Since it was first published nearly three decades ago, "The Art of Biblical Narrative" has radically expanded the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. Renowned critic and translator Robert Alter presents the Hebrew Bible as a cohesive literary work, one whose many authors used innovative devices such as parallelism, contrastive dialogue, and narrative tempo to tell one of the most revolutionary stories of human history: the revelation of a single God.

Preface --
A literary approach to the Bible --
Sacred history and the beginnings of prose fiction --
Biblical type-scenes and the uses of convention --
Between narration and dialogue --
The techniques of repetition --
Characterization and the art of reticence --
Composite artistry --
Narration and knowledge --
Conclusion.