Monday, February 18, 2013
What a convoluted mess...
The story of Balaam’s jenny exhibits a sophisticated literary structure. It is divided into three paragraphs (the first of which can be subdivided into three separate “encounters”). The first and second paragraphs employ role reversal as the primary literary convention. The third paragraph restores proper roles and reveals the purpose of the entire episode―to reinforce that Balaam may only speak YHWH’s words. Num 22:22–35 is outlined here as follows: I. Reversal A: The Jenny as Seer (vv. 22–27) First Encounter (vv. 22–23) Second Encounter (vv. 24–25) Third Encounter (vv. 26–27) II. Reversal B: The Jenny as YHWH’s Mouthpiece (vv. 28–30) III. Resolution: Balaam as Seer and Mouthpiece (vv. 31–35) The first paragraph (vv. 22–27) reverses the roles of the seer and the donkey. The role of the donkey (which is infamous for its stubbornness; see §§2.6.4, 4.2.3) is assigned to Balaam. The role of Balaam “whose eyes are opened” (Num 24:4b, 16b) is assigned to the donkey. —Donkeys in the Biblical World, page 184
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This is an intriguing look into the literary structure of this passage. My interests involve digging into the literary crafting within the structure of a passage, focusing particularly on the crafting of "point of view". Note how, in the first paragraph, the readers are provided with information possessed by the donkey, but kept from Balaam. According to point-of-view theory, when readers experience events possessing exactly the same information possessed by a character (thus viewing them through the character's point of view), they will be inclined to empathize with the character, but when they experience events possessing more or less information than a character, they will feel distanced from that character. So, in this passage, the readers are led to side with the donkey (which is appropriate, given that the donkey is about to become Yahweh's mouthpiece), and feel distanced from Balaam (also appropriate, since his going is at odds with the wishes of Yahweh).
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