Reading by genre: narrative, law, poetry, prophecy, gospel and letter

Program / Course 4: Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics / Lesson 5.3

What you will learn

• Define genre and explain why it governs how a text should be read.
• State one key question and one common mistake for each of six genres.
• Apply a genre question to a short passage.
• Recognize passages that mix genres or that stretch the usual conventions.

The big idea

Genre is the kind of writing a text is. A recipe, a love poem and a legal contract are all made of words, yet each is read differently. The Bible contains many genres, and most mistakes of interpretation begin by reading one kind of writing as if it were another. A proverb is not a promise, a psalm is not a report, and a letter answers a situation. Asking what kind of writing a passage is, and what its first audience expected from that kind, is among the most useful habits of a reader.

Key terms

Genre

A recognized kind of writing, with its own conventions and expectations, such as story, law, poem or letter.

Narrative

A story told in order, with characters, setting and plot. Much of the Old Testament and the New Testament is narrative.

Law

In the Pentateuch, commands and rules given to Israel as part of the covenant, including moral, civil and ritual regulations.

Hebrew poetry

Poetry marked less by rhyme than by parallelism, in which a second line repeats, contrasts or extends the first.

Prophecy

The message of a person who speaks for God, which may include warning, promise, call to repentance and prediction.

Epistle

A letter written to a particular person or community about a particular situation.

Parable

A short story, usually from everyday life, that teaches a point by comparison.

Background

Readers do this naturally in daily life. Nobody reads a newspaper headline, a poem and a set of instructions in the same way. The difficulty with the Bible is that the genres are ancient, and the conventions that were obvious to the first readers are not obvious to us. A modern reader may expect a story to teach a rule, a poem to state facts, or a letter to give a complete system of doctrine. Learning the genres means learning what the first audience would have expected.

The standard guide for this course on the subject, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, goes through the genres one at a time. This lesson follows a similar plan in brief. For each genre, there is a question to ask and a mistake to avoid. The questions are not mechanical rules. They are habits that help a reader approach the text in the way it asks to be approached.

Remember also that genres overlap. The book of Revelation is a letter, a prophecy and an apocalypse, a kind of writing full of visions and symbols. The Gospels contain narrative, parable, poetry and teaching. Always look at the passage you actually have.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Narrative and law

In narrative, ask what the story shows about God and his people, and not only what it shows about a character. Biblical narrative is often descriptive, not prescriptive: it tells what happened, and does not always approve it. When Gideon puts out a fleece to test God (Judges 6:36-40), the story does not set a rule for how to find God’s will. Reading every action as a model is the common mistake.

In law, ask what kind of command it is and to whom it was given. Some laws state moral principles, such as the prohibition of murder. Some are case examples, and some concern ritual and civil life in ancient Israel. Deuteronomy 22:8 commands a parapet on the roof of a house. The principle, care for the safety of others, lasts even if few of us have flat roofs. Christians differ on how the Old Testament law applies to them, and the traditions handle the question in different ways. Reading law as though it were all equally binding or all equally obsolete is the common mistake.

Step 2: Poetry and prophecy

In poetry, ask what the images and the parallel lines are doing. Hebrew poetry often says the same thing in two ways, or sets one thing against another, as in “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1). The second line deepens the first. Proverbs are a special case: they state general truths, not guarantees. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” It is a wise observation about how upbringing usually works and not a promise that every child will turn out well. Reading a proverb as a promise is the common mistake.

In prophecy, ask what the prophet said to his own time, and then ask how the New Testament uses the text. Prophets spoke for God to Israel and Judah, calling them back to the covenant, and sometimes spoke of the future. Many prophecies were conditional. Jeremiah 18:7-10 states the principle that God may relent if a nation turns, and the book of Jonah shows it at work. The common mistakes are treating all prophecy as prediction of distant events, and ignoring its context in the prophet’s own day.

Step 3: Gospel and letter

In the Gospels, ask what each writer is showing about Jesus, and read the individual stories in the light of the whole. The Gospels are not modern biographies. They are accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, shaped for teaching and faith. They contain narratives, sayings, parables and discourses. A parable usually has one main point, and reading every detail as a code is the common mistake, though traditions differ on how far Jesus’ own explanations of some parables licence a more detailed reading.

In a letter, ask what situation the letter answers. Epistles are occasional: they address particular problems in particular churches. We hear one side of a conversation. First Corinthians answers questions the Corinthians had sent (1 Corinthians 7:1) and reports on divisions. A reader should reconstruct the situation as well as possible, then ask what principle lies behind the advice. The common mistake is to take a local instruction as a universal rule, or to dismiss a universal teaching as merely local.

Step 4: Use the genre question in practice

Before reading a passage closely, write at the top of your notebook page its genre, and one sentence stating what the first audience would have expected from it. When a passage sits at the border of genres, say so. And when you are unsure, read more of the book, since the shape of the whole book often shows the genre of its parts.

1. What kind of writing is this passage?
2. What would its first audience have expected from this kind of writing?
3. Is the passage describing what happened or telling readers what to do?
4. Is it a general truth, a command, a promise or a warning?
5. Does the passage mix genres, and how does that affect my reading?
6. What mistake is typical of this genre, and am I making it?

Examples

Different perspectives

Protestant evangelical

Fee and Stuart, whose book is a standard guide, represent a tradition of careful attention to genre within a high view of Scripture. They argue that genre guards against both naive literalism and dismissal. Evangelicals differ over how far genre affects questions such as the early chapters of Genesis.

Catholic

The Second Vatican Council taught that, to understand what the human authors meant, interpreters must attend to literary forms, since truth is presented in different ways in history, prophecy, poetry and other kinds of speech. This is part of the church’s official teaching on interpretation.

Orthodox

Orthodox interpreters honor the genres and read the texts also in the liturgy, where psalms, prophecies and gospels are heard in worship. The fathers often distinguished history from parable and poetry, while seeking spiritual meaning in all of them.

Jewish

Jewish tradition distinguishes halakha, the legal portions, from aggadah, the narrative and ethical portions, and the rabbis read each with its own methods. This is a distinction of genre within the study of the Torah and the oral tradition.

Secular scholarship

Literary scholars compare biblical genres with those of the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world, such as treaties, annals, hymns and letters. Comparison helps clarify what the conventions were, though scholars debate how closely a given biblical text follows its parallels.

Why it matters

Misreading genre is the source of many popular misunderstandings of the Bible, from treating proverbs as guarantees to taking visions as timetables. A habit of asking what kind of writing a passage is will improve nearly all your reading. It is also the first step in any serious exegesis, and your final assignment for this course begins with it.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Which genre do you find hardest to read well, and why?
2. Can you think of a verse you have seen used in a way that ignores its genre?
3. How does the genre of apocalyptic, such as Revelation, change the questions you ask?
4. What might a parable lose if every detail were treated as a code?

Independent assignment

A genre profile

Choose one passage in each of three different genres from this lesson, for example a narrative, a psalm and part of a letter. In your notebook, write the genre, what its first audience would have expected, one question you would ask, and one mistake to avoid. Write 300 to 450 words in all. Then name one passage that seems to mix genres. Keep your work in your notebook.

Further study

• Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth Read the chapters on the genres you meet in your assignment passage.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hermeneutics Read the section on the role of genre and convention in interpretation.
• Jewish Publication Society, The Hebrew Bible in English (JPS translation) Read a prophetic book or a psalm in the Jewish translation and note the poetic lines.
• Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) Read for the context of the Catholic teaching on Scripture.
• Proverbs 22:6 A proverb about training a child.
• Psalm 19:1 Parallelism in Hebrew poetry.
• Jeremiah 18:7 Prophecy as conditional.
• Judges 6:36 Gideon and the fleece.