The Genres of Scripture

General Considerations

Each genre has distinctives

Narrative has a plot, setting and character

Poems consist of images and figures of speech

Each genre operates according to its distinctives

Narrative: the essence of plot is conflict, so we can trace the unfolding conflict throughout the story and analyze its resolution at the end.

Poetry: Metaphor and simile compare one thing to another, so we need to carry over the meanings from one level to another to understand it.

Genre cannot be ignored

Every book of the bible belongs to one or more genre.

In order to understand the books of the bible, we need to know to what genre(s) it belongs, the distinctives of that genre and how that genre operates.

When the biblical authors wrote in specific genres, they intended we read their works in keeping with the distinctives of the genre.

The Genres of Scripture

Epistle

A letter addressed to a person or church

All the books of the New Testament except the gospels, Acts and Revelation

They are occasional documents: arise out of and intended for a specific occasion.

The epistles were written in the context of the author to the context of the recipients. This is what makes them occasional.

That the epistles are occasional is what can make interpreting them difficult. We can observe the responses or answers, but the problems or challenges that occasioned those answers may not be clear.

Historical Context

Learn as much as possible about the place in which the recipients lived and the people themselves.

Reading the letter in one sitting is recommended. This is how we read letters, emails, texts etc. The aim is to get acquainted with the flow of the letter. If you were taking notes as you read you mights observe:

distinctives about the recipients; e.g., Jew or Greek, wealthy or slaves, their problems, attitudes etc.?

The author’s attitudes

Specifics mentioned regarding the occasion of the letter

the letter’s natural or logical divisions

Literary Context

Trace the author’s argument as an answer to a problem.

To do this, work through the text paragraph by paragraph, and try to summarize the point of each paragraph in one sentence.

Hermeneutical Rules

Discover God’s Word to them first.

Before we seek understand God’s Word to us, we must understand what the biblical author was saying to his audience.

By discovering God’s Word to them, we bring ourselves under that same word.

The caution here is that we do our exegesis well, so that we have confidence that our situations and particulars are genuinely comparable to theirs.

Discover God’s Word to you second

When there are comparable situations and comparable particulars, God’s Word to us in such texts must always be limited to its original intent. The application of the text is usually seen to be legitimate because it is clearly spelled out in other passages where that is the intent of that passage.

2 Corinthians 6:14 ESV

14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

The metaphor of yoke is rarely in antiquity to refer to marriage, and there is nothing in the context that has marriage in view.

The challenge is we cannot be certain as to what the original context was prohibiting. It most likely has something to do with idolatry, perhaps as a further prohibition of attendance of idol feasts (1 Cor. 10:14-22).

Can we legitimately extend the principle of this text to a caution regarding marriage? Perhaps, but only because it is a biblical principle that can be sustained apart from this single text.

Old Testament Narratives

God’s story

This makes it true, important and often complex

Distinctives

Stories about what God has done to and through His people. All the stories has God as the supreme protagonist.

Narrative do not answer all our questions about a given issue. They are limited in their focus and give only one part of the overall picture of what God is doing in history.

The whole narrative gives the message, not the separate individual parts. The thrust of the message comes from the entire sequence of events depicted in the narrative.

Principles for interpretation

OT narrative usually does not directly teach a doctrine.

OT narrative usually illustrates a doctrine or doctrines taught propositionally elsewhere.

Narrative record what happened - not necessarily what should have happened or what ought to happen every time. Therefore, not every narrative has an individual, identifiable moral of the story.

What people do in narratives are not necessarily a good example to us.

We are not always told by the end of a narrative whether what happened was good or bad. We are expected to be able to judge that on the basis of what God has taught us directly and categorically elsewhere in Scripture.

Narratives do not necessarily provide all the details of the what occured. What does appear however, is everything that the inspired author was directed to write down.

Narratives are narrowly focused and are not meant to answer all of our theological questions.

Narratives may teach explicitly (by clearly stating something) or implicitly (by clearly implying something without actually stating it).

Acts

Distinctives

Many do not think of the Old Testament histories (narratives) as setting biblical precedents for our own lives. When it comes to the book of Acts however, we are much more likely to look to it identify and apply patterns for person and church life.

Acts tells us the history of the church and also serves as the normative model for the church.

Reading Acts

In addition to chronicling the past, Luke wrote Acts to encourage and to inform the church. It should be noted however, that Luke was greatly influenced by his reading of the Old Testament narratives which is instructive for how we understand this book.

Luke’s own theological concerns are important as we read Acts. We should not only ask, what happened? But, what was Luke’s purpose in selecting and shaping the material this way? In other words, the question of Luke’s intent is at once the most important task.

Discerning Luke’s intent can be difficult partly because we do not know much about Theophilus (see Luke 1:3) or why Luke would have written to him.Keeping this question before us as we read Acts is important to understanding the message.

Principles for interpretation

Key Question: Does the narrative of Acts that describes what happened in the early church also function as norms intended to delineate what must happen in the ongoing church?

The Word of God in Acts that may be regarded as normative for the church today s related to what any given narrative was intended to teach.

What is incidental to the primary intent of the narrative may reflect the inspired author’s understanding, but it does not have didactic value as what the narrative intended to teach. In other words, what is incidental must not become primary, although it may serve as additional support to what is taught elsewhere.

Historical precedent, to have normative value, must be related to intent. If it can be shown that the purpose of a given narrative is to establish precedent, then such precedent should be regarded as normative.

The Gospels

Distinctives

Jesus Himself did not write the gospels.

While the gospels contain collections of Jesus’ sayings, they are always woven as an integral part of the historical narrative of Jesus’ life.

The gospels are not books by Jesus but books about Jesus, which contain a large collection of His teaching.

Here’s the challenge illustrated:

If we did not have the book of Acts, we would be hard-pressed to piece together the life of Paul from his epistles. If we did not have his epistles, our understanding of his theology would be based solely on his speeches in Acts which would be a meager account. We read Acts and feed that information into what he says in his epistles. For his teaching we go first to his epistles and then to Acts as an additional source.

In the gospels we have both the narrative of Jesus’ life and a large collection of His teaching. The teachings were not written by Him as the epistles were written by Paul. It’s important to note that Jesus’ primary tongue was Aramaic, so what we have in the gospels are a Greek translation of His teaching. All this is not to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the gospels. Good scholarship demonstrates the historical reliability of the gospel materials.

The point here is that God gave us what we know about Jesus’ ministry in this way, not in another way.

In each of the four gospels, there is a historical concern for the accounting of Jesus’ life and a concern to retell His story for the needs of later communities that were different from Jesus’.

Historical Context

To immerse ourselves in first century Judaism, outside reading is helpful. Here are some recommended resources:

“Jesus and the Gospels” by Craig Blomberg

“Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus” by Joachim Jeremias

“The New Testament Environment” by Eduard Lohse

Jesus taught in many forms

Parable

Hyperbole (Matt. 5:29—30)

Proverb (Matt 6:21)

Similes & Metaphors (Matt 10:16)

Irony (Matt 16:2-3)

Literary Context

When studying any one pericope in any one Gospel, be aware of the parallels in the other Gospels.

When studying a narrative or teaching in the Gospels, be aware of the historical context of Jesus and the author. We do this to keep clear in our minds that the Gospels in their original form is the Word of God to us; our own reconstructions of Jesus’ life are not.

If we are studying a teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew

Our first concerns is what it meant in the context of Matthew. What came before, what came after?

Once we have a good understanding of the context, we ask how the teaching functions within the Gospel of Matthew.

Law

Rules for understanding the relationship of Old Testament Law to the Church

The Old Testament law is a covenant

a binding contract between God (the Great King) and the vassal (Israel).

There are some aspects of the Old Testament law that is no longer applicable to the church.

a key to knowing which parts of the Old Testament law are applicable today or not is whether or not it is reinforced in the New Testament.

Loyalty to God is still expected, the evidence of our loyalty has changed since Christ has come.

Some stipulations of the Old Covenant have not been renewed in the New Covenant

We no longer make sacrifices because Jesus has once for all paid for sin.

Aspects of the Old Testament law are restated in the New Testament.

Deuteronomy 6:5 ESV

5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Leviticus 19:18 ESV

18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Matthew 22:40 ESV

40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus excerpts some Old Testament laws and gives them new applicability, taking them beyond their original scope.

5. All of the Old Testament law is still the Word of God to the church even though it may not all still be commands to the church.

6. Only that which is explicitly renewed from the Old Testament law can be considered part of the New Testament law of Christ.

Decalogue

The Prophets

Definition of prophecy

the spoken message of God by God’s chosen spokesperson to God’s chosen audience.

Distinctives

The prophets were covenant enforcers

Covenants had blessings and curses. The prophets declared the consequences of the covenant stipulations to God’s people.

Often the pattern is an identification of Israel’s sin or God’s love for her and then a prediction of curse or blessing depending on the circumstances.

The prophet’s message is unoriginal.

The prophets were inspired to present the essential content of the covenant’s warnings and promises.

Prophetical Literary Forms

Covenant Lawsuit: God is the plaintiff, prosecuting attorney, judge and bailiff in a courtroom scene. Israel is the defendant. The full lawsuit contains a summons, a charge, evidence, and a verdict. (Isa 3:13-26)

The Woe: Through the prophets, God makes predictions about imminent doom using the word woe. No Israelite would miss the significance of this word. Woes are pronounced with an announcement of distress, the reason for the distress and a prediction of doom. (Hab. 2:6-8)

The Promise: Promises are pronounced by referencing the future, mentioning radical change and mentioning blessing. (Amos 9:11-15)

Psalms, wisdom and Revelation next week