In the Bible, “genres” are types of writing style and content — the mode of expression of truth. Scripture is full of various literary types, and each has its own rules. It’s important to note the genre of a passage, though, because literary form dictates meaning and mode of reading. The following sections identify some of the primary biblical genre and describe how they shape interpretation. Narrative, poetry, prophecy, wisdom literature, the Gospel as a genre, apocalyptic literature. Each section responds to a certain question, provides a definition of the genre and demonstrates how to read it with the right methodology by means of an example. A bridge section will then pose “How do biblical texts imagine the role of literature more broadly?” (on why genre diversity is important). An additional Q&A section at the end covers related matters (e.g., hybrid genres between books, apocryphal texts, and textual vs. academic reading). Throughout, we provide examples and make references in order to illustrate how each genre affects interpretation.
What is biblical narrative?
The storytelling form of the Bible is Biblical narrative – stories that tell what God was doing in actual history. Almost half the pages of the Bible are narrative (stories about Israel and Jesus). These stories use setting, people, and events to communicate truth. For instance, Genesis and Exodus tell stories of creation and deliverance; Joshua-Kings capture a history of Israel; the Gospels depict the life of Jesus. In every story, God is the main character in stealth mode. There’s a narrative (it has setting, characters and a plot) that’s important to a story and which exists as merely “the vehicle by which to communicate a larger truth,” as one interpreter describes it. In reality, biblical narratives are indeed selective; they regale rather than inform, adhering to events that reinforce a theological point (you guessed it: the Exodus narrative tells us about redemption). We should be reading these stories to understand the context and flow (who speaks and when, what conflict is resolved etc.), not to cherry-pick moral maxims. For instance, if you were to read 1Kings 17–18, you would see that God’s sovereign work through Elijah (plot) is in support of the truth (1Kings 18:39). Narrative reading tips: focus on the plot and characters; assume nothing; give the text the benefit of the doubt; listen to the text’s own emphases and cadences rather than foisting your own on it. (About 40 percent of Scripture is narrative, an indication of its importance.)
What is the difference between modern poetry and biblical poetry?
It’s a form of poetry from the Bible (Psalms, Song of Songs, many prophets, etc.) that is very old, which often closely resembles free verse, and depends more on images and parallel lines than on the rhyme or meter of a lot of contemporary poetry. There is about a third of the Bible which is poetic material. Whereas most modern Western poetry is fixed in meter and rhyme, Hebrew poetry relies heavily on parallelism: two (or more) short lines arranged side by side to build on an idea. Biblical poetry, as one guide puts it, is of a “form of verse that you might as well call free verse. They don’t do meter the way some traditions of poetry do, and they don’t do rhyme in the same way.” Instead poetic lines tend to come in pairs: the first phrase makes a statement and the second phrase reviews, or contradicts, it. For example, Psalm 51 begins with a request for grace (first line) and petition for forgiveness (second line). That structure — a common feature in the Psalms, Proverbs and prophetic oracles — should tell readers to compare parallel lines for the full meaning. Biblical poetry also employs metaphor, repetition and symbol. For example, poetic verses such as Exodus 15: “The waters stood like a wall” (figurative language) must be interpreted as images, rather than as literal depiction. As summarised in the above, Understanding biblical poetry is reading couplets in combination, observing parallel and opposing metaphors and idiomatic language. It’s a bit like reading modern poetry; if you concentrate on the wordplay alone or expect constructs of narrative logic, you might miss how you were meant to receive the poetry.
What is biblical prophecy?
Biblical prophecy is the category of predictions or messages in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament of the Christian Bible. A prophet is, for all intents and purposes, God’s mouthpiece. In Exodus, for example, Moses was told he would speak to Pharaoh and Aaron would serve as a prophet who would speak for him. As one of the narrators puts it, “the Prophet is the one who speaks in the name of God.” So the primary function of prophecy is the relay of God’s word to His people. These texts typically carry judgments of judgment, appeals for repentance, or expressions of God’s faithfulness. Prophets’ Books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, etc.) Often contain poetic oracles, symbolic actions, and visions. Importantly, prophecy is not merely fortune telling. As Bible scholar Tim Mackie puts it, “what biblical prophecy … is not is prediction of future events. Prophets of the Bible sometimes predict the future, but that’s not the primary concept.” The question is rather not breaking covenant and enunciating the purposes of God. For instance, Jeremiah’s prophecies are based on the use of symbolic poems and sign-acts calling for Israel’s repentance, and are not simply a chronicle of events. In approaching prophecy, it is important to remember that metaphorengesprobe careful attention to metaphor along with the context of the original prophet: prophecies often had both first-order and higher-order fulfillment. To understand prophecy one must regard the prophet as a divine spokesman, not simply a psychic. Such an attitude discourages us from reading every picture literally and enables us to differentiate between prophecy and subsequent apocalyptic symbolism.
What is wisdom literature?
Wisdom literature: Wisdom literature—Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes—is instruction on life and godly living. These books pose practical and philosophical questions (“What is the good life? “Why do the righteous suffer?” ) and offer insights. The book of Proverbs: is a collection of general sayings that are at times presented in poetic couplet form and it teaches about wisdom, fear of God, and results of right and wrong choices. As one commentator puts it, for example, ‘We read in Proverbs, ‘Be wise, fear God; and it will be well with you… and if you’re stupid and evil, processes work badly for you. ” These are laid out as general principles, not ironclad promises. Job and Ecclesiastes, on the other hand, are long meditations on life’s complexity. Job is a story with poetic dialogue contending against injustice, and Ecclesiastes is a meditative monologue. They are evidence that real life doesn’t always play by simplistic rules. In reality, “Proverbs… has a picture of the world that says, ‘There are general rules,’ and Ecclesiastes and Job center on the exceptions to the rule.” The understanding of wisdom literature, therefore, requires acknowledging the form of wisdom literature: the brevity of Proverbs (a poetry of instruction) contrary to the dialogic (and frequently lamenting) variation found in Job or the skeptical form lamented in Ecclesiastes. Readers would be well-advised to impose no one formula, for while one is an expression of optimism and a love for life (the aphorisms), the other is an admission of doubt or of honesty (the exercises). Each instructs in its own way: Proverbs through aphorism, Job through story and dialogue, Ecclesiastes through philosophical reflection. The attentive reader of wisdom literature will be aware of its rhetoric (e.g., maxims, poetic devices) and will know that some of the statements are general statements, not universal rules.
What is the gospel genre?
The “gospel” books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) constitute a genre of Christian literature found nowhere else – ancient biographies (or “glorious histories”) of Jesus. Gospel: Work is generally recognized as belonging to the Greco-Roman genre of biography. Yet each of these biographies is unique: the portrait of Jesus’ life and teaching is selectively shaped to reveal theological realities of God. These consist of birth narratives (in Matthew and Luke), teachings and parables, miracle reports, passion narrative, and resurrection appearances. And of course, the Gospels aren’t mere modern history books. As Bart Ehrman points out: “Most biographies today are packed with information—names and dates, where people went and what they did, and what they were thinking and feeling. The Gospels (and other ancient biographies), by contrast are not.” “They zero in on what the individual did and taught, but not every fact about his or her life. In practice, that means that each evangelist had his own purpose in editing or distilling his narrative: Matthew, for example, dumped in all that fulfilled the Jewish prophets; Mark was obsessed with action and suffering; Luke was into careful investigation of events (Lk 1:2–4); and John just kept flogging his divine identity. The fact that they are gospels should guide interpretation: we accept them as writing true (and often eye-witnessed) accounts to encourage faith, not myth or pure allegory. We would do well to examine all four for a more complete picture, taking note of literary features such as repeated stories or thematic patterns. In other words, the Gospels are more like history delivered in literary form, bearing a theological message – one needs to read them as narrative biographies, mindful of both historical setting and religious message.
What does apocalyptic literature mean?
Apocalyptic writings in the Bible (especially in Daniel 7–12 and Revelation) are visionary revelations about the spiritual forces behind human history. This is the form with the vivid, weird images, and the symbolism. Ironically, the word “apocalypse” is translated not “cataclysmic end” but “revelation” or “uncovering.” In the Bible, apocalyptic visions “provide people with a heavenly perspective on their earthly plight.” For instance, Isaiah 6 witnesses a vision of God’s throne; Daniel 7 sees beasts standing for empires; and the Revelation 12 shows a dragon representing a cosmic enemy. The BibleProject defines apocalyptic visions as one that contain “intense imagery and strange symbols” (red moons, beastly creatures, angelic visions) that express spiritual truth. To unlock the apocalyptic text, we must define these symbols symbolically. Most numbers or beasts frequently symbolize something (Revelation’s dragon stands for evil empires). Biblical prophecy is both poetic and prophetic; much of it points towards God’s victory in the end in and through Christ. For example, it associates Jesus’ death and resurrection with the ‘renewed creation’ and the dragon’s defeat. In short, biblical apocalyptic is a symbolic genre designed to unveil hidden truths (the Greek root ἀπόκάλυψις means “to uncover”). It is best read with Old Testament kinds of imagery (e.g., Daniel – not straight-forward predictions). It is by the reading of its symbols that men come to understand the interpretation of hope and God’s reign conveyed in ratio of its type.
What does literature do in the Bible?
As a whole, the Bible’s genres function as God’s chosen medium of communication. And there’s no doubt in any case that the literary genre of each book performs an actual function. We’ll have to take each section as it comes. As one writer puts it, “the style and the form — or the genre — of what we’re reading determines our expectations and our mode of scrutiny.” The Bible itself is “not a single book … but a library of books,” and every one is in a different genre. On the one hand, regarding Scriptures as nothing but facts from history would spoil passages that were obviously poetic, just as it would be misplaced to read laws as allegory. Analogies have been offered such as the attempt to learn astronomy by reading a work of fiction as being all nonsense; to misread the genre of a block of text and you will misread the text itself. I believe in practice the narratives instruct through story, psalms stimulate emotion and worship, prophetic books challenge with God’s word, wisdom literature provokes the reader to reflection, apocalyptic texts disclose the cosmic view. This range also makes certain that the Bible addresses various facets of human experience and knowledge. In other words, the literature of the Bible isn’t an afterthought: it is part of its message. The genres were selected to help communicate in truth (declaredly on a “higher, deeper” and even under literal surfaces). Acknowledging this unites the Bible’s teaching: literary forms are how God has chosen to reveal himself; it prompts readers to interpret every passage according to the assumption that the author was conforming himself to his culture.
What Other Questions Do You Have About Biblical Literature?
How do changes in genre within a single text do to interpretation?
A lot of books of the Bible blur genres. For example, there could be a song or poem after a narrative part. The tendencies are worth being observed. When the genre changes, the interpretive method should change as well. Exodus, for example, recounts the crossing of the Sea of Reeds as history and immediately follows with a lyrical, poetic song of thanksgiving (Exodus 14–15). Recognizing that the song is poetry (and it does not continue the “story”), and reading it as such, as a song (and even a hymn of thanksgiving), we attend to its metaphor and parallelism, and do not take it as reportage. Genre-blindness can create confusion or misapplication as in Austen’s case. Read the work according to its type (law, narrative, poetry, etc.) in general before drawing conclusions, pattern poems as such and story as story.
What about the apocryphal or extra-canonical books?
Books that are apocryphal (deuterocanonical) are Jewish writing from the period between the Testaments (e.g. 1Maccabzies, Wisdom of Solomon). They tend to follow the same genres of biblical books -history and story style, wisdom style, apocalyptic style, etc. For instance, 1Maccabees reads as history, and one could say the Wisdom of Solomon is poetic instruction. But most Protestant denominations do not regard them as Scripture, and therefore they are not utilized in the definition of doctrine. However, reading these books can help to highlight specific genre conventions of that era. Interpreters regard them as literature: paying attention to their genres is the key to understanding both history and theology (just as it is for canonical books), though they do not hold the same authority as canonical works.
How do we reckon of historical context and literary form?
We have to read the Bible as history and as literature. Historical background (culture, authorial and other) accounts for why something was written, but the literary form indicates how it speaks. Neither can be ignored. For instance, now that we know Luke intended to put together a careful narrative for Theophilus (Luke 1:1–4), we are better poised to understand his desire to show “the exact truth” concerning Jesus. But we must not lose sight of Luke’s storytelling fashion and theological themes. For the most part, interpretors use a “historical-grammatical” approach: combine knowledge about history (who wrote what, when, to whom) along with knowledge of genre. This dual approach keeps us from reading modern expectations back into the ancient text. It is asking: what kind of book is this, and what did it mean to them? In doing so, we allow the text to articulate itself through genre whilst firmly planted in its real-world context.
