Synchronic Approaches

Although the era of the diachronic approach using the documentary hypothesis or the fragmentary hypothesis is far from over, synchronic methods have been on the rise. Narratology, the study of the literary nature of the final form of the text, has provided scholars with new insights concerning the Balaam narratives from a synchronic perspective. Alter, for example, points out several literary devices that are evident in the Balaam narrative:

1. The use of the verb “to see” and its cognates function as a Leitwort, a significantly repeated word.

2. Phrases or motifs concerning blessing and cursing are repeated.

3. There is threefold repetition of similar occurrences, which is similar to folktales.

Based on these three observations, Alter understands the donkey pericope (Num 22:21–35) as a literary device where the ass plays the role of Balaam and Balaam plays the role of Balak (Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 104–07). Therefore the entire Num 22:2–24:25 story is harmonized, and Balaam is a saint.

Another application of narratology concludes the opposite. Sharp proposes that the Balaam story is ironic. She argues that Balaam is consistently portrayed as unreliable and that his conversations are often ambiguous, manipulating Balak and his emissaries (Sharp, Irony and Meaning, 134–51).

Moberly also reads the narrative synchronically; he recognizes irony in the story, but not to the extent that Sharp does. He takes a middle reading, where Balaam falls to the temptation of greed but turns back to God and thereby also receives his sight back (Moberly, “On Learning,” 1–18).

Another synchronic approach is intertextuality, where similar texts are compared in such a way as to illuminate the meaning of the compared texts. Savran compares and contrasts Gen 3 and Num 22–24 (especially Num 22:22–35), the two Old Testament stories that have animals talking. He isolates the theme of blessing and cursing in the two pericopes: Gen 3 focuses on curses while Num 22–24 yields blessings (especially in the oracular poems of Num 23–24). Furthermore, the two contrasting narratives highlight the themes of vision and understanding along with obedience and disobedience to God (Savran, “Beastly Speech”).

Kenneth Way analyzes the stories of animals within prophetic narratives. The two passages he studies are the donkey narrative (Num 22:22–35) and the story of the man of God from Judah (1 Kgs 13). He concludes that the animals play a literary function as divine agents in these early prophetic narratives. He also notes that both pericopes emphasize the importance of Yahweh’s word along with depictions of death (Way, “Animals in the Prophetic World”).

These and other synchronic methods have highlighted many details and provided ways of making sense of the final form of the Balaam narrative in Num 22–24, with a special emphasis on how to integrate the donkey pericope. The larger issue of how to handle the full collection of Balaam stories in both the biblical and extrabiblical texts is put to the side in these studies.