Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (II Tim 2:15)
Father, help me approach your Word with a right head as well as a right heart. Grant me your common sense.
The Bible is not an ordinary book. If you do not have a right heart, you will never understand it, for it is more than words. And yet the Bible is an ordinary book. Its writers were real people writing to a real audience with a real historical setting. Sometimes they wrote history, sometimes legal code, sometimes songs and poetry, sometimes letters, sometimes proverbs, sometimes prophecy; and when they wrote, they used normal words with normal meanings to fit their purpose. In this respect, the Bible is like all other books, and the skills that help us interpret the U.S. Constitution, Hamlet, and the lyrics of the Beatles also help us interpret the Bible.
For example, if you want to understand Thomas Paine, it helps first to know the meanings of the words he used. It then helps to know that he is writing nonfiction, that he is a child of the Enlightenment, and that he is personally sympathetic to the colonial cause during the American Revolution. In this respect, interpreting the Bible is like interpreting Thomas Paine. You need to know what the words mean. You need to take into consideration the genre, the writer’s specific situation, and the broader historical context. And when it comes to the Bible, learning these factors does not require a college degree or years of study.
But it does require study. The study of Scripture is important. It often helps us discern the plain sense of a passage.
Let’s give some examples. Today we will talk about genre.
Common sense says that the genre of a piece of literature should inform how we read it. We should not interpret poetry the same way we interpret epistles. Common sense also says that if the author declares his genre, we should give precedence to what the author states. For example, Luke states outright that he has “carefully investigated” many sources and is writing an “orderly account” of the events that happened (Lk1:1-4). Common sense, thus, indicates that one must interpret the Gospel of Luke to be historical narrative. That is what Luke himself says he is writing. In fact, any interpretation of Luke that says he was somehow trying to write legend is intellectually irresponsible.
But there is more, for Luke also states that he is writing this orderly account so that the reader “might know the certainty of the things [he] has been taught.” Thus, Luke has a pastoral objective as well. He is not writing history just for history’s sake. One must then interpret Luke as an attempt to write history which has great theological significance. Any interpretation of Luke that says he is too theological to be historical is suspect. To Luke, history and theology are not mutually exclusive. In fact, to Luke, history is theological. He tells us so straight up. When we read Luke, we must, thus, let Luke be Luke and not force him to fit our 21st century biases and categories. If you read Luke as mythology or midrash, you miss Luke.
When reading the psalms, however, we might take a different approach. The psalms are a collection of songs, an ancient hymnbook so to speak. They are full of passion, struggle, faith, pain and praise, and they often use figurative language. So when the psalmist tells us, for example, that “God will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge” (Ps 91:4), he is not saying that God is some sort of giant bird. He is rather using poetic metaphor to illustrate a point about God’s character. This is poetry, not expository description, and we need to read it as such.
When it comes to epistles, we need to read them even differently. Though they are not historical narrative as the gospels are, they do have historical context, and they generally address specific issues. Those issues are doctrinal and practical. For example, Romans is a theological treatise on the gospel, while I Corinthians, deals with multiple issues that have come up in the Corinthian church. It’s not that Romans never talks about living life (it does) or that I Corinthians never gets theological (it does). Both letters marry theology and practice. Theology is always practical, and everyday life always involves theology. In the broadest sense, this is what the epistles are about. They are letters explaining how the Cross and Resurrection should affect our lives, and they apply the theology of the Cross and Resurrection to specific contexts. In this sense you might say they are like case law. If someone wrote to you today explaining some principle of Constitutional law and then illustrating that principle with specific cases, he would not be far amiss from what the epistles are doing. The content would be different obviously, but the idea is much the same. Therefore, when you read epistles, read them to learn God’s theology and to apply it. That’s the genre.
The Bible contains many more genres. Much of Exodus and Leviticus is legal code. Read it as such. The Proverbs, however, are not laws. Don’t read them as such. They are meant to give wise counsel for life, not precise legal requirements. And, of course, Revelation is its own animal. You can’t read about beasts and angels and trumpets and bowls and streets of gold and a river with fruit trees without seeing a great contrast and a great war between heaven and earth. Behind all the symbol, God judges this earth and delivers His people, and in the end they see His face. The main themes are obvious, but the details that the symbols represent … Well, shall we say that we must hold them loosely?
One more quick word. Sometimes a genre can exist within a genre. For example, the gospels are historical narrative, but within the gospels, Jesus tells parables. Now the parable is history in the sense that it is what Jesus said, but a parable itself is not necessarily history. It is a different literary genre. This means that when Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins or the Prodigal Son, he is not likely describing some event that happened. This genre within a genre is quite frequent. Revelation contains epistles. Isaiah contains history, prophecy, and song all within the same book. The Psalms frequently refer to historical events.
But don’t let this fact discourage you. In most instances, the genre within the genre is clear. Common sense generally will show you what is going on.
Taken as literature, the Bible is a rich book full of many genres, and each genre needs to be read in a different way. But isn’t this common sense? You would do this with any other book wouldn’t you?
