A modern reader studying biblical narratives encounters various literary approaches and ways of
understanding interpretive concepts. Hence an attempt to put forward a comprehensive
hermeneutical model of reading biblical narratives. Such a model should aim at a synthesis of
various approaches and show how they are interrelated.The book proposes a hermeneutical theory
which uses modern approaches to literary texts for the exegesis of biblical narratives. The
book discusses three spheres of the reader's knowledge about reality: immanent narrative and
transcendental. The move from immanent to transcendental knowledge through the mediation of
narrative knowledge results from the mediatory role played by the biblical text which refers
the reader to a transcendent reality. This theory is then applied to the exegesis of Genesis
21:1-21 and involves the evaluation of the New Criticism rhetorical criticism structuralism
and narrative analysis reader-response criticism thehistorical-critical method as well as
deconstruction. In order to satisfy the postulate of pluralism in interpretation the
hermeneutical theory draws upon a variety of ancient and modern sources such as Aristotle T.
S. Eliot Hans Urs von Balthasar and Paul Ricoeur.
