ABSTRACT
The biblical text mirrored reality; the events it reported were events that had happened in the real world, the theological ideas it presented to the reader were theological truths about God and humanity and nature. Abrams's model is so simple, so illuminating and such a powerful analytical tool that the author have been led to wonder if it could not be adapted so as to provide biblical critics with a map on which to locate the various theories and methods that play so large a role in biblical scholarship today. It may be odd, as the author have suggested, to find post-structuralists rubbing shoulders with Dr Johnson in this corner of the diagram, but he would surely find himself quite at home with a patristic approach, a style of biblical study that sought first and foremost for what could nourish the Christian soul.
