Well Scenes – An Introduction to Biblical Type Scenes

Recently I finished meditating on the book of Genesis.  It is by far my favorite book of the Bible.  The characters are deep.  The stories are beautifully complicated and real.  The writing is rich and full of twists and turns.   It has so much to tell us about God and ourselves.  It’s a seriously fantastic book.  (If you want some free daily devotionals to help you read through Genesis you can get them here.)

One of the things that stuck out to me this read through were the well scenes.  There are five well scenes in Genesis that I’ve found.  Before we jump into them though, let me first explain why they pop out to me.

In his magnificent book The Art of Biblical Narrative, Robert Alter describes “type scenes”.  He starts the discussion off by explaining:

A coherent reading of any art work, whatever the medium, requires some detailed awareness of the grid of conventions upon which and against which the individual work operates…an elaborate set of tacit agreements between artist and audience about the ordering of the art work is at all times the enabling context in which the complex communication of art occurs.  Through our awareness of convention we can recognize significant or simply pleasing patterns of repetition, symmetry, contrast; we can discriminate between the verisimilar and the fabulous, pick up directional clues in a narrative work, see what is innovative and what is deliberately traditional at each nexus of the artistic creation.

Think about your favorite romantic comedy.  There are all kinds of type scenes in romantic comedies that allow us to compare and contrast the movies.  For example, there is the moment the couple first meets.  Typically one person notices the other first and begins to pine away.  Tension in the drama arises because the other piece of the puzzle hasn’t clued in yet.  In You’ve Got Mail for example, Tom Hanks makes the realization that the love of his life is the woman whose store he is destroying.  Then tension builds around how Tom Hanks will reveal himself to her.

Another type scene I’ve noticed is the big fight moment.  It is the make or break point in the story when one member of the couple is going to have to overcome some hurdle if the relationship is going to succeed.  Recently Wendy and I watched Friends with Benefits.   There is a moment in that movie when Mila Kunis overhears Justin Timberlake saying disparaging things about Mila’s character to his sister.  Mila then has to overcome the hero’s failure for the relationship to continue.  Or in the movie The Holiday there is the moment when Cameron Diaz discovers that she is in love with Jude Law, but she lives in California and he lives in England.  What will they do?!?!  Oh the drama!

These type scenes aren’t just in romantic comedies.   Think of your favorite hero-action movie.  At some point there is a Hero Walk.  It is a moment in the movie when the good guys are about to kick some butt.  We see them walking toward the camera with determination and strength.  The clearest one I can think of off the top of my head came in the movie Tombstone.

So story tellers recognize these type scenes and play off of them to enhance your experience and their story telling.  For example, in the cartoon Monsters Inc. there is a hero walk, but the monsters trip and fall all over each other.  It is the story tellers way of saying, “These are the heroes, but don’t take them to seriously.”

These type scenes empower the story teller to set a framework for the audience.  When we see a hero walk we naturally think, “Oh yeah!  Now it’s on!”  Unconsciously other hero moments come to mind and we begin comparing and contrasting the art we are seeing with other pieces we have watched in the past.

Alter’s brilliant argument is that these type scenes, these repeated situations/circumstances, existed in Biblical times too.  The problem is so much time has passed and so little literature survived from the period that we don’t recognize them.  Alter believes though that we can begin to pick them up by looking at the different stories in the Bible.  And as we begin to see them the stories in Scripture open up for us in new ways.

Alter gives several examples in his book of type scenes he has spotted.  One of which is betrothal scenes at a well.  As I’ve been reading through Genesis again though, I think the type scene is more than just betrothal scenes.  I think the type scene can be expanded to conversations at a well.  These are moments when the action slows down and we see characters chatting at a well.   These chats give us insight into the characters and the plot.

As I said at the opening of this post, I’ve noticed five scenes like this in Genesis.  There are more scattered through the Old Testament narrative.  Then there is one in the New Testament that has really come alive for me as I’ve compared it to the Old Testament ones.

In this series I’m going to work through some of the scenes in Genesis, maybe one or two in other OT narratives (depending on how I’m enjoying the writing…because it is in fact all about me), and then I’ll attack the one in John 4.

If you want to read ahead before the next post go check out Genesis 21.

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