What type of literature is in the Bible?
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Establishing literary form
Only in modern times, with the discovery of the literatures of people contemporary with Israel, have we realised just how many types of literature were current in antiquity. In the Old Testament, for example, we find:
● epic poetry
● lyric poetry
● didactic poetry
● drama
● prophecy
● apocalyptic
● many forms of history
● prehistory
● fictional tales
● parables
● allegories
● proverbs
● maxims
● love stories
Once readers have determined the literary form of any biblical book or passage, standards applicable to that form help to clarify that literal sense of the text (i.e. what the author meant meant).
The story of Jonah - Embed video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yMNG6-C_S8
If Jonah is a fictional parable, the reader should recognize that the author is not giving a history of the relations of Israel and Assyria and is not presenting the story of a prophet in a whale’s belly as a factual happening; rather, in an imaginative way the author is communicating a profound truth about God’s love for the Gentile nations.
Only in modern times, with the discovery of the literatures of people contemporary with Israel, have we realised just how many types of literature were current in antiquity. In the Old Testament, for example, we find:
● epic poetry
● lyric poetry
● didactic poetry
● drama
● prophecy
● apocalyptic
● many forms of history
● prehistory
● fictional tales
● parables
● allegories
● proverbs
● maxims
● love stories
Once readers have determined the literary form of any biblical book or passage, standards applicable to that form help to clarify that literal sense of the text (i.e. what the author meant meant).
The story of Jonah - Embed video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yMNG6-C_S8
If Jonah is a fictional parable, the reader should recognize that the author is not giving a history of the relations of Israel and Assyria and is not presenting the story of a prophet in a whale’s belly as a factual happening; rather, in an imaginative way the author is communicating a profound truth about God’s love for the Gentile nations.
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If the statement about the sun standing still in Joshua 10:13 comes from a fragment of highly poetic description in a victory song, readers will judge it in the light of poetic license rather than according to the rules of strict history.
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Many past difficulties about the Bible have stemmed from the failure to recognize the diversity of literary forms that it contains and from the tendency to misinterpret as scientific history pieces of the Bible that are not historical or are historical only in a more popular sense. We have taken examples from the Old Testament, but the same problem exists in the New Testament.
The Gospels are not scientifically historical biographies of Jesus but written accounts of the preaching and teaching of the early church about Jesus, and their accuracy must be judged according to the standards of preaching and teaching.
There is a feeling that somehow the recognition that certain parts of the Bible were written as fiction weakens or challenges their inspiration by God. However, God could inspire any type of literature that was not unworthy or deceitful, i.e. not contrary to his holiness and truth (e.g. pornography, lies). Biblical fiction is just as inspired as biblical history.
God as author of Scripture may be understood in terms of the authority who gives rise to the biblical books rather than in the sense of writing author.
The primary duty of the human author was to be intelligible in his era, writing in a language and a culture far removed from our own. What he wrote communicates meaning to us today, but he did not envision our circumstances or write to us in our times. In an effort to draw from his text a message for our circumstances, there is always the problem of whether we achieve true communication or only an illusion in which we impose on the text what we want to find (eisegesis).
The Gospels are not scientifically historical biographies of Jesus but written accounts of the preaching and teaching of the early church about Jesus, and their accuracy must be judged according to the standards of preaching and teaching.
There is a feeling that somehow the recognition that certain parts of the Bible were written as fiction weakens or challenges their inspiration by God. However, God could inspire any type of literature that was not unworthy or deceitful, i.e. not contrary to his holiness and truth (e.g. pornography, lies). Biblical fiction is just as inspired as biblical history.
God as author of Scripture may be understood in terms of the authority who gives rise to the biblical books rather than in the sense of writing author.
The primary duty of the human author was to be intelligible in his era, writing in a language and a culture far removed from our own. What he wrote communicates meaning to us today, but he did not envision our circumstances or write to us in our times. In an effort to draw from his text a message for our circumstances, there is always the problem of whether we achieve true communication or only an illusion in which we impose on the text what we want to find (eisegesis).
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Source:
Brown, R., & Schneiders, S., Hermeneutics. In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Eds. R. Brown, J. Fitzmeyer & R. Murphy. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990.
Brown, R., & Schneiders, S., Hermeneutics. In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Eds. R. Brown, J. Fitzmeyer & R. Murphy. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990.