Mapping the Exodus plague narratives: Applying the poetics of Robert Funk

This study applies the methodology of Robert Funk's Poetics of Biblical Narrative to the examination of the Exodus plague narratives with two ends in view: (1) to assess the adaptability of that methodology for the study of Hebrew literature. (2) to generate a surface structure mapping of this narrative complex based on internal, text-based markers rather than thematic or external criteria.; After identifying four significant streams of scholarship on these narratives, labeled here as the historical, naturalistic, Jewish, and modern synchronic (i.e. literary and social-scientific approaches) and comparing their fundamentally disparate methodological points of view, the study focuses attention upon a problem in identifying the surface structure of these narratives that was revealed by the survey and is inherently a part of the source critical process as it has been applied.; Since the dissolution of the old "consensus" for the source critical partitioning of the Pentateuch, the present state of impasse in source critical studies of the Pentateuch has moved some scholars to look for methods outside the realm of historical studies that may offer some guidance in sorting through the alternatives. One of the places one might hope to find a methodological nexus for comparing results obtained by completely different methods, is in the matter of accounting for the surface structure of the final redaction. The plague narratives in Exodus offer an excellent ground for exploring this problem, since they have been subjected to a wide range of methodological approaches from pre-critical times to the present. Yet it remains that so basic a surface structure question as identifying where these stories begin and end in the text of the larger Exodus narrative has never been settled with any sense of agreement. This study is dedicated to the proposition that attempts to use the imagery of the plague narratives as the basis for understanding the surface structure of the narrative complex have brought us to the present state.; Funks methodology, never before applied to Hebrew literature, uses structural criteria he calls macrofeatures and microfeatures instead of thematic linkages to help discern how a story progresses from one state to another. The patterned operations of these features convert a narrative from an undifferentiated stream of words into a segmented description of events, and this is the internal basis for the structuring of all narratives. His macrofeatures trace continuities and discontinuities in temporal and spatial settings, groupings of characters as participants in segments and sequences of events, and patterns in the layering of discourse. Further segmentation of a story is discerned in the kinds of language being used to move participants together for some action and apart again afterward, resulting in a new state. Because these operations are fundamental to communication, and not related to the historical moment or meaning of the imagery employed, it is possible to get a picture of the shape of the narrative structure that is independent of these features. This has the potential of being used as a check on the surface structure proposals that have been put forth by other means and methods.