I’ve recently been reading a lot on biblical narrative, literary criticism, and Bible as literature recently. Some of it is in preparation for teaching Pentateuch and some of it will eventually serve my dissertation. My friend Jack Klem pointed me to a work that has proved to be helpful for me so I wanted to point you to this as well. In J.P. Fokkleman’s Reading Biblical Narrative he identifies ten groups of questions that are useful to ask while reading narrative (pg 207-209).

1. Who is the hero? What is your reason for thinking this (remember the criteria of presence, initiative, and the executor of the quest)?
2. What does the quest consist of? What is the hero after, i.e. what is the object of value? Does he attain his goal, and if not, why not?
3. Who are the helpers and opponents? Besides characters, factors, situations, or personality traits also qualify. Are any attributes (objects) present? What do they contribute? Do they have a symbolic added value?
4. Can you feel the narrator’s presence anywhere in the text? This will apply especially in the case of information, comments, explanations, or value judgments on his part. Can you point to these instances of the writer speaking? Where is the writer less obviously present (for instance in his deliberate arrangement or composition of the material)? Does he usually make his own statements at strategic points in the text?
5. Does the narrator keep to the chronology of the events and processes themselves? If not, where does he deviate, and why do you think he does that? Try and get an idea of the discourse time/narrated time ratio.
6. Where are the gaps where the narrated time has been skipped and are there cases of acceleration, retardation, retrospect and anticipation? Assuming that the writer inserted them at the right points: why are they where they are? What is their relation with the context?
7. Is there a clear plot, or is the unit you are reading more or less without plot of its own, because it forms part of a greater whole? What, then, is the macro-plot there?
8. Where are the speeches? Are there many of them? Have speeches been left out where you would expect them? What factors influence the
   character who is speaking, what self-interest, background, desires, expectations? Congruence: do the characters’ words match their actions? If not, how come?
9. Is there any particular choice of words that strikes you? Any other considerations of style or structure? Take them seriously, and keep pondering them, guided, for instance, by such questions as “what does this contribute to plot or characterization?”
10. Boundaries: what devices are used to demarcate a unit? (Consider the data regarding time, space, beginning and end of action, entrances or exits of characters.) Can you make a division of the text (divide it into smaller units)? By what signals are you guided? Try and find other signals or markers, which may possibly lead to a different structuration. To what extent does the division clarify your view of themes or “content”?