The Dramatic Feature Of The Old Testament

The dramatic feature of the Old Testament is playing an important role in theinterpretation and reading appreciation to the text. However, the study in this field is notclear and overall enough that the academic circles have been engaged in and most ofthem only remains in the controversy over the existence of drama in the Old Testament,so it restricts the exploration for dramatic style of the whole works. This paper isintended to avoid the limitation of the drama, and makes a further attempt to discusscomprehensively about the dramatic characteristic of the Old Testament. This discussion of the dramatic feature of the Old Testament is in the field of thenarrative literature, which differs from the study made in the field of drama and theatre.On the one hand, the Old Testament expresses the strongly conflictive and suspensefuldramatic plot under the influence of historical and religious conscious factors. On theother hand, the dialogic characteristic of the dramatic style the Old Testamentpossessing directs the corresponding application of scene narrative. Otherwise, in thereader's perspective, the scene narrative produces the unique feature of the OldTestament, the drama of reading, which is realized through the procedure of applyingthe narrative techniques including the change of perspective and the repetition. Analyzing from the general principle of creating the Old Testament, the profoundreason causing this kind of dramatic effect is discussed further that covers the differentrequirements of history, region and aesthetics. Different from that of Ancient Greece,Hebrew language literature expresses the style of subjectivity and abstraction, whichrestricts the development of drama. Furthermore, the other model arts areunderdeveloped in Hebrew such as painting, statuary and so on.