After looking at Direct speech in biblical narratives and especially how the manner of speaking characterises Boaz and Naomi in the book of Ruth and a side glance at the question of whether Ruth’s very arrival at Boaz’ field was chance or not (in Chance or Providence?) I’d like now to suggestthat thinking more deeply about how Ruth is portrayed in chapter 2 can add a sharpness and richness to the story. There is little of direct theological significance to this exercise, but in terms of the sort of reading Scripture as a way of exploring ourselves and our world (that Julia and I have been extoling in Reading Novels, Reading the Bible and Hard Times for Bible Readers respectively) this sort of nuance can be highly significant!
The work referred to in the podcast is: Crapon de Caprona, Pierre. Ruth la Moabite : essai. Genève: Labor et Fides, 1982.
NB: There is a video version here.
Tags: Gender, Narrative, Reading, Ruth
Very cool! Thanks for this and the small file size!
Keep em comin!
D
Thanks 🙂
Quite a few of my students are on dialup still, so small files are necessary, and for PodBible many users are from places with poor connections also. For really small files (especvially for 1 hour class recordings) I use AMR files which are tiny, but for these short pieces MP3 works fine.
Hi Tim – Ruth is on my radar so thanks for these particularly. After 3 years of reading, I think I am old enough for a grammar lesson and Ruth is it. My senior student is mapping the repeated words – and there are many – so he aged 13 will learn something of structure too.
That sounds like real fun and a great way for him to learn 🙂 I've been following your posts on Ruth, I have just been too busy this year for many serious comments 🙁
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