Observation – Part Two: Genre
Roses are red, violets are blue…
Once upon a time…
Which line begins a story and which line begins a poem? The answer is obvious. Why? Well, one answer is that we have all heard these famous lines. The other answer is that we all know the basic rules of poetry and narratives. Poetry has rhyme and rhythm. Narratives have settings, characters, and conflict. Poetry typically has shorter lines, while narratives have longer paragraphs. All of these literary rules and conventions help us determine the genre of any given text. Once we know the genre, we know how to understand the words on the page.
We’ve been discussing how to read our Bibles, and learning practical tools to grow as Bible-readers. We’ve discussed that the first step to good Bible reading is observation. We need to see what is actually there in the text in front of us. The first step to observation is a Book Overview (looking at the whole puzzle picture before laying out the puzzle pieces). Today, we take the next step by finding the genre or literary form of a passage. I know how boring this sounds, but I promise this step can be very helpful in understanding the Bible. Imagine our puzzle again. After you have seen the picture on the box, the next great step to working a puzzle is to find the “border” pieces, the puzzle pieces that frame the picture to make sure every other piece falls into its proper place. The genre of a passage are those border pieces that help us frame the words inside the passage.
There are generally seven major genres in the Bible: historical narrative, law, wisdom literature, prophetic literature, gospel, letter, and apocalyptic literature. Don’t worry, you don’t have to memorize all seven of these, much less different rules for each one. What you need to know is that different genres exist in the Bible and the authors will write differently depending on the genre. We can find great help in understanding a text just by being aware that these genres exist. For example, the book of Exodus is largely historical narrative, which means Moses is writing to us about things that actually happened in history. When we read the story of Moses parting the Red Sea, we are reading the actual, historical story. We should pay attention to the characters, the conflict, the resolution, and how God works within the story to display His glory and save His people!
Yet, when we come to Proverbs, we have wisdom literature. We do not read Proverbs as a story that actually happened. Rather, we have word pictures that help us understand the theme of wisdom, and we have short, pithy statements of wisdom that help us remember and apply that truth. If we read Proverbs like it’s a historical narrative, we will be very confused. And if we read Exodus like it is wisdom literature, we will come up with all kinds of crazy, unbiblical beliefs. The genre gives us the border for those books and the passages in those books.
So, how can we begin to pay attention to the genre? Well, we can start by looking for three different types of writing (like the “corner” peices of our puzzle, even though we only have three). Read the passage and ask: is this passage telling me a story? Does it have characters, a plot with conflict and resolution, a clear ending? If so, this is a narrative. That helps us to know that the meaning is found in the story. What is the big picture? Who are the important characters? Where is God in this story and how is He working?
The second type of writing to look for is poetry. Is this passage using a lot of imagery (word pictures) to describe something? Does it seem like it is repeating things a lot (the Bible’s poetry has a lot of parallelism, so the same point will be said over and over in a slightly different way)? Then we can ask, “what truth is this poem teaching us and how are the images helping us understand?”
The third type of writing to look for is discourse. Discourse is any kind of speech. Sometimes a narrative will have discourse between characters. Other times, whole books are discourse (one person talking to another). For example, the book of 1 John is discourse because John is talking to an audience. This helps us to ask: what is the author directly saying? How does this apply to the original audience? How might this apply to us?
I recognize this is drinking water from a fire hydrant. But if we practice these questions intentionally, they will become second nature. Before you know it, you’ll be a puzzle-working champ (excellent Bible reader!)!
Maybe practice this week by reading Psalm 1. How do you know Psalm 1 is poetry? Hint: the answer is not because your pastor said so.
Pastor Mark