The deal with Melchizedek

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Calling it fiction allows one to pivot to making points about the unknown concerning authorial intent.

Wouldn’t calling it mythology allow that as well?

Boru

[Angrboda]

Perhaps.

[Belacqua]

Calling it fiction allows one to pivot to making points about the unknown concerning authorial intent.

I don't think we have to be strict about naming a genre here. I suppose we could make some rules to distinguish "fiction" from "legend" or "myth," but the Bible contains all of these things. 

If we define "fiction" as "a narrative which is NOT an unbiased account of events that actually happened," then I think the whole Bible is fiction. Because all of the authors had their various biases and goals which were more important to them than straight telling what happened. 

Mr. Greene is correct, I think, to say that Ezra is the closest book to straight history. Though even the author of that book had a strong viewpoint -- maybe we could call it something like "propagandized history."

As for authorial intent, our knowledge of it will always be more or less speculative. We can't go back and ask them what they wanted. This is of course complicated by the fact that many of the narratives were changed from their original form, re-edited and combined with bits from other writers. The Book of Job, for example, seems to be a re-telling of an older myth in order to make a point about the Jewish God, and then a second or third author added an epilogue which arguably changes the whole meaning of the story. It's a mash-up, and a modern editor would not allow it. 

But that doesn't mean it's pointless to wonder about authorial intent of the various parts. People who are knowledgable about the language and history of the time can enrich our understanding of the texts. It's wrong to say we're SURE about much of anything, but if we keep in mind what the various theories are, it helps us to read better. 

I think we want to avoid settling on one interpretation and rejecting all others, when in fact we don't really know.

[The Grand Nudger]

.....but we do know about the interpretation you chose to chastise the boards with. The idea that the jahwist source was a secular folklorist writing poetry is explicitly contemporary and ahistorical fan fiction. In mere reality, the jahwist source believed in the god they described as they described it and was telling us the story of how their tribe was created by the same. That they'd been living in a society that had believed as much and organized themselves as such for centuries and would continue to believe as much and do as such for centuries more is a bit of a tip off.

[Paraselene]

Oration is a testament to tradition. No doubt about it.

But "Your grandma didn't much like me" is more believable than "he tore the moon in half with his bare hands".

[The Grand Nudger]

The believability of the tale is mostly unrelated to it's historical value with magic books. For example. Ezra is often claimed to be more historical because it contains more known external referents like place names and people, and a 1st person narrative. However, the actual contents of the tale told by "Ezra" are not historical, nor is the style of that first person narration believed to be so. It's name dropping fiction start to finish. OTOH, the book of judges is not believed to have historical value in the sense of external referents, and it's purported timeline is wildly off, but it describes warfare in the time period it was actually written very well. So the person is telling us stories about things that certainly happened (which we have copious physical evidence of) and still manages to get it wrong. In ezra, god moves human hearts. In judges he has trouble with those pesky iron chariots.

[Belacqua]

.....but we do know about the interpretation you chose to chastise the boards with.  The idea that the jahwist source was a secular folklorist writing poetry is explicitly contemporary and ahistorical fan fiction.  In mere reality, the jahwist source believed in the god they described as they described it and was telling us the story of how their tribe was created by the same.  That they'd been living in a society that had believed as much and organized themselves as such for centuries and would continue to believe as much and do as such for centuries more is a bit of a tip off.

I have not chastised anyone, and I do not believe that J was a folklorist.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Belacqua

I don't think we have to be strict about naming a genre here.

Speaking for myself (because I don't presume to speak for other people), I'm not at all strict about this. As I said, it's a pet peeve, a personal peccadillo if you will. It's not as if I'm going to fly into an unhinged nomenclatural rage if someone calls it fiction.

Boru