Does narrative in the books of the law contain ethical guidelines for today's Christian?
Renowned scholar Gordon J. Wenham says yes.
In his book Story as Torah: Reading Old Testament Narrative Ethically, Wenham says understanding the implied author's ethical message in Old Testament narratives will help modern Bible readers understand the moral issue behind the story and apply it to their own life.
In Story as Torah, Wenham acknowledges that for centuries, Jews have drawn moral and legal principles from narrative in the Bible to guide their daily life. Since the time of Jesus, Christian teachers and preachers have done the same, using the stories found in New Testament books to install ethical principles in their hearers on the teaching of Jesus and Paul.
But Wenham says there's a wide gap between when the original Old Testament authors penned their stories and modern readers, muddying the original sense of the message: Was the author making an ethical comment or just communicating facts? Because the answer is often unclear, it has been challenging for people to determine Old Testament authors' moral standpoints.
The result? Bible readers, preachers, and teachers often avoid Old Testament narratives and focus instead on direct ethical teaching where there's no confusion—found in books of the Bible that discuss legal codes and in Wisdom Literature and the prophets. Unfortunately, this has led to interpreting books like Genesis, which is primarily about ethics, as simply the story of creation.
Wenham untangles this issue to prove the Old Testament narratives can function as "Torah" and inform a person's moral choices even today. The end result is an accessible book that will help seminarians, pastors, and other students and scholars of the Bible use Old Testament narratives more responsibly.
