Transplanar

Consider how many magical/powerful beings are portrayed in science fiction and fantasy novels. Often times beings of extraordinary power seem to show inconsistency in their use of their powers, attesting not to a coherent vision of the character's powers but to serve as a plot device. After all, why would Darth Vader bother taking out his lightsaber to fight luke when he could have force-choked him to death? Why would Saruman send a lightening bolt to kill Frodo and his companions and have it hit the top of the mountain, rather than under their feet to just kill them outright?

It seems the same is the case with God. In stories that are supposed to show God's love, he heals the sick. In stories where he is supposed to be just and resolute, he destroys cities out of righteous fury. In stories about pondering morality, God conspicuously lacks his omniscience (such as in Genesis, or when he talks to the devil to wager over Job, etc).

These examples and others make me think that these are not true attestments to a coherent vision of God, but merely tools used to weave the narrative of the Bible and reinforce the message of any given passage.

DCHindley

Some post-modernists look upon history as a form of literature, and thus propose that all history, no matter how well it is based on factual evidence, must of necessity use the elements of narrative.

Hayden V. White, who is my favorite representative from this school, sees all historical narrative as possessing a Deep Level Trope (i.e., figures of speech that deploy words in such a way as to turn or translate meaning); Emplotment (i.e., a story line or plot structure that imparts meaning to a historical narrative); an Argumentative Strategy (i.e., a set of premises and the conclusion drawn or inferred from them); and horror of horrors an Ideological Implication (a coherent set of socially produced ideas that lend or create a group consciousness).

Since these elements are present in all narrative, his analysis can be applied not just to history but to all ancient sources that come to us in narrative form and which try to explain things or convey "meaning."

Ancients had developed several well known emplotments such as romance, tragedy, comedy and satire, which still dominate our way of telling stories. In selecting and arranging the "facts," the emplotments, argumentative strategies and ideologies chosen to organize and thus "explain" them (and there can be more than one employed in a narrative) will tend to adhere to cliche and sometimes stilted paradigms, simply because the reader/hearer will easily recognize them and internalize the new data easier.

DCH

GakuseiDon

Eusebius of Caesarea wrote in "De praeparatione evangelica" about 1700 years ago:

"Now you may find in the Hebrew Scriptures also thousands of such passages concerning God as though He were jealous, or sleeping, or angry, or subject to any other human passions, which passages are adopted for the benefit of those who need this mode of instruction."

Clivedurdle

What is the other mode of instruction? That the emperor has no clothes?

bacht

Right, and along with narrative there is the imagery. In religion metaphor is used to explain the unexplainable, typically with anthropomorphism (God has "eyes" and "ears")