The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative by Hans W. Frei
Essentials in Biblical Theology Series
The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative by Hans W. Frei[1]
Hans W. Frei (1922–1988) was a leading figure in twentieth-century theology best known for reshaping modern discussions of biblical interpretation through his emphasis on the narrative character of Scripture. For most of his academic career, Frei taught at Yale Divinity School. During his time there, Frei worked alongside other significant scholars like Brevard Childs, George Lindbeck, and David Kelsey. Collectively, these professors were part of what came to be called the “Yale School” that influenced the development of postliberal theology.[2]
Frei’s most influential work was The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics. In this work, Frei advances the central claim that a decisive shift occurred in modern theology and biblical interpretation in which the Bible’s stories ceased to function as the primary framework for understanding reality.
Frei argues that premodern Christian interpreters usually read Old and New Testament stories as realistic narratives that depicted the real world and located all other historical, moral, and doctrinal truths within that scriptural world. By contrast, from the eighteenth century onward, interpreters increasingly treated biblical narratives as either historical data to be reconstructed or as symbolic expressions of timeless religious ideas. In both cases, the narrative itself lost its governing role, leading to what Frei famously calls the “eclipse” of biblical narrative as the locus of meaning for Christian theology.
Structurally, Frei’s book is organized around his overarching historical argument that unfolds in three major movements, each marking a distinct way Scripture’s narratives were understood in relation to meaning and reference.
In the first movement (17–50), Frei describes the precritical consensus, in which readers naturally assumed that the literal sense of biblical narratives was inherently realistic and historically referential. In this vein, Frei begins his argument by stating his central concern: “Western Christian reading of the Bible in the days before the rise of historical criticism . . . was usually strongly realistic, i.e. at once literal and historical, and not only doctrinal or edifying. The words and sentences meant what they said, and because they did so they accurately described real events and real truths that were rightly put only in those terms and no others” (1).
For patristic, medieval, and Reformation readers (like Augustine, Luther, or Calvin), narrative meaning and historical reference were not separate questions. Though there were of course disagreements about the meaning of the Bible and theology, there was also a common foundational approach to reading narrative texts. As Frei explains, “it followed automatically that [a narrative] referred to and described actual historical circumstances . . . the true historical reference of a story was a direct and natural concomitant of its making literal sense” (2).
Figural interpretation functioned within this framework rather than competing with it, allowing readers to see Scripture as a unified narrative world ordered by God’s action in history (17–34). In this precritical context, “literal and figurative reading, far from contradicting each other, belonged together by family resemblance and by need for mutual supplementation” (28). Further, “far from being in conflict with the literal sense of biblical stories, figuration or typology was a natural extension of literal interpretation. It was literalism at the level of the whole biblical story and thus of the depiction of the whole historical reality” (2).
In his second movement (51–182), Frei traces the decisive eighteenth-century shift, driven by Enlightenment empiricism and the increasing concern for what Frei calls “ostensive reference.” In Frei’s account, this shift represented something genuinely new in the history of interpretation. As Frei describes his project, “the pages that follow are an investigation of the breakdown of realistic and figural interpretation of the biblical stories, and the reversal in the direction of interpretation” (9).
Under this new epistemological stance, meaning was increasingly tied to what could be verified outside the text. Biblical narratives were no longer assumed to render their own world; instead, they were judged by their correspondence to independently accessible historical facts. In his survey and synthesis of the modern era, Frei shows how thinkers influenced by British empiricism, such as John Locke, Anthony Collins, and Hermann Samuel Reimarus, redefined literal meaning as reference to something “out there,” available for confirmation or falsification by historical evidence.
In the case of miraculous events depicted in biblical narratives, Frei observes two major responses. Some argued that the historical subject matter of these texts (i.e., “what really happened”) was in fact false. These “naturalists” interpreted the ostensive referents of biblical narratives just as they would any other occurrence in the natural world. By contrast, those who affirmed the authority of Scripture and the existence of God sought to establish the historicity of the historical subject matter of these texts. These “supernaturalists” used historical investigation to serve the apologetic task of demonstrating that what biblical narratives depicted could or did in fact happen. Though on opposite ends of the theological spectrum, Frei insists that both of these kinds of interpreters shared a hermeneutical assumption. For both readers, meaning resides outside of the narrative text itself.
This movement is pivotal in Frei’s argument because it marks the beginning of the eclipse of narrative shape in the reading of Scripture’s stories. In the shadow of historicism, the biblical story ceases to function as the primary framework for theological understanding, even when Scripture is still affirmed as important or authoritative.
In the final movement (183–324), Frei traces the nineteenth-century development in which reference becomes “ideal” rather than historical. Here Frei focuses on figures such as Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and David Friedrich Strauss, who each relocate meaning away from the narrative world of the text. Herder emphasized historical consciousness and cultural development, Schleiermacher grounded meaning in a kind of religious experience and feeling, and Strauss famously treated the Gospel narratives as mythic expressions of timeless religious ideas rather than historical accounts.
Frei argues that in this phase the scaffolding that bridged the literal narrative meaning and historical reference finally collapsed. He observes that “the breakup of the cohesion between the literal meaning of the biblical narratives and their reference to actual events . . . cannot simply be undone” (3–4). As he concludes his wide-ranging study, Frei also remarks on how this fundamental hermeneutical shift endured even as different approaches to accessing and analyzing the biblical events came and went. What remained was the separation between the biblical text itself and the meaning found in external referents. As he reflects, “the realistic narrative reading of biblical stories, the gospels in particular, went into eclipse throughout the [modern] period” (324).
In this scenario, although Scripture may still be used to construct theology, its narratives no longer govern theological formulation by their own internal logic. Frei’s book thus tracks the move from narrative coherence to narrative displacement, clarifying what is at stake for theology, biblical interpretation, and the church when Scripture’s stories no longer render the world Christians inhabit.
The enduring value of Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative is its keen insight into the history of interpretation and its incisive diagnosis of the central challenge of reading narrative after modernity. Frei’s last word in the book leaves the urgency of this interpretive dilemma open-ended: “Whether anything has changed in this respect since the days of Schleiermacher and Hegel is a question for another day” (324).
Much more could be said about Frei’s work and the hermeneutical problems it raises. Because so much of the Bible tells a story, and because biblical theology as a discipline pays close attention to the grand storyline of redemptive history, grappling with the nature of narrative remains a matter of utmost importance for the study of hermeneutics and the work of biblical theologians.
Readers may disagree with Frei’s conclusions, but the questions he presses about narrative, meaning, and the task of reading itself should remain central to serious engagement with Scripture. Indeed, the questions Frei leaves open are the very ones that will determine the future of faithful biblical interpretation in every era.
While the reading of biblical narrative may have suffered an eclipse in the modern era, the task of the evangelical biblical theologians is to open the shutters and allow the light of the Bible’s storied world to continue doing what it has always done: illuminate the minds and shape the lives of biblical readers.
Ched Spellman
Cedarville University (December 2025)
TL;DR
The Precritical Consensus: Before the eighteenth century, Christian readers viewed biblical stories as “realistic narratives” where the literal meaning and historical events were inseparable, allowing the scriptural world to serve as the primary framework for understanding all of reality.
The Rise of Historical Criticism: During the Enlightenment, a major shift occurred where meaning became tied to external verification; interpreters began treating the Bible either as historical data to be proven or as myths to be debunked, moving the locus of meaning outside the text itself.
The Eclipse of Narrative: As interpretation moved into the nineteenth century, the internal logic and cohesive “story” of the Bible lost its governing role in theology, becoming overshadowed by interests in religious feeling, cultural history, or timeless symbolic ideas.
The Ongoing Challenge: Frei’s work identifies a permanent tension in modern hermeneutics, challenging contemporary theologians to move beyond external historical or idealist references and return to a serious engagement with the Bible’s own storied world.
[1] Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
[2] While both the “Yale School” and “postliberal theology” are debated terms that must be handled with nuance, we might say in general that this approach to theology was marked by a focus on narrative, ecclesial practices, and the internal logic of Christian language. For a brief synopsis, see David Lauber, “Yale School,” Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 859–61. On the difficulty of the categories, see further Michael Root, “What is Postliberal Theology? Was there a Yale School? Why Care?” Pro Ecclesia 27.4 (2018): 399–411.
