Narrative Reading Methodology

(b) Proposed Research Method: Socio-Narrative Reading
The proposed research attempts to fill these gaps in scholarship by reading biblical texts as identity-forming documents within their historical, social and cultural context. It will employ a reading methodology, which is called socio-narrative reading. This model of reading early Christian documents contributes to attempts to understand how early Christian narratives, which includes Gospels, function as identity-forming stories. To accomplish this, the proposed research brings together Social Identity Theory and Narrative Theory.
Hanri Tajfel defines social identity as the “aspects of an individual’s self-image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself as

It will employ a reading methodology, which is called socio-narrative reading. This model of reading early Christian documents contributes to attempts to understand how early Christian narratives, which includes Gospels, function as identity-forming stories. To accomplish this, the proposed research brings together Social Identity Theory and Narrative Theory.
Hanri Tajfel defines social identity as the “aspects of an individual’s self-image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself as belonging.” In a later work, Tajfel adds to this definition, noting that social identity “derives from his knowledge of his membership of a group together with the vale and emotional significance attached to the membership.” The theory, then, concerns itself with the way group members understand themselves as part of the group and differentiate their group from other groups in order to achieve a positive social identity. Tajfel argues that simply recognizing that one belongs to a specific group is “sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination favoring the in-group.” Thus people categorize themselves into groups that attempt to establish a positive sense of value by distinguishing their group (and self) values by making clear distinctions

Paul Ricoeur in his landmark work “Time and Narrative” argues that narratives has an identity forming role and coined a phrase “narrative identity” in which he defined a narrative identity as “the kind of identity that human beings acquire through the mediation of the narrative function.” This narrative identity is developed through interaction with narrative in a three-fold process: prefiguration (the pre-understanding the reader/hearer bring to the text), configuration (the author’s construction of the text and the reader’s interaction with the narrative world of the text), and re-figuration (the fusion of the world of the text and the world of the