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The sentence goes as:
Surely, through most of the history of history writing, the dominant mode of recalling that past has been narrative, with all that this implies about literary crafting and persuasive intent.
Should I interpret this as kind of 'and'?
The sentence is from A Biblical History of Israel by Provan.
...and all that this implies...
Sure. Kind of. They want to highlight all the implications, which go with the first part of the sentence.
It means taking all that into account. And your interpretation of using and instead of that part seems to be perfectly fine.
The unusual word here is not that but this. The usual phrase would be 'all that that implies', which though momentarily confusing would at least show that the first that is a relative pronoun. The author seems to have thought it would be inelegant to repeat a word, but not thought to omit it entirely; '...with everything narrative implies about...' would have been my choice.
And no, it really doesn't mean 'and'; if you have to replace the phrase with a single word it would be 'including'.
Surely, through most of the history of history writing, the dominant mode of recalling that past has been narrative, with all that this implies about literary crafting and persuasive intent.
Not the best sentence possible. The "this" refers back to "the dominant mode", which is the narrative mode, i.e. writing history in the form of stories. It then goes on to say what "this" implies about "literary crafting". But the author has things the wrong way round. The narrative mode doesn't imply anything about literary crafting. Rather, the fact of literary crafting implies something about the narrative mode, which is that historical accuracy will be sacrificed for artistic purposes, facts distorted or embellished, important details omitted where they don't serve a nice dramatic arc.
The meaning would be clearer if you replaced about with in terms of.
"...with all that this implies [about the narrative mode] in terms of literary crafting and persuasive intent".
If you're unclear about the meaning of "with all that this implies", you can re-word it as "when you consider what this implies".
