Understanding the different literary styles of the Bible enhances our study and allows us to fully appreciate the context. Reading a nonfiction biography is a lot different from reading a science fiction novel. You have different expectations of the content, and the books express their meaning in different ways. If you don’t know the literary style of a book in the Bible, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on what the author has to say.
There’s a myriad of genres the Bible could be broken up into, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll outline 5 main ones:
Narrative
Poetry
Wisdom
Law
Prophecy
Before we talk about these, it’s important to know that while the Bible has different genres, it has one objective. The Bible is about the reign and rule of God. It’s comprised of narratives, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, and law literature that all point to the reign and rule of God. It’s a book about Him and no other. When we read it, we shouldn’t be willing it to tell us something about ourselves, but rather about how we can better glorify the Lord.
Narratives make up a large portion of the Bible, and is exactly what it sounds like: stories. And we love a good Bible story. Daniel and the lion’s den, David and Bathsheba, and Jesus feeds the 5,000 are just a few stories that come to mind. They teach us the history of God’s people through real events and push us to learn spiritual lessons from them. We can see ourselves and our sin in a lot of the Bible’s characters, and our comparison to them should spur us to reshape our lives to please God.
A couple examples of poetry are Songs of Solomon and Psalms. They can be more difficult to understand as the style leans heavily on the expression of feelings and ideas by way of distinct rhythm and sound. Meaning can be beyond the literal sense of the word, so when you’re reading biblical poetry, s l o w d o w n and contemplate what the author is trying to convey.
The books of Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs can be considered wisdom literature. They exist to teach us about the meaning behind life. Virtues, the nature of God, and life are all topics touched on in these 3 books. They speak of how to honor God and how to, in general, live well. Although it may seem like it, wisdom literature is not the same as Law and Prophecy literature.
The Law is not the most exciting read. In fact, it can be really tempting to skip over the first 5 books of the Bible because of the lines and lines of laws that are in them. But the Law shows us how far away we are from God. Only through Jesus Christ do these laws become obsolete, and how thankful we are for that!
Prophecy scriptures include Isaiah, Odadiah, and Ezekial and tell of the prophets who spoke on behalf of God to warn Israel concerning their actions and consequences. Prophecy shows us that God will always do what he says he’s going to do, and the warnings the prophets give are timeless, meaning we can apply them to our own lives.
Depending on the literary style, the takeaway from each book of the Bible is vastly different. Biblical poetry asks us to dig deeper beyond the surface to be rewarded with a greater understanding of what God is conveying. Narratives ask us to learn from a character’s mistakes and see our own sin within the story. We must practice patience and endurance when reading through these different styles, and yes, that includes the Law, too!
P.S. If you haven’t read Courtney’s post about spiritual gifts and how to find them, I highly recommend it.
Komentarai