Narrative context

It is fatal to exegesis when this narrative sense is lost, or goes into eclipse. Every word of Scripture fits into its large narrative context in one way or another, so much so that the immediate context of a sentence is as likely to be 85 pages off in words written 300 years later as to be the previous or next paragraph. When the narrative sense is honoured and nurtured, everything connects and meanings expand, not arbitrarily but organically - narratively. We see this at work in the narrative-soaked exegesis of a preacher like John Donne whose texts always lead us "like a guide with a candle, into the vast labyrinth of Scripture, which to Donne was an infinitely bigger structure than the cathedral he was preaching in." (Northrop Frye)

Working the Angles, p124