Stories, a Different View

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 “The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told...”

― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Fortunately, the narratives of the Bible do not depend on these tropes! We would do well to call them narratives or accounts, not stories. Story makes us human, and there are story/human elements in the Bible (how real is the Prodigal Son to our lives?) but the Bible narratives do not equate beauty with goodness (think Saul!)  or royalty with virtue.

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