Terry Giles

Talk is essential to human social life. Through conversation we form friendships, share dreams and hopes, and develop a common outlook on the world around us. Talk with God can achieve the same thing. This book examines the conversational prayers in the Hebrew Bible, their structure and content, to understand how talk with God forms friendship, shares dreams and hopes, and develops a Divine-human outlook on the world. Conversation forces the petitioner to surrender control of the encounter and become susceptible to unscripted give and take with the Divine. Conversation with God is always a risk, but the rewards can be great. Through conversation Abraham and Moses became friends with God. The same can be true for us.

Embedded in portions of the biblical text are performance modes of thought that preserve a pre-literary way of thinking that can be analyzed through performance analysis. Even as literary forms of thought are embedded in non-literary forms of communication (television and radio announcers, preachers, actors, conversation), pre-literary forms of thought (i.e., performance modes of thought), became embedded in early literature. Performance analysis is designed to identify and describe these performance modes of thought embedded in the prophetic literature. While recognizing the contribution of various forms of literary criticism, performance analysis enriches literary analysis by bridging the written word to its oral world. Doan's and Giles' book has two major components: the development of performance analysis methodology and the application of that methodology to select portions of the prophetic texts found in the Hebrew bible.