In our local university, there is a course called “The Bible as Literature”. I’ve always been told the very idea was the height of sacrilege. Of course, this particular course is taught from an atheistic point of view where it’s not even an option for anything (other than some of the historical references) to actually be true. I’ve always viewed the Bible as a special book that is so different from any kind of other literature as to be off in a special category all by itself. Lately though, I am beginning to realize that this can give us an incomplete understanding of the passage. The holy spirit gives us understanding regardless of how much we understand, but let us strive to understand more.
The Bible is true and divine, but it also IS literature. Each book was written down by a human being and directed, not to just generic Jews or Christians, but intended for a specific audience. It has clear genres. Some of it is straight up history, as reported by a royal chronicler. Job is NOT history literature (regardless of whether or not it describes actual events). Psalms and Song of Songs are poetry. Philemon was a letter written to one recipient. Corinthians was written to a whole group of Greek people, not Jews. Now, all of this seems pretty obvious, so why mention it?
It’s because if you throw these things out (which happens more often than I ever realized), then you can come up with all kinds of goofy ideas. Grabbing a verse from Song of Songs to back up a particular point of doctrine from Romans might not actually work. Really! Revelations is full of metaphors and imagery. When you take something from it and stick it next to some verses from Mark, it may sound more “literal”, but that is only confusion. This is beyond just the idea of context, but stretches to the authors original intention for each particular section of the Bible.
A recent commenter at the Boar’s Head Tavern pointed out an excellent example of this:
Let’s say you are studying Deuteronomy, and right at the beginning of the study, one of your students says the following:
“I’ve been reading this book for years and it clearly teaches that, if you obey and worship God, he will financially and materially bless you. It’s plain and clear. Anyone can read it in chapter after chapter. Obey, worship and God will bring you prosperity and wealth.”
What would be your response? (No seminary level answers allowed. These are regular laypersons.)
I would tell him to be aware of who God’s talking to. The Bible is not God’s personal letter to you, and in this case, he really DID promise Israel prosperity if they as a nation continued in his commandments and his worship. He made no similar promise to any other nation.
Posted by: Josh S
The Bible is not God’s personal letter to me? I’ve been told so many times that it’s his personal LOVE letter to me. Actually, I still think this is true (in some sense), but if you just stop to think, you’ll realize that in many other ways, it never has been. Above is a great example. Can you find an image of God’s love for you in the types and liturgical instruction in Deuteronomy? Yes, I believe you can. But it actually was written for some old guys with beards living in tents in the desert 3500 years ago. The author (God, through a human writer) wasn’t EXACTLY writing it for you sitting on your couch listening to your iPod. That’s fine, but that must be taken in to account!
I hope to explore the different genres of the Bible in the next while and maybe blog some about how that has helped me to understand (and appreciate) it better.
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November 8th, 2007 at 5:19 PM
This post actually felt very disturbing to read. I don’t think it was the idea that we ought to look at the Bible as literature. To me that is a no-brainer. Of course we should look at the Bible from any and every angle. Each way of seeing it enhances the layers and layers of meaning.
No, what I find disturbing is the tone of the post. It takes a defensive stance that almost challenges the reader NOT to do the very thing you are advocating. For instance, you said, “The author (God, through a human writer) wasn’t EXACTLY writing it for you sitting on your couch listening to your iPod.” Well, duh. But getting bogged down in that view is what trips secular guys up who study the Bible. We have to believe that EVERY line in the Bible has relevance and meaning for us today. I know you are not saying that it doesn’t but getting off on tangents like “The word iPod isn’t in the Bible” has no benefit even for people who view it as literature. I think that there are many ways of studying the Bible without bearing in mind that the audience is 3,000 years dead. I actually think that the audience IS alive and sitting on their couches with iPods. I think it is EXACTLY written for them because it is timeless and we have as much chance of understand and applying its concepts as the guys in beards and robes.
I think viewing it as literature is a good and beautiful thing but advocating it doesn’t mean we toss the baby out with the bathwater and say that we misunderstand the Bible if we don’t take a strong historical viewpoint. History is great but its usefulness is to guide our actions today and the same applies to the Bible.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:52 PM
The thing is, this isn’t an all-or-nothing kind of argument. I agree with what you said. The Bible IS written for us today, and it was written for those people in distant history. I wasn’t advocating one or the other, but both, tempered.
The whole reason I wrote this post was to convey some of the excitement I felt when I discovered this way of looking at scripture. I’ve been reading the bible for years and years and not really “getting” chunks of it. Yes, looking at historical context in Catechism class helped, but at the time a lot of it had still never clicked. A couple things that bought this around:
Reading N.T. Wright explain in great detail how the “going to heaven when you die” (as typified in much bluegrass music) idea was completely foreign to OT Jews and even early Christians. We are so used to the idea that we carry it with us when we read these old passages and come up with a kind of gnostic reading that is at odds with other elements of the Gospel. No wonder the bible is confusing to us. I imagine other parts of it are just a confusing to the Chinese, coming from yet another angle. I don’t think it’s any kind of requirement to be well versed in the history before you read the bible. By all means, go ahead and read it and let the spirit bring it to fruition in your heart and life. I just find this kind of study to be helpful to me.
This has also helped me to appreciate the poetry and prophecy of the bible more. In the particular fundamentalist background I grew up with, poetry was not appreciated at all. So we read the psalms, but they always felt so rigid. So literal, hard, and cold. I could never quite figure out why some people got so emotional about them. There were other things that were a source of emotion for me: some secular poetry (discovered later), music, finely crafted lyrics, a beautiful painting. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any of this stuff in the psalms. It’s because I was reading them like Deuteronomy or Romans. By putting myself in the artists shoes and imagining beautiful ways to describe God and his faithfulness and mighty deeds, they suddenly meant so much more.
If you don’t relate to this, then praise God! May the bible continue to grow rich for you and not stagnate. It may seem odd, but trying to read the bible like this actually feels LESS rigid than before for me.