How God Forms Abraham to Be a Blessing: Using Formative Narrative Approach and Narrative Discourse Analysis
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
This book aims to understand God’s interactions with Abraham in relation to God’s command that Abraham “be a blessing” (Gen 12:2d), which is directly tied to God’s goal that “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen 12:3b). The book proposes a formative narrative approach to examine interactions between character and plot, the movement of plot, and the connection between sequential plots. An analysis of thirteen Abrahamic narratives (Gen 12–22) suggests a classification based on four different types of interactions between God and Abraham, which indicate how cooperation and conflict between God and Abraham advance the narrative’s plot. The book then proposes a narrative discourse analysis to examine how Abraham evolved through different stages of the narrative by moving from deviation to cooperation. Detailed analysis of this transformation process reveals three turning points in Abraham’s life. The formative narrative approach and narrative discourse analysis proposed in this book can contribute to the analysis of two important aspects of Old Testament narratives: the formation of plot and the cause-and-effect structure in narrative discourse.
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- Examines God’s interactions with Abraham in relation to the command to “be a blessing”
- Proposes a formative narrative approach to analyze character, plot movement, and plot connections
- Reveals three turning points in Abraham’s life through a narrative discourse analysis of his transformation
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Meaning of “Be a Blessing” in Genesis 12:2d
- Chapter 2: An Overview of Abraham’s Cooperation and Deviation (Gen 12–22) Using a Formative Narrative Approach
- Chapter 3: Abraham’s Deviation from God’s Promised Land and His Cooperation with God’s Blessing Plan (Gen 12–14): Narrative Discourse Analysis
- Chapter 4: Abraham’s Deviation from Obeying God’s Words and His Cooperation with God’s Blessing Plan (Gen 16–17)
- Chapter 5: Abraham’s Deviation from Fear of God and His Cooperation with God’s Blessing Plan (Gen 20 and 22)
- Chapter 6: Conclusion
- Appendix: Summary of Each of Plot of the Abraham Narratives
- Bibliography
In How God Forms Abraham to Be a Blessing, Qiang Fu uses formative narrative analysis and narrative discourse analysis of the Abraham cycle in Genesis 12–22 to explore God’s promise that Abraham would ‘be a blessing.’ This volume explores how God’s interactions with Abraham fulfill that promise and transform him into a model mediator of God’s plan that all human families have a relationship with him.
—John D. Harvey, professor of New Testament, Columbia Biblical Seminary
Most enlightening is Qiang Fu’s unfolding of the central theme of Genesis 12–22, God’s command to Abraham to be (with imperative force) a blessing. Through the interplay and flow of pericopae, he shows how the narrative reveals God’s interaction with Abraham, forming him into the agent of blessing he is commanded to be. The pastoral applications to spiritual formation are significant.
—John Hilber, professor of Old Testament, McMaster Divinity College
Beyond isolated episodes, here is a method of discourse that is applied to the entire Abraham story. This interpretive analysis should find its way into the next generation of commentaries and literary studies.
—Andrew Schmutzer, professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute