The strange return of the continuous need to make sense of things

The idea of reading continuous narrative may be relatively recent. For example, the Bible is arranged in many places with a long sequential narrative, and some have seen it as ‘the greatest story ever told’. But liturgical practice, both Jewish and Christian, is to split this extended narrative up into excerpted readings (&rsquo;the reading&rsquo; or &rsquo;the lesson&rsquo;; &rsquo;the…