Collectively, the Bible consists of complex literary layers stacked atop one another. Stories and motifs are recycled and re-used. When we read any individual story, we must read it as a single layer of a greater whole. The strange story of Ananias and Sapphira, for example, is written in conversation with a series of Old Testament stories as well as at least one other Ananias story in the Book of Acts. We aren’t reading it well unless we learn to read it as a literary layer.

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