own work, calls "a clear and vigilant presentation," not solely but especially of the work of Boris Uspensky, the point-of-view theorist most often drawn upon in biblical narrative studies.

After a brief introduction to the concept of point of view, he discusses in four chapters how it has developed in 1) literary criticism and 2) linguistic sudies, then how it has been (often mis)understood and (mis)applied by 3) New Testament and 4) Old Testament narrative critics. In the fifth chapter he offers a method, distilled from the previous discussion and based on--but not limited to--Uspenky's planes, for analyzing point of view in biblical narratives. The sixth chapter is an application of this methodology to Luke 19.1-10.

Since I am engaged in translating Mark's Gospel for performance, Yamasaki's work has provided much-needed help in appreciating the text's own literary and linguistic clues to its performance. I recommend it for all performers and critics of biblical narratives.