Many years ago, I was in a pretty serious relationship with a woman when we were separated by a thousand miles for a work obligation. We talked on the phone weekly (long distance!) and exchanged countless letters. One of those letters completely caught me off guard, though. As a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding, she wrote about how much she enjoyed dancing with some of the groomsmen. I was dismayed! Had I miscalculated the trajectory of this relationship? The three days before our next phone call seemed like an eternity. Was this the end?
Fortunately, it was not the end. On our weekly call we talked through the issue, sincere apologies were made, and forgiveness was extended. But it wasn’t me who offered the forgiveness. I was the one asking for it. I had completely misread the sarcastic tone in the letter. I clearly understood what the letter said, but I didn’t understand how the letter said it. What was intended as grief, I mistook as glee. Karen and I got married two years later, but a misunderstanding of genre could have had profound implications for both of our lives.
Genre in Popular Use
Even if we don’t use the term, most of us are familiar with genre. What kind of books do you like? I’m captivated by adventure biographies, like Boys in the Boat or Edge of the Map. What about movies? Karen and I like a good action-adventure flick or spy movie. Whatever type of entertainment we enjoy, we have certain expectations. I would have quite the convoluted view of the 33rd president of the United States if I watched “The Truman Show” as if it were a documentary.
We generally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about genre. That doesn’t mean we aren’t aware of its importance. Based on our experience of observing patterns, we arrive at certain expectations from the media we consume. To demonstrate, let’s look at a few examples. How would you classify the genre of each? What clues helped you decide?
Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum—as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.’ (Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”)
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. (John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields”)
What did you decide and why? The Hobbit and Pride and Prejudice are both written in prose, but one is fantasy and the other is a satirical comedy of manners. A character like Gollum is useful for portraying Frodo’s shadow figure in The Hobbit, but his presence in Pride and Prejudice would render the entire novel incredulous. Although both “The Raven” and “In Flanders Fields” are concerned with death and are written in poetic verse, they each approach death from a very different perspective. As macabre, Poe’s poem confronts death as an inevitable enemy, waiting to destroy and devour. The raven haunts, mocks and horrifies. As poésie de guerre, McCrae’s poem views death as final rest and peace for the war hero. If there were a raven in Flanders Field, it would stand and salute.
Determining Genre in the Bible
In his Reflection on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis noted that “the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”[1] Leland Ryken, professor emeritus of English at Wheaton College, echoes these sentiments, writing that “when the Bible employs a literary method, it asks to be approached as literature and not as something else.”[2] Although the Bible contains a grand narrative, it is composed of 66 separate books, each contributing to the Bible’s story in its own way. Before hearing what each of these books say, we first need to hear how the author intended to say it.
Identifying genres in the Bible is generally not as easy as identifying genres of movies, television, music or well-known literature. James Bailey attributes this difficulty to “the biblical cultures’ foreignness to us westerners who live in the twenty-first century.”[3] We are simply unaccustomed to the “well-worn grooves of expectation”[4] cut throughout the pages of Scripture. The challenge for most readers of the Bible is not only recognizing the subtle shifts in these grooves, but also identifying them among the hundreds of genre categories.[5] However, as we read the Bible more regularly and thoroughly, the more we’ll become accustomed with its “well-worn grooves of expectation.”
One of the more recognizable genres found in the Bible is the parable due in large measure to the frequency with which Jesus used it. C. H. Dodd defines parable as follows:
At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.[6]
Despite its precision and clarity, most of us don’t need such a definition to spot a parable nested within a narrative setting.
Take for example the parable of the lost coin.
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:8–10; NRSV)
Several clues alert us to the fact that this is a parable. First, it’s a story detached from the narrative’s plot. Second, the story has anonymous characters (a woman; friends; neighbors). Third, the story is vague on details (why ten coins? which house?). Fourth, the story draws on common life. Fifth, the story has a specific point of application. Finally, and most obviously, the story is the second of three consecutive stories about lost things: a lost sheep (Luke 15:3–7), a lost coin (Luke 15:8–10), and a lost son (Luke 15:11–32). “So he told them this parable” (Luke 15:3). Furthermore, each of these stories concludes with a celebration of joy over the thing that was lost to demonstrate to the Pharisees and scribes why Jesus welcomed sinners and dined with them (Luke 15:2). Just as there was rejoicing over the found sheep, coin, and son, how much more will heaven rejoice when lost sinners are found (Luke 15:7)!
Genre and Biblical Interpretation
Appreciating the subtleties of genre is paramount for a proper understanding of a biblical passage. If we are mistaken about how God is speaking, we can easily be mistaken on what God is saying. For example, in Isaiah 44, the prophet describes how idols are made, casting some in metal and carving others out of wood. The artisan uses half a piece of wood to fuel a fire and uses the other half to form into an idol, praying, “Save me, for you are my god!” (Isa 44:17). By paying attention to “well-worn grooves of expectation” throughout Isaiah, we’ll readily recognize Isaiah 44:1–20 as satire, mocking the folly of graven images. For the prophet, these images aren’t gods—they’re pieces of wood and metal. If we miss the genre, we might mistake the prophet as condoning idolatry!
To hear God speaking through the text, then, requires that we pay attention to genre. Not only do individual books vary in their genre type (e.g., Chronicles vs. Corinthians; Exodus vs. Ephesians; Jonah vs. James), but also most books contain a variety of genres. Although it’s impractical to provide a comprehensive list of genre types in the Bible, the following charts help demonstrate the array of possibilities.
Old Testament[7]
New Testament[8]
The Challenge of Interpreting Genre
Given the fact that we are unaccustomed to the “well-worn grooves of expectation,” it shouldn’t surprise us that interpreters sometimes disagree on biblical genres. These debates aren’t new. One classic example is the dialogue recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (ca. 500 A.D.) on whether the book of Job is parable or historical biography:
A certain Rabbi was sitting before R. Samuel b. Nahmani and in the course of his expositions remarked, Job never was and never existed, but is only a typical figure. He replied: To confute such as you the text says, ‘There was a man in the land of Uz, Job was his name’ [Job 1:1] But, he retorted, if that is so, what of the verse. ‘The poor man had nothing save one poor ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up etc.’ [2 Sam 12:1]. Is that anything but a parable? So this too is a parable. If so, said the other, why are his name and the name of his town mentioned? R. Johanan and R. Eleazar both stated that Job was among those who returned from the [Babylonian] Exile, and that his house of study was in Tiberias.[9]
Using genre clues from the text itself, the rabbis came to different conclusions. Depending on how we understand the genre of Job can significantly change our expectations of the book. If Job is read as parable, we would expect some point of universal application, such as “true happiness, which is the knowledge of the deity, is guaranteed to all who know Him and that a human being cannot be troubled in it by any of the misfortunes in question.”[10] If Job is read as historical biography, “a story about an interpretation of life,”[11] we would expect to glean from Job that (1) it is within human capacity to be a blameless, upright, God-fearer who shuns all evil (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3); and (2) through his suffering, Job came away with a reformed theology of the divine’s nature. Neither approach diminishes the message of Job, but they can lead to rather divergent applications.
Hearing God Through the Noise
According to G. G. Brown, communication is the “transfer of information from one person to another, whether or not it elicits confidence. But the information transferred must be understandable to the receiver.”[12] Communication doesn’t happen if the message is distorted and anything that creates distortion is called noise.
The Bible is God’s primary mode of communication to those who care to listen. Hearing God’s words accurately demands that we become intentional about eliminating as much noise as possible from the message. Paying close attention to how God is speaking, not just what God is saying is an important way to eliminate noise.
For Further Reading:
Bailey, James L, and Lyle D. Vander Broek. Literary Forms in the New Testament: A Handbook.
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992.
Ryken, Leland. A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway,
2014.
_____. Literary Introductions to the Books of the Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015.
Online Resources:
https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/bible-articles/your-guide-to-biblical-genre/
https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2016/03/the-many-genres-of-scripture/
https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/literary-styles-bible/
Notes:
[1] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958), 3.
[2] Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature and Get More Out of It (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 11–12.
[3] James L. Bailey, “Genre Analysis,” in Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation, ed. Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 140–64, esp. 141.
[4] Bailey, “Genre Analysis,” 140.
[5] See, e.g., James L. Bailey and Lyle D. Vander Broek, Literary Forms in the New Testament: A Handbook (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 89–188; Leland Ryken, A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014);
[6] C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (New York: Scribner, 1961).
[7] William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, and Robert L. Hubbard, Jr., Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 417–567.
[8] The New Testament table has been supplemented by Bailey, “Genre Anaylsis,” Ben Witherington III, Invitation to the New Testament First Things (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), and my own observations.
[9] Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Bathra 15a.
[10] Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III.23:492–93.
[11] Birgitte Possing, Understanding Biographies: On Biographies in History and Stories in Biography (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2017), 22.
[12] G. G. Brown, “Definitions of Communication.” https://www.communicationtheory.org/definitions-of-communication.
