How to Read the Bible as Literature: 11

How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It: Chapter Eleven  Visionary Literature    The Two Types of Literature 

Chapter Eleven 

Visionary Literature 

 

The Two Types of Literature 

THE CONTENT OF LITERATURE AS A WHOLE falls into two large categories. Some 

literature presents a replica of existing reality; the usual term for such literature is 

realism. Other literature presents an alternative to known reality. It does not imi- 

tate empirical reality but creates or imagines an alternate reality. The standard 

term for such literature is fantasy. 

The Bible’s tendency toward realism is a commonplace. Its staple is historical 

narrative and biography. Even the fictional parables of Jesus stay close to the way 

things are in everyday reality. 

 

Visionary Literature Defined 

 

But the other type of literature is also well-represented, chiefly in the related gen- 

res of prophecy and apocalypse. I have decided to discuss this amorphous body 

of literature under the single heading of visionary literature. Visionary literature 

pictures settings, characters, and events that differ from ordinary reality. This is 

not to say that the things described in visionary literature did not happen in past 

history or will not happen in future history. But it does mean that the things as 

pictured by the writer at the time of writing exist in the imagination, not in empir- 

ical reality. 

 

Prophecy and Apocalypse Are Partly Visionary 

 

In discussing prophecy and apocalypse together I do not mean to imply that these 

biblical forms do not have distinguishing traits that make them different from 

each other. Nor am I saying that they are wholly visionary. Prophecy, especially, 

contains much that is straightforward preaching and prediction, and many of its 

judgments can best be approached under the literary category of satire. 

Still, the visionary element is strong in both genres, and my purpose is to 

delineate the rhetoric and literary forms that will allow a reader to make literary 

sense of these writings. They are among the most literary parts of the Bible but are 

so different from familiar types of literature that they often get bypassed in literary 

discussions. By discussing them under this visionary aspect, I am obviously omit- 

ting much that could be said about both genres. I should also note that the vision- 

ary element in such literature should by no means be regarded as necessarily 

futuristic in orientation. 

 

The Element of Otherness 

 

I have already hinted at the first thing we should notice about visionary literature: 

the element of otherness. Visionary literature transforms the known world or the 

present state of things into a situation that at the time of writing is as yet only 

imagined. In one way or another, visionary literature takes us to a strange world 

where ordinary rules of reality no longer prevail. 

 

Reversal and Transformation as Visionary Themes 

 

The simplest form of such transformation is a futuristic picture of the changed 

fortunes of a person or group or nation. In the prophetic oracle of judgment, for 

example, the currently powerful individual or group is pictured as defeated, con- 

trary to all that is apparent at the time of writing: 

You women who are so complacent, 

rise up and listen to me; 

you daughters who feel secure, 

hear what I have to say! 

In little more than a year 

you who feel secure will tremble; 

the grape harvest will fail, 

and the harvest of fruit will not come. . . . 

The fortress will be abandoned, 

the noisy city deserted; 

citadel and watchtower will become a 

wasteland forever, 

the delight of donkeys, a pasture for flocks 

(Isa. 32:9-10, 14). 

In the oracle of redemption, this pattern is reversed. Instead of a coming woe 

more terrible than anything that presently exists, those to whom the oracle is ad- 

dressed will receive a blessing that is the opposite of anything they currently expe- 

rience: 

“The days are coming,’’ declares the LORD, 

“when the reaper will be overtaken by the 

plowman 

and the planter by the one treading grapes. 

New wine will drip from the mountains 

and flow from all the hills’’ 

(Amos 9:13). 

The motifs of transformation and reversal are prominent in visionary literature, 

and they lead to this principle of interpretation: in visionary literature, be ready for 

the reversal of ordinary reality. 

 

Transcendental Realms as a Visionary Theme 

 

The otherness of visionary writing is often more radical than the temporal rever- 

sals and changing fortunes just noted. A leading element of visionary literature is 

the portrayal of a transcendental or supernatural world. In the Bible this other 

world is usually heaven, but there are also visions of hell. Visions of either type do 

not primarily take the reader forward in time but rather beyond the visible spatial 

world. One thinks at once of such passages as Isaiah’s vision of God sitting on 

his heavenly throne (6:1-5), or Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot (Ezek. 1), or 

scenes of heavenly worship in the Book of Revelation (e.g., ch. 4), or the descrip- 

tion of the New Jerusalem in the last two chapters of Revelation. The element of 

transcendence is pervasive in visionary literature, and it, too, can be formulated as 

a principle: when reading visionary literature, be prepared to use your imagination to 

picture a world that transcends earthly reality. Visionary literature assaults a purely 

mundane mindset; in fact, this is one of its main purposes. 

 

The Cosmic Scope of Visionary Literature 

 

The strangeness in visionary literature extends to both scenes and actors. The 

scene is cosmic, not localized. In Old Testament prophecy it extends to whole na- 

tions. In apocalyptic works it encompasses the entire earth and reaches beyond it 

to heaven and hell. In the Book of Revelation, for example, we move in a regular 

rhythm between heaven and earth, and the scenes set on earth involve the entire 

planet. The action, moreover, eventually reaches out to include the whole human 

race throughout all of history. Old Testament prophecy is similar; Richard Moul- 

ton writes: 

 

These prophetic dramas are such as no theatre could compass. For their state 

they need all space; and the time of their action extends to the end of all 

things. The speakers include God and the Celestial Hosts; Israel appears, Is- 

rael Suffering and Israel Repentant; Sinners in Zion, the Godly in Zion; the 

Saved and the Doomed, the East and West, answer one another.¹ 

 

Supernatural Agents and Strange Creatures 

 

Filling this cosmic stage are actors that do not fit ordinary expectations. God and 

angels and glorified saints in heaven seem appropriate enough in the heavenly 

scenes, and they are leading actors in the visionary literature of the Bible. But 

other creatures are more startling to earthly eyes: a great red dragon (Rev. 12:3-4), 

“living creatures” with “six wings and. . .covered with eyes all around” (Rev. 4:8), a 

warrior riding a red horse (Rev. 6:4), two flying women with wings like those of a 

stork (Zech. 5:9), or a beast that “was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle,” 

which had its wings plucked off and then stood “on two feet like a man” (Dan. 

7:4). 

 

Inanimate Forces as Actors 

 

Such mingling of the familiar and unfamiliar, a hallmark of visionary literature, 

takes an even stranger form when inanimate objects and forces of nature suddenly 

become actors, as in this vision of imminent military invasion in Isaiah 13:10: 

The stars of heaven and their constellations 

will not show their light. 

The rising sun will be darkened 

and the moon will not give its light. 

Such breaking down of ordinary distinctions between the human and the natural 

realms is equally pervasive in the Book of Revelation: 

 

The woman was given the wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the 

place prepared for her in the desert. . . .Then from his mouth the serpent 

spewed forth water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away 

with the torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and 

swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth (Rev. 12:14- 

16). . 

 

Anything Can Happen 

 

In the strange and frequently surrealistic world of visionary literature, virtually any 

aspect of creation can become a participant in the ongoing drama of God’s judg- 

ments and redemption. It is a world where a river can overflow a nation (Isa. 8:5— 

8), where a branch can build a temple (Zech. 6:12) and a ram’s horn can grow to 

the sky and knock stars to the ground (Dan. 8:9-10). Sea, clouds, earthquake, 

storm, whirlwind, and assorted animals are constant actors in visionary literature. 

This is obviously a type of fantasy literature, not because the events symbolically 

portrayed are unreal or untrue, but because the form in which they are pictured as 

happening is purely imaginary. 

The visionary strangeness of such writing leads to a related rule for reading it: 

visionary literature is a form of fantasy literature in which readers must be willing to 

exercise their imaginations in picturing unfamiliar scenes and agents. It requires what 

the poet Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief.” We know that peo- 

ple do not fly through the air on wings, but when reading such visions we sus- 

pend our disbelief and enter the realm of make-believe in order to appropriate the 

truth it conveys about reality. The best introduction to such visionary literature in 

the Bible is other fantasy literature, such as the Narnia stories of C. S. Lewis. 

 

Visionary Literature as a Subversive Form 

 

What is the point of such writing? Why would a biblical writer resort to fantasy in- 

stead of staying with realism? Visionary literature, with its arresting strangeness, 

breaks through our normal way of thinking and shocks us into seeing that things 

are not as they appear. Visionary writing attacks our ingrained patterns of deep- 

level thought in an effort to convince us of such things as that the world will not 

always continue as it now is, that there is something drastically wrong with the 

status quo, or that reality cannot be confined to the physical world that we per- 

ceive with our senses. Visionary literature is not cozy fireside reading. It gives us 

the shock treatment. 

 

Kaleidoscopic Structure 

 

The element of the unexpected extends even to the structure of visionary liter- 

ature. I will call it a kaleidoscopic structure. It consists of brief units, always shift- 

ing and never in focus for very long. Its effects are similar to those of some mod- 

ern films. The individual units not only keep shifting, but they consist of a range 

of diverse material, including visual descriptions, speeches that the visionary 

hears and records, dialogues, monologues, brief snatches of narrative, direct dis- 

courses by the writer to an audience, letters, prayers, hymns, parables. Visionary 

elements, moreover, may be mingled with realistic scenes and events. 

This disjointed method of proceeding places tremendous demands on the 

reader and is the thing that makes such literature initially resistant to a literary ap- 

proach. The antidote to this frustration is a basic principle of interpretation: in- 

stead of looking for the smooth flow of narrative, be prepared for a disjointed series of 

diverse, self-contained units. 

 

Dream Structure 

 

Dream, and not narrative, is the model that visionary literature in the Bible fol- 

lows. Of what do dreams consist? Momentary pictures, fleeting impressions, 

characters and scenes that play their brief part and then drop out of sight, abrupt 

jumps from one action to another. This is exactly what we find in visionary liter- 

ature. 

 

Pageant Structure 

 

Sometimes, it is true, the units form a more discernible sequence than this, as in 

the visions of the four horsemen of Revelation (6:1-8). The model we should have 

in mind for such passages is the pageant—a succession of visual images that 

suggest in symbolic fashion an event or situation. In no case, however, does vi- 

sionary literature in the Bible follow the typical structure of a story. 

 

Narrative Elements 

 

Even though visionary literature is not structured as a story, some of the standard 

narrative questions are exactly the right ones to ask. Individual units normally con- 

sist of the usual narrative elements of scene, agent, action, and outcome. The 

corresponding questions to ask of individual passages are: 

1.Where does the action occur? 

2.Who are the actors? 

3.What do they do? 

4.What is the result? 

Not just the individual units but usually the books as a whole will yield some type 

of unity and organization if we ask these narrative questions: 

1.What overall plot conflicts govern the work? 

2.Who are the main actors in the work? 

3.What changes occur as the book unfolds? 

4.What final resolution is reached in regard to the overriding conflicts? 

Symbolism as the Basic Mode 

 

Visionary literature not only has story-like qualities; it makes even more use of the 

resources of poetry. And above all, visionary literature uses the technique of sym- 

bolism. In fact, it is symbolic through and through, a point that cannot be over- 

stated. To insist that the Old Testament prophetic books and the Book of Reve- 

lation use symbolism as their basic mode is not to deny that they describe super- 

natural and historical events that really happen. The crucial question, however, is 

how the writers go about describing history. 

 

The Reality of What Is Portrayed 

 

It can be easily documented by ordinary historical means that the events de- 

scribed in visionary literature are historical in nature. For example, Israel and 

Judah were carried into captivity (as predicted in Old Testament prophecy), and 

the Roman Empire did fall (as predicted in Revelation). The literary question is, 

How are these historical realities portrayed in visionary literature? The answer 

usually is, By means of symbolism. 

 

Symbolism in Old Testament Prophecy 

 

Consider some typical specimens. The youthful Joseph dreamed that the sun, 

moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. This symbolic picture was fulfilled 

later in his life, but the fulfillment was not literal. Isaiah described a river that over- 

flowed the land of Judah. This symbolic picture was fulfilled historically (but not 

literally) when Assyria invaded and conquered Judah. The dream, interpreted by 

Daniel, of a statue composed of various minerals (Dan. 2:31–45) pictured histor- 

ical realities, but it is not a literal description of those realities. 

 

Symbolism in the Book of Revelation 

 

The same type of symbolism prevails in the Book of Revelation. It is already 

present in the letters to the seven churches, the most realistic part of the whole 

book. We read, for example, about people “who have not soiled their clothes” 

(3:4) and who are destined to become “a pillar in the temple of my God” (3:12). 

Surely no one will interpret such statements literally. When the Christians at 

Laodicea are said to be lukewarm (3:16), we are obviously not talking about body 

temperature, and when they are described as being “poor, blind, and naked” (3:17) 

it is not a literal picture of their physical state but a symbolic picture of their spir- 

itual condition. Nor does Christ literally stand at a physical door and knock (3:20). 

If there is this much symbolism already in the letters to the churches, how much 

more can we not expect in the futuristic sections of Revelation? 

The action that unfolds in the opening verses of Revelation 12 is also a good 

index of the symbolic mode of the book. This passage narrates how a woman of 

cosmic dimensions (symbolic of Old Testament Israel) gives birth to a child “who 

will rule all the nations” (Christ), and it tells of the futile attempt of a great red 

dragon (Satan) to destroy the child, who is caught up into heaven. The most plau- 

sible interpretation of the passage is that it is a symbolic account of the incar- 

nation and ascension of Jesus as narrated in the Gospels. 

The corresponding question we need to ask of visionary literature in the Bible 

is a further principle of interpretation: of what historical event or theological reality 

or event in salvation history does this passage seem to be a symbolic version? 

An example of a theological reality in symbolic form would be God’s forgive- 

ness of sins as seen in Zechariah’s vision of the replacement of the high priest’s 

filthy garments with clean ones (Zech. 3:3–5). Similarly, the sealing of believers in 

Revelation (7:2–3) is a symbolic picture of redemption. By “events in salvation his- 

tory” I mean such events as the moral degeneration of the end times and the final 

judgment that are repeatedly pictured in the Book of Revelation. 

 

Visionary Literature Is Symbolic Rather Than Pictorial 

 

We need to make a distinction between symbolic and pictorial effects. Visionary 

literature in the Bible is heavily symbolic but rarely pictorial. Many of the scenes in 

Revelation become grotesque the moment we visualize them as pictures. The por- 

trait of Christ in Revelation 1:12-16, replete with a hand holding seven stars and a 

mouth with a sword issuing from it, is a series of symbols representing various 

aspects of Christ’s character, not a composite picture of him. Someone has 

expressed the distinction thus: 

 

Symbolic writing. . .does not paint pictures. It is not pictographic but ideo- 

graphic. . . .The skull and crossbones on the bottle of medicine is a symbol of 

poison, not a picture. . . .The fish, the lamb, and the lion are all symbols of 

Christ, but never to be taken as pictures of him. In other words, the symbol is 

a code word and does not paint a picture.² 

 

Interpreting the Symbols 

 

How can we know what a given symbol means? It is relatively easy. In Old Testa- 

ment prophecy the immediate context usually provides an interpretive framework 

for a given symbol or scene. Similarly, whenever a symbolic vision has been ful- 

filled in subsequent history, we can use that fulfillment to interpret the prophecy 

in which it was portrayed. This includes New Testament fulfillments of Old Testa- 

ment prophetic and messianic visions. 

 

Symbols Are a Universal Language, Easily Grasped 

 

A wide acquaintance with visionary literature both in the Bible and in literature 

generally is a great asset because literary symbolism tends to be a universal lan- 

guage that recurs throughout literature. Such common symbols as thunder, earth- 

quake, dragon, lion, or harvest occur often enough in visionary literature for us 

generally to know what they mean. 

 

A Keen Eye for the Obvious 

 

Above all, we should never minimize the usefulness of contact with everyday expe- 

rience and a keen eye for the obvious. The purpose of symbols is not to conceal 

but to reveal. A few of the symbols in the visionary literature of the Bible no doubt 

had a contemporary meaning that has been lost, but for the most part all we need 

is a sensitivity to the obvious associations of literary symbols. We do not need a 

commentary to tell us that a sword symbolizes judgment or a throne power or a 

vineyard prosperity. 

 

Grasping the Total Meaning 

 

Nor should we allegorize every detail in a passage unless there is a hint that we 

are intended to do so. Often it is the total impact of a scene or action that conveys 

the meaning. 

 

The Mystery of the Supernatural 

 

Then, too, some of the images portraying supernatural reality are meant to convey 

a sense of more-than-earthly mystery. Naturally, much remains elusive in Ezekiel’s 

vision of the divine chariot (Ezek. 1). The images remain mysterious because their 

purpose is to convey the mystery of supernatural reality. Someone has contrasted 

the clarity of outline in Greek statues of the gods and the blurred edges of vision- 

ary writing in the Bible: 

 

The very clarity and definiteness of outline in those wonderful marbles stand 

out as a limitation: in comparison with these vague and mystical imaginings of 

the Christian seers the representations of Greek art are impotent. In the end 

the Greek statue of a god, for all its gracious beauty, is only a glorified and 

idealized man. The visions of the apocalypse, on the other hand, transcend 

once for all the limitations of human nature.³ 

 

SUMMARY 

 

Visionary literature is what its name implies—an imagined picture, frequently 

symbolic rather than literal, of events that have not yet happened at the time of 

writing, or of realities such as heaven that transcend ordinary reality. Such writing 

requires that readers be ready to use their imagination—to let it fly beyond the 

stars. Visionary literature liberates us from the mundane and familiar and literal. It 

is an assault on our patterns of deep-level thought in an effort to shake us out of 

complacency with the normal flow of things. Visionary literature is a revolutionary 

genre. It announces an end to the way things are and opens up alternate possi- 

bilities. 

 

Further Reading 

The characteristic rhetoric, imagery, and generic features of apocalyptic writing 

are discussed in these sources: William A. Beardslee, Literary Criticism of the New 

Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), pp. 53–63; Amos N. Wilder, “Apocalyptic 

Rhetorics,” in Jesus’ Parables and the War of Myths, ed. James Breech (Philadelphia: 

Fortress, 1982), pp. 153–68; and vol. 14 of Semeia (1979), especially the intro- 

duction by John J. Collins (pp. 1–20). 

For Old Testament prophecy, J. Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Phila- 

delphia: Muhlenberg, 1962), is good on the visionary element (see especially pp. 

122–82). 

For literary commentary on the New Testament Book of Revelation, see the ex- 

cerpts collected under that heading in The New Testament in Literary Criticism, ed. 

Leland Ryken (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984); and my book The Literature of 

the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), pp. 335–56. 

 

 

¹The Modern Reader's Bible (New York: Macmillan, 1895,1935), 1392. 

²Donald W. Richardson, The Revelation of Jesus Christ: An Interpretation (Rich- 

mond: John Knox, 1939), 16. For convincing statements of the same viewpoint, 

see the excerpts under “Revelation, Book of, Symbolism,” in The New Testament 

in Literary Criticism, ed. Leland Ryken (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984). 

³J. H. Gardiner, The Bible as English Literature (New York: Charles Scribner’s 

Sons, 1906), 272.

How to Read the Bible as Literature: 10

How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It: Chapter Ten  Satire    The Prominence of Satire in the Bible 

Chapter Ten 

Satire 

 

The Prominence of Satire in the Bible 

THERE IS MORE SATIRE IN THE BIBLE than one would guess from standard discus- 

sions. Many a passage in the Bible would make a great deal more sense to us if we 

simply added satire to our lexicon of literary terms. 

 

A Definition of Satire 

 

Satire is the exposure, through ridicule or rebuke, of human vice or folly. An ob- 

ject of attack is the essential ingredient. Thus defined, satire is not inherently lit- 

erary, since the exposure of vice or folly can occur in nonliterary as well as literary 

writing. Satire becomes literary when the controlling purpose of attack is com- 

bined with a literary method, such as fiction, story, description of characters, 

metaphor, and so forth. Satire may appear in any literary genre (such as narrative, 

lyric, or parable), and it may be either a minor part of a work or the main content 

of an entire work. Although satire usually has one main object of attack, satiric 

works often make a number of jabs in various directions, a feature that has been 

called “satiric ripples.” 

 

Object of Attack 

 

In any literary satire, there are four main elements that require the reader’s atten- 

tion. The first is the object(s) of attack. The object of attack might be a single 

thing. Thus the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) attacks love 

of money and the callous unconcern that it encourages, and the Book of Jonah ex- 

poses the type of Jewish ethnocentrism that tried to make God’s mercy the exclu- 

sive property of the Jews. But in a satire such as the Book of Amos or Jesus’ satiric 

discourse against the Pharisees in Matthew 23, the list of things being attacked is 

an ever-expanding list of diverse abuses. Another thing to note about the object of 

attack is that it can be either a historical particular or a universal vice. The parable 

of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14), for example, is specifically an 

attack on the self-righteousness of the Pharisees, while the parable of the rich fool 

(Luke 12:13–21) is not about a specific category of materialistic people but about 

covetous greed in general. 

 

The Satiric Vehicle 

 

The second thing to note in a satire is the satiric vehicle. Story is one of the com- 

monest satiric vehicles, as in the story of Jonah or the satiric parables of Jesus. In 

the absence of a full-fledged story, there can be brief snatches of action, as when 

Amos recounts the immoral actions of which Israel is guilty (Amos 2:6–12), or 

when Isaiah briefly narrates how idol worshipers first have a goldsmith make an 

image and then fall down before the lifeless statue (Isa. 46:5–7). The portrait tech- 

nique or character sketch is a standard form with satirists. Typical specimens are 

Ezekiel’s satiric portrait of the prince of Tyre (Ezek. 28:1–19) or Isaiah’s portrait of 

the haughty women of Jerusalem, who can be seen 

walking along with outstretched necks, 

flirting with their eyes, 

tripping along with mincing steps, 

with ornaments jingling on their ankles (Isa. 3:16). 

Such literary forms as narrative and portrait are among the more artistic and 

sophisticated types of satiric vehicle. At the more informal end of the spectrum we 

find an array of cruder satiric weapons. One is direct vituperation or denunciation: 

“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan. . . ,” shouts Amos to the wealthy women of 

Israel (4:1). The “woe formula’’ is equally direct: “Woe to you, scribes and Phar- 

isees. . . Jesus repeatedly says in Matthew 23. A satiric vehicle can be as brief and 

simple as a derogatory epithet or title (“you blind guides,’’ Jesus calls the Phar- 

isees in Matt. 23:16, 23), or an uncomplimentary metaphor or simile, as when 

Jesus compares the Pharisees to whitewashed tombs that are outwardly beautiful 

but inwardly filled with repulsive decay (Matt. 23:27–28). 

 

The Satiric Tone 

 

Thirdly, satire always has a prevailing tone. There are two possibilities, which lit- 

erary scholars have named after two Roman satirists. Horatian satire is gently ur- 

bane, smiling, subtle. It aims to correct folly or vice by gentle laughter, on the 

premise that it can be laughed out of existence. Examples of the “soft sell” ap- 

proach to satire include the story of Jonah, the pouting prophet; Isaiah’s rollicking 

story of the steps by which a pagan fashions an idol out of wood and uses part of 

the very same piece of wood to build a fire (Isa. 44:9–17); and Jesus’ hilarious por- 

trait of the Pharisees who “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matt. 23:24). 

The other type of satire, traditionally known as Juvenalian satire, is biting, bit- 

ter, and angry in tone. It does not try to laugh vice out of existence but instead at- 

tempts to lash it out of existence. It points with contempt and moral indignation 

at the corruptness and evil of people and institutions. Most satire in the Bible is of 

this type, and it includes a large quantity of scorn (as distinct from humorous 

laughter). 

 

The Satiric Norm 

 

Finally, satire always has a stated or implied satiric norm—a standard by which 

the object of attack is being criticized. The satiric norm is the positive model that 

is offered to the reader as an alternative to the negative picture that always domi- 

nates a satiric work. In the story of Jonah, for example, the universal mercy of God 

extended to the repentant city of Nineveh is a positive foil to the misguided na- 

tionalism of Jonah. In the Sermon on the Mount, each of Jesus’ satiric charges 

against the Pharisees is accompanied by a positive command (Matt. 6:1–14). 

 

The Pervasiveness of Satire in the Bible 

 

Where can we find this type of satire in the Bible? Virtually everywhere. Books 

such as Jonah and Amos are wholly satiric. Other books are heavily satiric; for 

example, the Book of Job holds up the orthodox “comforters” to rebuke, and the 

Book of Ecclesiastes is a prolonged satiric attack against a society that is much 

like our own—acquisitive, materialistic, hedonistic, secular. Many of Jesus’ para- 

bles are satiric (e.g., the rich man and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the 

publican). There is a satiric thread in biblical narrative whenever a character’s 

flaws are prominently displayed (for example, Jacob’s greed, Haman’s pride, and 

the Pharisees’ antagonism to Jesus in the Gospels). Satire can show up in lyric po- 

etry, as in taunt songs directed against the worshipers of idols, or the portraits of 

the speaker’s enemies in the psalms of lament. Many biblical proverbs have a 

satiric edge (“Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no 

discretion,” Prov. 11:22). And the discourses of Jesus in the Gospels are often 

satiric. 

 

Satire in Biblical Prophecy 

 

The largest category of satire in the Bible is prophetic writing. The two major types 

of prophetic oracle (pronouncement) are the oracle of judgment and the oracle of 

salvation. The best literary approach to the oracle of judgment is satire. These pas- 

sages always have a discernible object of attack, a standard by which the judgment 

is rendered, and a vehicle of attack (at its simplest, it consists of a prediction of 

calamity in which the prophet pictures in vivid and specific detail a reversal of 

present conditions). Such satiric oracles of judgment pervade the prophetic books 

of the Bible; typical specimens are Isaiah 5; Ezekiel 28:1–19; and Ezekiel 34. 

 

SUMMARY 

 

Much of the Bible’s truth and wisdom have been enshrined in the form of satire. 

By framing truth as an attack on vice or folly, biblical satire drives its point home 

with an electric charge. Usually the attack is conducted by means of a discernible 

literary technique. Despite the negative approach of the satirist (who is always 

busy attacking someone or something), a positive norm emerges from biblical 

satire because it includes a foil to the evil that is attacked. That foil is usually the 

character or law of God. Satire is an unsettling genre. Its aim is to induce discom- 

fort with the way things are, which explains why there is so much of it in the Bible. 

The reader’s task with satire is fourfold: to identify the object(s) of attack, the satiric 

vehicle, the tone, and the norm or standard by which things are criticized. 

 

Further Reading 

Leland Ryken, The Literature of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), pp. 

261–70; Edwin M. Good, Irony in the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 

1965), as indicated in the index; Harry Boonstra, “Satire in Matthew,” Christianity 

and Literature, 29, no. 4 (Summer 1980): 32–45; Elton Trueblood, The Humor of 

Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), especially chapter 4. Although it does 

not use the framework of literary satire, Claus Westermann’s Basic Forms of 

Prophetic Speech, trans. Hugh C. White (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), has 

material that can easily be assimilated into the category of satire.

How to Read the Bible as Literature: 9

How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It: Chapter Nine  The Epistles    A Mixed Form    

Chapter Nine 

The Epistles 

 

A Mixed Form 

THE EPISTLE IS THE DOMINANT LITERARY GENRE of the New Testament in terms of 

space. It is a mixed form that combines literary and expository features. The New 

Testament Epistles are, moreover, a combination of private correspondence and 

public address. They may lean in a literary or nonliterary direction, depending on 

how a given writer on a given occasion treats the letter form. At no point, however, 

can we understand the New Testament Epistles without applying literary prin- 

ciples. 

 

Epistolary Structure 

 

The New Testament epistle has a relatively fixed form, consisting of five main 

parts: 

1.Opening or salutation (sender, addressee, greeting). 

2.Thanksgiving (including such features as prayer for spiritual welfare, 

remembrance of the recipient[s], and eschatological climax). 

3.Body of the letter (beginning with introductory formulae and concluding 

with eschatological and travel material). 

4.Paraenesis (moral exhortations). 

5.Closing (final greetings and benediction). 

This formal element in the New Testament Epistles satisfies the literary impulse 

for pattern and design, and it proves that the writers self-consciously met certain 

understood conventions of letter writing when they wrote the Epistles. 

 

Discerning the Unity of an Epistle 

 

The letter form requires different activities from a reader than stories and poems 

do. One thing all of these forms do have in common is that they will yield most if 

they are read as literary wholes, preferably in a single sitting. But the flow of a letter 

is topical and logical, in contrast to the flow of events that makes up a story or the 

sequence of feelings in a lyric poem. The best way of outlining an epistle is by top- 

ics, noting how one argument leads logically to the next. The most crucial rule of 

all is to “think paragraphs” when reading an epistle.¹ 

 

The Real-Life Situations in the Epistles 

 

Despite the expository and logical nature of the writing in the Epistles, they none- 

theless possess the experiential immediacy that we expect of literature. The Epis- 

tles are not essays in systematic theology which the apostles sat down to com- 

pose in their studies. They are letters addressed to specific people and situations. 

They convey a sense of actual life in the manner of other literature. Taken together, 

the New Testament Epistles yield a vivid picture of the varied life of the early 

Christian church. 

 

Their Occasional Nature 

 

Because they arise from specific occasions, the Epistles should not be pressed 

into a more systematic form than they are intended to have. As one biblical schol- 

ar has stated, 

 

Since these are letters, the points argued and stressed are often not those of 

the greatest importance. They are usually points about which differences of 

opinion existed. . . .The churches addressed. . .knew [the author’s] views on 

the great central facts; these he can take for granted. It is to show them their 

mistakes in the application of these central facts to their daily life, to help their 

doubts, that he writes. . . .Many of the questions he discusses are those pro- 

pounded by the perplexed church. He answers the question because it has 

been raised.² 

 

In a word, the Epistles are occasional letters evoked by a specific situation, not for- 

mal essays on theological topics. 

 

Literary Genres Within the Epistles 

 

One of the literary features of the Epistles is the specific genres that are embedded 

in them. Proverbs and aphoristic sayings abound (“Bad company corrupts good 

character,” 1 Cor. 15:33; “a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough,” 

Gal. 5:9). There are liturgical formulas, creedal affirmations, and hymns (e.g., Gal. 

5:14; Phil. 2:6–11; Col. 1:15–20; 1 Tim. 3:16). Lists of vices and virtues are also a 

recognizable form (e.g., Rom. 1:29–31; Gal. 5:22–23), as is the imperative cluster 

(e.g., Col. 3). 

 

Poetic Language 

 

Another thing that makes the Epistles literary is their reliance on the resources of 

poetic language and figures of speech. Metaphor and simile are common: “gluing 

yourselves to the good”; “boiling with the spirit”; “let the love of Christ make its 

home in you”; “let the peace of Christ be umpire in your hearts.”³ Many of the com- 

parisons are extended ones that ask for detailed analysis (such as the complete 

armor of the Christian in Eph. 6:10–17). Other rhetorical and poetic devices re- 

quire more of a willingness to be receptive to their affective style. I refer to such 

forms as rhetorical questions (“If God is for us, who is against us?”), paradox 

(“when I am weak, then I am strong”), questions and exclamations (“What then 

shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means!”), and apostrophe (“O death, where 

is thy sting?”). 

 

Rhetorical Patterns 

 

Yet another literary element in the Epistles is their rhetoric and style. To expe- 

rience the full impact of these letters requires us to be sensitive to the masterful 

use of repetition, balance, antithesis, and parallel constructions. All of them are 

present on a small scale in the following passage (2 Cor. 4:8–9): 

We are hard pressed on every side, 

but not crushed; 

perplexed, but not in despair; 

persecuted, but not abandoned; 

How to Read the Bible as Literature: 8

How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It: Chapter Eight  Parables    The Parables as Stories 

Chapter Eight 

Parables 

 

The Parables as Stories 

MY DISCUSSION OF THE PARABLES OF JESUS will focus on the ones that tell a story. 

Some of Jesus’ brief parables are not stories but similes or analogies. To under- 

stand them we need to apply what I said about metaphor and simile in the chapter 

on poetry. But the longer parables are stories composed of setting, characters 

about whose destinies we care, and plots that move through conflict to resolution. 

Recent biblical scholarship has made so much of the parallels between parable 

and metaphor that we are in danger of missing the story element in the parables. 

This I take to be a great error. Furthermore, the parables, intended to be simple 

(though profound at the same time), have been buried under such a weight of 

scholarly controversy and esoteric terminology that they have ceased to commu- 

nicate with power. 

 

Masterpieces of Popular Storytelling 

 

There is no doubt that the parables of Jesus lend themselves to almost indefinite 

reflection and application, but why do they capture the listener’s attention in the 

first place? They are folk literature, originally oral. Indeed, they are the very touch- 

stone of popular storytelling through the ages. 

 

Realism and Vividness 

 

Virtually the first thing we notice about the parables is their everyday realism and 

concrete vividness. “It is ‘things’ that make stories go well,” writes P. C. Sands of 

the parables; here “everything. . .is concrete and vigorous. Everything is described 

in solid terms.”¹ The parables take us right into the familiar world of planting and 

harvesting, traveling through the countryside, baking bread, tending sheep, or re- 

sponding to an invitation. The parables thus obey the literary principle of verisim- 

ilitude (“lifelikeness”), and a perusal of commentaries always uncovers new evi- 

dence of how thoroughly rooted in real life the parables are.² There is no fantasy 

in the parables of Jesus—no talking animals or imaginary monsters, only people 

such as we meet during the course of a day. The parables reveal “an amazing 

power of observation.”³ 

 

The Parables as “Secular” Stories 

 

This minute realism is an important part of the meaning of Jesus’ parables. On the 

surface, these stories are totally “secular.” There are few overtly religious activities 

in the parables. If we approached them without their surrounding context and pre- 

tended that they were anonymous, we could not guess that they were intended for 

a religious purpose. An important by-product of this realism is that it undermines 

the “two-world” thinking in which the spiritual and earthly spheres are rigidly di- 

vided. We are given to understand that it is in everyday experience that spiritual 

decisions are made and that God’s grace does its work. 

 

Simplicity of Action 

 

Combined with the delightful fidelity to actual life is the extreme simplicity of ac- 

tion. We can call this the principle of single action. The parables of Jesus have 

simple plots that focus on one main event: sowing and harvesting a crop, taking a 

journey and returning, hiring workers to labor in the vineyard, inviting guests to a 

banquet. 

 

Simple Plot Conflicts 

 

These simple situations gain vigor from equally uncomplicated plot conflicts. The 

seeds that the sower plants struggle against the destructiveness of their natural 

environment. The conflict between the poisonous tares and the wheat has as its 

background a feud between the farmer and his neighbor. The elder and younger 

brothers contend for their father’s favor. As we read through the parables we listen 

to character clashes and watch robbers beat up lone travelers. There is enough 

plot conflict to seize an audience’s attention, but probably none of the parables 

can be said to have a unifying plot conflict that persists all the way through the 

story. 

 

Suspense 

 

The rule of suspense operates effectively in the parables. The opening situation is 

invariably one that arouses curiosity about its outcome. The act of sowing is a risk 

about whose outcome we wonder. When the younger son leaves his parental 

home with his share of the inheritance in his pocket, we wonder how the action 

will turn out. When people who work different numbers of hours get equal pay- 

ment, we are curious about how the workers will respond. Often the parables turn 

upon a test that arouses our curiosity (e.g., the entrusted wealth in the parable of 

the talents or the wounded man on the highway in the parable of the good Samar- 

itan). 

 

Heightened Foils or Contrasts 

 

Like other popular storytellers, Jesus used obvious and heightened foils (con- 

trasts) in his parables. The rich man and Lazarus, the Pharisee and publican, the 

generous employer and the selfish workers, the wise and foolish virgins are obvi- 

ous examples. Sometimes a pair of characters is contrasted to a single character, 

as with the two faithful stewards and the lone slothful servant, or the two passers- 

by and the compassionate Samaritan. 

 

The Functions of Contrasts 

 

Why the heightened contrasts? Because folk stories deal with simple contrasts, 

because the very brevity of the parable precludes subtle shades of good and evil, 

and because the oral nature of the genre requires simple, heightened patterns. But 

the strategy also fits well with the purpose of Jesus to elicit a response from his 

hearers. Parables are an invitation and even a trap to move a listener or reader to 

take sides for or against the characters in a story. By confronting the audience with 

an obvious contrast, a parable by Jesus “tends to polarize the hearers. . . .The 

lines along which polarization takes place must be signaled by an unambiguous 

code in the narrative; like highway markers along the interstate, they must be leg- 

ible at a glance. So we have pairs like Levite, priest/ Samaritan, laborers hired 

fìrst/last, invited/uninvited, etc.”⁴ 

 

Repetition 

 

The parables make conspicuous use of the principle of repetition, which produces 

unity and emphasis. The owner of the vineyard goes out to the marketplace five 

times to hire laborers. We twice hear the prodigal’s speech, “Father, I have sinned 

against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son,” and 

the father twice explains that the prodigal “was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and 

is found.” 

 

Threefold Repetition 

 

Especially noteworthy is the folktale pattern of threefold repetition, often com- 

bined with the rule of end stress (the crucial element comes at the end). Thus we 

get three types of soil that yield no harvest and three degrees of good harvest, 

three people who refuse the invitation to the banquet, three stewards to whom 

wealth is entrusted and three corresponding interviews when the master returns, 

and three passersby. 

 

The Rule of End Stress 

 

The rule of end stress is pervasive in the parables, leading some interpreters to 

claim that the last element in a parable is the most important. In the parable of the 

sower, the fertile soil with its abundant harvest comes last. The lesson of the para- 

ble of the workers in the vineyard turns upon those hired last. Similarly, it is the 

last steward who is judged harshly, the last traveler who is generous, and the last 

invited group who enjoy the banquet. 

 

Universal Character Types 

 

The characters in the parables are anonymous. Only one of them (Lazarus) is 

named. The result is that they become universal character types. Paradoxically, 

these nameless characters assume a quality of vivid familiarity, like the characters 

of Chaucer and Dickens. Someone has aptly commented that “nowhere else in the 

world’s literature has such immortality been conferred on anonymity"⁵ 

 

Archetypes 

 

The surface appeal of these stories also depends on the presence of powerful 

archetypes. Archetypes are recurrent images and motifs that keep appearing in 

literature and life and that touch us powerfully, both consciously and uncon- 

sciously. The parables are filled with archetypal situations. Jesus told parables 

about master and servant (employer and employee), for example, that tap our am- 

bivalent feelings toward employers—feelings of fear, dependence, security, inse- 

curity, gratitude, and resentment over injustice. 

 

Archetypes Touch Us Where We Live 

 

So also with the motif of lost and found that figures in several parables. All that 

we experienced the last time we misplaced something of crucial importance enters 

our experience of these parables—the panic that accompanied the discovery that 

we had lost it, the self-laceration and sense of worthlessness that accompanied 

our search for it, the relief and regained self-esteem that accompanied finding it. 

 

The Psychological Dimension of Archetypes 

 

Or consider the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal is an archetypal char- 

acter that represents an impulse that lies within each of us. It is the impulse away 

from the domestic and secure and morally governed toward the distant, the 

adventurous, the rebellious, the indulgence of forbidden appetites (including the 

sexual), the abandonment to unrestraint. The elder brother in the same parable 

represents something that is equally a part of our psychic and moral make-up: the 

voice of duty, restraint, self-control, self-righteousness. It is no accident that the 

prodigal is the younger son (a figure of youth with its thirst for experience and 

abandonment to appetite) and the other the elder son (representing a middle-aged 

mentality, judgmental and self-righteous). Furthermore, the parable describes a 

family situation, replete with sibling rivalry and parent-child relationships. 

 

The Appeal of Archetypes 

 

In sum, there is an abundance of human psychology and archetypal (universal) 

human experience in the parables. Even when the theological or moral point of the 

parable does not directly hinge on them, these archetypes do help to account for 

the powerful grip the parables have on our attention and emotions. As Amos 

Wilder has stated, 

 

Human nature has always responded to stories about quests and adventures, 

ups and downs, rags to riches, lost and found, reversals and surprises . . . , 

good and bad son or daughter, . . . masters and servants, the wise and the 

foolish, rewards and penalties, success and failure.”⁶ 

 

Points of Exaggeration or Unrealism in the Parables 

 

I have said that the parables are realistic rather than fantastic or supernatural, but 

there is often an element of exaggeration or improbability in them. There are 

“cracks” in the realism that tease us into seeing more in them than the surface 

story would call for. For all their verisimilitude, the parables have an element of ar- 

resting strangeness. We think of such details as a hyperbolic hundredfold yield of 

grain (though not all commentators agree that this is an exaggeration), or the 

Samaritan’s lavish generosity to an unknown victim, or the Oriental father’s run- 

ning to his son and then bestowing such unrestrained luxury on him.⁷ 

 

The Artistic Excellence of the Parables 

 

My discussion thus far has focused on how the parables are told and has been an 

implied plea to relish the parables as masterpieces of popular or folk storytelling. 

The parables represent the beauty of simplicity, and they can be enjoyed first of all 

as examples of narrative art. They can be analyzed for their pleasing narrative 

qualities of lifelike and vivid realism, for their skill in arousing the narrative curios- 

ity to discover what happened next and how it all turned out in the end, for their 

skillful conciseness in which every detail counts, for the universal character types 

that are part of our own life, for the archetypal patterns, for the element of strange- 

ness that teases us (as riddles do) to discover what the story is “getting at,” and 

for “a structure and balance of narrative form which can scarcely be accidental.”⁸ 

 

The Parables Are More Than Stories 

 

But of course we do not read the parables only as stories. There are several rea- 

sons why we cannot rest content with the surface level of the narrative. The stories 

are too simple to satisfy us at a purely narrative level. The “cracks” in the realism 

hint at a meaning beyond the literal. Some of the details already had symbolic 

meanings in Jewish analogues (e.g., sowing = teaching, seed = word, the owner of 

the vineyard = God). Most conclusively of all, we have Jesus’ own recorded inter- 

pretations of the parables of the sower (Matt. 13:18-23) and the wheat and the tares 

(Matt. 13:36-43), which show that the parables have a meaning beyond the narra- 

tive level. The parable is a story that means what it says and something besides, 

and in the parables of Jesus that something besides is the more important of the 

two. 

 

Are the Parables Allegorical? 

 

How, then, can we go about finding the intended meanings in a parable? My an- 

swer is much less unfashionable now than it would have been a decade or two 

ago: by treating the parables as allegories. I am not, to be sure, calling for a return 

to the arbitrary allegorizing of the Middle Ages. I have in mind the kind of alle- 

gorical interpretation that Jesus himself gave to the parables of the sower and the 

wheat and tares, namely, translating at least some of the details of the story into a 

corresponding other meaning and then deducing themes and applications on the 

basis of those symbols. 

I am well aware that many biblical scholars have deeply ingrained objections to 

calling the parables allegorical. I would hope that all of my readers would give an 

openminded hearing to what I say in the next several pages and in the appendix. 

Literary scholars do not share the aversion of biblical scholars to allegory. They 

acknowledge only one literary classification (allegory) for stories in which a sub- 

stantial number of details have a corresponding “other” meaning. 

A literary critic, therefore, is at once inclined to ask questions like these: Why 

should we deny to the parables the literary classification that we apply to the same 

type of literature when we encounter it outside of the Bible? What substitute lit- 

erary term can possibly be invoked for stories in which numerous details stand for 

a corresponding person, thing, or quality? Why would we create a confusing lit- 

erary situation by avoiding the term allegory simply because the concept is capable 

of abuse? 

To think of the parables as being either allegorical or not allegorical is already 

to confuse the issue. What we find in the parables is a range of degrees to which 

the narrative details are allegorical. The idea of an allegorical continuum proposed 

by Northrop Frye is the most useful framework for analyzing what we actually find 

in the parables.⁹ 

According to Frye’s scheme, any work of literature can be placed somewhere 

on an allegorical continuum. He describes that continuum thus: 

 

Within the boundaries of literature we find a kind of sliding scale, ranging from 

the most explicitly allegorical. . .at one extreme, to the most elusive, anti- 

explicit. . .at the other. First we meet the continuous allegories, like The Pil- 

grim’s Progress . . . . Next come the poetic structures with a large and insistent 

doctrinal interest, in which the internal fictions are exempla, like the epics of 

Milton. Then we have, in the exact center, works in which the structure of im- 

agery, however suggestive, has an implicit relation only to events and ideas, 

and which includes the bulk of Shakespeare. Below this, poetic imagery begins 

to recede from example and precept. . . .¹⁰ 

 

We can visualize the continuum something like the diagram on the next page. The 

great advantage of this model is that it does not force us into a “great divide’’ ap- 

proach where a story is either allegorical or not allegorical. Instead, we can gauge 

the degree of allegory in a work. 

 

Degrees of Allegory in the Parables 

 

The parables of Jesus range over the left half of the allegorical spectrum. In para- 

bles like those of the sower and the talents we translate virtually every detail into a 

corresponding meaning. Moving a notch to the right, we have the parable of the 

prodigal son in which, for example, the father is God and the elder brother repre- 

sents the Pharisees and scribes, but in which we do not allegorize such details as 

the prodigal’s money, the harlots, the pigs, or the shoes that the father gives to his 

repentant son. In the middle we can place the parable of the good Samaritan, 

where the story as a whole embodies the moral meaning. 

 

Decline of the Anti-Allegorical Bias in Biblical Scholarship 

 

But doesn’t an allegorical approach to the parables run counter to what everybody 

learns in seminary and Bible courses? This may have been true until recently, but 

the anti-allegorical bias is on its way out and has, in fact, been questioned for a 

long time. “Certain of the parables cry out for an allegorical interpretation of their 

details,” writes a noted biblical scholar.¹¹ “The parabolic narratives are never whol- 

ly free from allegory,” writes another, adding that “the difference which should be 

emphasized is between a story which in itself is allegorical and the arbitrary al- 

legorization of one which is not.”¹² “Parable and allegory. . .are partial synonyms,” 

writes a third biblical scholar as he dismantles Jülicher’s influential theory that 

none of the parables is allegorical, and he, too, makes a distinction between al- 

legorizing (“to impose on a story hidden meanings which the original author nei- 

ther intended nor envisaged”) and allegorical interpretation of texts in which the 

details were intended to convey a corresponding set of meanings.¹³ 

Most conclusive of all is the study of a biblical scholar who devised a simple 

scheme for determining the allegory content of the parables in the synoptic 

Gospels.¹⁴ As he went through the parables, he listed the main details in each 

story and then counted how many of them have a corresponding “other” meaning 

(e.g., sower = evangelist, seed = word, etc.). His conclusion should settle the 

issue of how allegorical Nţhe parables are: the allegory content of the parables m 

the Gospel of Matthew is 82 percent, those in Mark 75 percent, and those in Luke 

60 percent.¹⁵ 

 

Guidelines for Interpreting Parabolic Details 

 

What guidelines do we have for interpreting the details in a parable? One signpost 

is the surrounding context in the Gospel narratives. If the narrative lead-in to the 

parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:1-2) alerts us that the parable is Jesus’ reply to 

the Pharisees’ and scribes’ complaint that Jesus “receives sinners and eats with 

them,” then it is plausible to see the prodigal as a representative of “sinners,” the 

father who forgives him as a symbol of God and Christ, and the unforgiving elder 

brother as a picture of the Pharisees and scribes. 

Another signpost is details in the parables that had an established Hebraic 

(usually Old Testament) meaning: God as father or owner of a vineyard or master, 

seed as God’s Word, sowing as teaching, and so forth. Other details rather au- 

tomatically call to mind the familiar teachings of Jesus or of New Testament writ- 

ers: the banquet or marriage feast is a picture of salvation, the master’s return 

after a long journey (Matt. 25:19) suggests Christ’s second coming, the father’s 

forgiveness of the prodigal cannot be anything other than God’s forgiveness of 

sinners, and the employer’s payment of his workers is a judgment that calls to 

mind the final judgment at the end of history. 

 

The One-Point Rule Challenged 

 

Another long-established rule of parable interpretation that is under increasing at- 

tack is that parables can have only one main point. This is an extremely arbitrary 

rule of interpretation and one that we do not otherwise impose on a work of liter- 

ature. It is one of the glories of literature that it can embody a multiplicity of mean- 

ings even in so small a unit as a metaphor. How can the metaphor of God as fa- 

ther, for example, ever be reduced to a single meaning? The one-point approach of 

past biblical scholarship strikes at the very heart of a literary approach. As one lit- 

erary critic exclaims, “No wonder there are six or eight one-point interpretations of 

the Sower currently put forth, each to the exclusion of the others!”¹⁶ 

 

Multiple Themes in Parables 

 

Even when a parable has a single main point, why would we deny legitimate sec- 

ondary or related themes? The context of the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 

15:11-32) would lead us to look for the main point in the satiric attack on the elder 

brother, who stands for the Pharisees and scribes who occasioned the parable. Is 

the only main theme that the Pharisees and scribes were wrong for not accepting 

repentant people into fellowship? Are there not, rather, a number of rich themes in 

this parable? Does it not give us insight into the nature of human life as a choice 

for or against God, into the nature of evil and selfishness, into the selfdestructive 

consequences of sin, into repentance as the first step to true satisfaction, into the 

nature of God as forgiving, into the nature of forgiveness as a genuine personal 

reconciliation, and into the joy that accompanies forgiveness? Surely we cannot 

ignore all of these themes simply because of an arbitrary rule that a parable can 

have only one main point. 

 

Why Some Parables Have More Than One Meaning 

 

Nor is the originally oral nature of the parables an argument against the notion 

that they can have multiple meanings. For one thing, biblical truth holds together 

as a system. In teaching a specific doctrine such as the certainty of final judgment, 

Jesus would naturally touch upon related doctrines that are part of the total pic- 

ture, such as stewardship or the second coming or heaven or glorification. Fur- 

thermore, it is entirely possible for an audience listening to a story to make contin- 

uous connections between details in the story and a corresponding symbolic 

meaning, provided the story is not too complex. We should remember also that a 

parable was not intended to yield all of its meanings at once. As Archibald Hunter 

states: 

 

the Gospel parable is not always sun-clear. . . .The Gospel parable is designed 

to make people think. . . .And sometimes. . .it conceals in order to reveal. Seen 

thus, the parable is not so much a crutch for limping intellects (as so many 

illustrations are) as a spur to spiritual perception.¹⁷ 

 

Liabilities of the One-Point Approach 

 

The one-point theory is something that we would do well to discard. As A. T. 

Cadoux long ago noted, that approach has produced two unfortunate results: 

 

The judgment for which the parable asks is likely to be sought for in one ele- 

ment of it only and is thus unduly simplified; and all other elements of the 

parable are regarded as. . .unnecessary ornament. . . .A parable is the work of a 

poor artist if the picture or story is a collection of items out of which we have 

to pick one and discard the rest.¹⁸ 

 

Analogy or Comparison as the Basic Principle 

 

If we agree that the parables are designed to convey meaning, how should we go 

about interpreting what the stories mean? The basic principle of a parable is that 

of analogy or comparison. Literally the word “parable” means “to throw along- 

side.” This means that the literal level of the story has a corresponding meaning, 

either continuously or as a whole story. Amos Wilder writes that “there is the pic- 

ture-side of the parable and there is the meaning or application.”¹⁹ The corre- 

sponding activity that this requires of a reader has been stated succinctly by 

Cadoux: “The parable elicits a judgment in one sphere in order to transfer it to 

another.”²⁰ 

 

The Fourfold Process: 1. Analysis of the Literal Story 

 

Once we have been alerted to the need to make such a transfer of meaning, the ac- 

tual analysis of a parable falls rather naturally into a four-phase process. It begins 

with looking as closely as possible at the literal details of the story. Here is where 

we should apply all that I said about the parables as masterpieces of storytelling. 

If, as modern scholarship has taught us, the parables function partly as 

metaphors that have as a main thrust to shock our deep-level ways of thinking, 

then we need to let the shock at the literal level of the story sink in—shocks such 

as a good Samaritan, or outcasts being invited to a banquet while the respectable 

members of society are excluded, or all workers receiving a day’s wage regardless 

of how short a time they worked.²¹ 

 

2. Interpreting Symbolic Details 

 

The second thing to do is determine whether any details in the story require a 

symbolic interpretation. In the parable of the good Samaritan, none of the details 

requires such an interpretation. In most parables, at least some of the details do. 

In either case, this is the point in one’s analysis to apply the idea of the allegorical 

scale or continuum discussed earlier. 

 

3. Determining the Theme(s) 

 

Having allowed the literal details to have their impact, and having interpreted the 

symbols, the reader next needs to determine the theme(s) of the parable. The 

rules for deciding what the parable is about are exactly the same as those for sto- 

ries in general (see pages 33-73). Often the surrounding context in the Gospels al- 

ready establishes an interpretive framework, but even in such instances the para- 

ble might have implicit themes beyond the one(s) suggested by the lead-in or 

concluding comment. In the parable of the talents, once we have interpreted the 

allegory (the master = God or Christ; the entrusted money = abilities, time, and 

opportunities; the master’s commendation and condemnation = the final judg- 

ment; and so forth), we then have to decide what themes are conveyed by this mix- 

ture of narrative and allegory. Using what we know about the doctrines of the 

Bible and the clues that are inherent in the very nature of this parable’s action, it is 

easy to interpret the parable as embodying ideas about stewardship or calling, the 

sovereignty of God as creator and judge, and the eschatological doctrines of the 

second coming and heaven/hell as the destination of people. 

 

4. Application 

 

Having identified the theme(s), there is, fourth, the matter of application. Granted 

that themes a, b, and c are present in a given parable, to whom, or how, did those 

themes apply in the specific context in which Jesus uttered them? And further- 

more, how do those same themes apply today? As with other parts of the Bible, 

interpretation deals with the double question of what a parable meant then and 

what it means now.²² 

 

SUMMARY 

 

The parables of Jesus are masterpieces of storytelling. We should first of all enjoy 

them in the same ways that we enjoy other stories. These simple stories are didac- 

tic in their purpose. Before they fully interest us or assume their true significance, 

we must usually attach a symbolic meaning to some of the details in the story, 

and we must always find one or more religious themes in them. 

 

Further Reading 

The most convenient starting point is the excerpts collected under “Parable” in 

The New Testament in Literary Criticism, ed. Leland Ryken (New York: Frederick 

Ungar, 1984). The sources cited in the foregoing footnotes are all profitable ones 

to consult. Much of the scholarship on the parables that has been touted as being 

a literary approach strikes me as the worst possible type of pedantry. 

 

 

¹Literary Genius of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 

86. 

²For a particularly outstanding example of commentary that uncovers the Ori- 

ental verisimilitude of the parables, see the books by Kenneth Ewing Bailey: Poet 

and Peasant: A Literary Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke(Grand Rapids: 

Eerdmans, 1976) and Through Peasant Eyes: More Lucan Parables (Grand Rapids: 

Eerdmans, 1980). 

³Geraint V. Jones, The Art and Truth of the Parables (London: S.P.C.K., 1964), 

113. This is one of the best literary studies of the parables. 

⁴Robert W. Funk, “Critical Notes,” Semeia 1 (1974): 188. 

⁵Jones, Parables, 124. 

⁶Jesus’ Parables and the War of Myths (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 92. 

⁷For more examples, see Norman A. Huffman, “Atypical Features in the Para- 

bles of Jesus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 97 (1978): 207–20. 

⁸Jones, Parables, 120. 

⁹For Frye’s theory of allegory, see Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton 

University Press, 1957), 89–92. 

¹⁰lbid.,9l. 

¹¹Raymond E. Brown, “Parable and Allegory Reconsidered,” Novum Testa- 

mentum 5 (1962): 36–45; reprinted in New Testament Essays (Milwaukee: Bruce, 

1965), 254–64. 

¹²Jones, 105–9, 137–41. 

¹³G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: West- 

minster, 1980), 160–77. Archibald M. Hunter, Interpreting the Parables (Phila- 

delphia: Westminster, 1960), 92–100, also distinguishes between arbitrary allego- 

rizing and interpreting the intended allegorical elements in the parables. 

¹⁴M. D. Goulder, “Characteristics of the Parables in the Several Gospels,” Jour- 

nal of Theological Studies, n.s., 19 (1968): 58–62. 

¹⁵The easiest way to prove the allegorical nature of the parables is to compare 

them to the fables of Aesop. Aesop’s fables are truly one-point, relatively nonalle- 

gorical stories, and they at once strike a reader as far different from Jesus’ multi- 

faceted parables in which numerous details call for identification and interpre- 

tation. 

¹⁶John W. Sider, “Nurturing Our Nurse: Literary Scholars and Biblical 

Exegesis,” Christianity and Literature 32 (Fall, 1982): 15–21. A good source for bib- 

lical scholars to consult. 

¹⁷Interpreting the Parables, 13–14. 

¹⁸The Parables of Jesus: Their Art and Use (London: James Clarke, 1930), 51–52. 

¹⁹Earlỵ Christian Rhetoric (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 74. 

²⁰The Parables of Jesus, 56. 

²¹Good discussions of the parables as an assault on the reader’s “deep struc- 

tures’’ of thinking include Robert W. Funk, Language, Hermeneutic and the Word óf 

God (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval 

(Niles, 111.: Argus, 1975); Sallie TeSelle, Speaking in Parables (Philadelphia: 

Fortress, 1975). 

²²For a good statement of the literary principle that we need to see universal as 

well as first-century meanings in the parables, see Jones, “Toward a Wider Inter- 

pretation,” 135—66 in The Art and Truth of the Parables. A lot of modern parable 

scholarship has surrounded the parables with so much first-century context that it 

becomes hard to see their relevance for twentieth-century people.

How to Read the Bible as Literature: 7

How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It: Chapter Seven  The Gospels    Traditional Approaches to the Gospels 

Chapter Seven 

The Gospels 

 

Traditional Approaches to the Gospels 

BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON THE GOSPELS has been preoccupied with questions of 

historical authenticity, theological content, relation to the religious milieu of the 

first century church, literary precedents or models, and stages of oral trans- 

mission that can be traced backward to a primitive original from the written form 

in which we currently find the Gospels. 

 

A Literary Approach to the Gospels 

 

A literary approach substitutes an entirely different agenda of interests that are 

complementary to the traditional questions and that have been unjustifiably ne- 

glected. A literary approach begins with the conviction that the Gospels are first of 

all stories. Once this premise is accepted, the reader’s attention focuses on a clus- 

ter of related concerns: unifying plot conflicts that move toward a final resolution; 

the overall structure and progression of the story; narrative and artistic patterns 

such as repetition, contrast, and framing; the characters who generate the action; 

the settings in which events occur; the point of view from which the story is told, 

including patterns of approval and disapproval of characters and events that the 

story encourages the reader to adopt; image patterns and symbolism; style (with 

emphasis on economy of expression, choice of concrete details that suggest a 

bigger picture, the prominence of dialogue and speech patterns, and the poetic 

bent of Jesus); and the characteristics of the narrative “world” that each Gospel 

builds in the reader’s imagination. 

 

The Primacy of Story 

 

These matters have long received scattered attention, but not until recently have 

they been integrated into a systematic and popular approach to the Gospels. The 

main new factor is a growing consensus that the primary form of the Gospels is 

narrative or story, not sermon or saying. Above all, literary critics are now saying, 

the Gospels consist of characters doing certain things in a series of settings. “The 

genre characteristics of the gospel are. . .narrative characteristics,” writes a biblical 

scholar as he criticizes the inadequacies of traditional approaches.¹ “The Gospel 

writers produced neither volumes of learned exegesis nor sermons,” writes an- 

other; “rather, they told stories; and if we wish to understand what the Gospels 

say, we should study how stories are told.”² And a third warns that “there are spe- 

cial aspects of narrative composition which biblical scholars will continue to ig- 

nore if there is not greater awareness of how stories are told and how they 

communicate.”³ In short, the starting point for understanding the Gospels is what 

I said about stories in chapter 2. 

 

The Hybrid Nature of the Gospels 

 

If we come to the Gospels with the usual narrative expectations of cause-effect 

plot construction, a strict beginning-middle-end framework, and the principle of 

single action, we will be continuously frustrated. The Gospels are too episodic 

and fragmented, too self-contained in their individual parts, and too thoroughly a 

hybrid form with interspersed nonnarrative elements to constitute this type of uni- 

fied story. The Gospels are an encyclopedic or mixed form. They include elements 

of biography, historical chronicle, fiction (the parables), oration, sermon, dialogue 

(drama), proverb, poem, tragedy, and comedy. 

 

The Realism of the Gospels 

 

This very mixture and randomness produce an unusually powerful realism. They 

capture a sense both of the kind of life that Jesus actually lived and of what it 

would have been like to live through the experiences narrated in the Gospels. The 

kaleidoscopic variety of scenes, events, characters, dialogues, speeches, and en- 

counters, always revolving around Jesus at the center, conveys an astonishing 

sense of reality. 

 

The Portrait of Jesus in the Gospels 

 

The unifying focus of the Gospels is the central character, Jesus. How, then, is 

Jesus portrayed? Let us pause for a moment to analyze how three types of visual 

art—a photograph, a painted portrait, and an abstract painting—portray a land- 

scape or person.⁴ The photograph is virtually objective: it shows every detail as it 

appears to the eye (with the corresponding limitation that it cannot highlight a 

given aspect of the scene or offer an interpretation of the subject). A painted por- 

trait is more selective in its details, highlighting whatever features of the subject a 

painter wishes to call attention to as he or she tries to capture the spirit of a scene 

or event or character. An abstract painting conveys only a vague impression of its 

subject and depends almost wholly on the subjective response of the viewer for 

its final content. 

Given these three possibilities, the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is most 

like the portrait. The Gospel writers did not record everything about Jesus. They 

were highly selective in what they included. Through a combination of selection of 

material, arrangement, repetition, contrasts (foils), and interpretive commentary, 

each Gospel writer produced a verbal portrait in which certain features of Jesus 

and his message are highlighted. 

 

Complementary Perspectives in the Four Gospels 

 

Because the Gospel portraits are interpretive in nature, the four Gospels are com- 

plementary. Trying to harmonize them into a single photograph is, from a literary 

perspective, unnecessary (though I do not thereby imply that a literary approach is 

sufficient by itself). Someone has proposed the helpful analogy between the 

Gospels and the slow-motion replays that are familiar to us in television coverage 

of sports events: 

 

In these replays the action can be dramatically slowed down so that one is able 

to see much more than one was able to see in the action as it actually oc- 

curred. If one is given the full treatment—closeup, slow-action, forward-and- 

re-verse, split-screen, the same scene from several perspectives, and with the 

verbal commentary and interpretation of an expert superimposed—one has a 

fair analogy of what the evangelists do. . . .One might add to the force of the 

analogy by pointing out that the true significance of certain plays can only be 

known after the game is over. Now they are often seen in a new light, their true 

meaning dependent on what subsequently transpired.⁵ 

 

As we watch a television event from various angles, we often do not even see the 

same people or scenic details from one perspective to the next. Might the same 

thing not be true of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus? 

 

The Narrative World of the Gospels 

 

Each of the Gospels creates its own narrative “world,” and one of the best general 

approaches to the Gospels as stories is to allow them to build a total, self- 

contained picture in our imaginations. Someone has rightly said that in every story 

 

there is presented to us a special world with its own space and time, its own 

ideological system, and its own standards of behavior. In relation to that 

world, we assume (at least in our first perceptions of it) the position of an 

alien spectator. . . . Gradually we enter into it, becoming more familiar with its 

standards, accustoming ourselves to it, until we begin to perceive this world 

as if from within.⁶ 

 

In Matthew’s Gospel, for example, we enter a Jewish world where Old Testament 

prophecies and religious practices are a constant force, where Jesus is repeatedly 

portrayed in terms of royalty, and where the teaching of Jesus is presented in very 

orderly fashion. When we read the Gospel of Luke, we are in quite a different 

world, a cosmopolitan world in which people on the social and religious fringes— 

women, outsiders, the poor, people in shady professions—are important because 

they are the ones who receive Goďs grace. 

 

SUMMARY 

 

The Gospels, taken as literary wholes, are first of all stories. As readers we can 

best organize our total impressions of them around such narrative concerns as 

the characterization of the central hero, the general (but not strict) chronological 

arrangement of incidents in the life of Jesus, the presence of unifying plot con- 

flicts (they mainly involve Jesus and groups of characters such as the disciples 

and Pharisees), a linear or progressive movement of the action to the climactic 

death and resurrection of Jesus (if we count chapters, the four Gospels devote 

anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-eight percent of the total story to the Passion 

and Resurrection), and the distinctive narrative “world” that unifies each Gospel. 

 

Individual Stories in Gospels 

 

If narrative provides a literary framework for a Gospel as a whole, it is an equally 

good device for dealing with individual narrative units within the Gospels. These 

brief stories will yield their meanings best if we ask the usual narrative questions: 

where? who? what happens? At the level of action, these brief stories (unlike a 

Gospel as a whole) follow the Aristotelian principle of one event leading by a 

cause-effect link to the next event. These stories are tightly constructed, with one 

detail producing the next in a marvelously coherent fashion. Most of them have a 

central conflict moving to resolution, and many of them progress toward a cli- 

mactic epiphany (moment of revelation, insight, understanding). The story of 

Jesus’ meeting with the woman at the well (John 4:1–42) is a classic case of how a 

Gospel story moves from one event to the next in a seamless progression from an 

initial situation to a final resolution or epiphany.⁷ 

 

Individual Gospel Stories as Small Dramas 

 

Because the Gospels contain so much dialogue and encounter, it is also a helpful 

procedure for many of the longer episodes to lay out the story into separate dra- 

matic scenes, as though it were a play, focusing on each segment and also noting 

the sequence or positioning of scenes as we move through the episode from 

beginning to end. Many of these stories are, in fact, dramas in miniature. As a 

variation on this model, we can approach some of the episodes as though we 

were watching the event on television. There are distant (overview) shots, close- 

ups, shifting of focus from one speaker to another, scenes of the crowd, and so 

forth. 

 

Genres Within the Gospels 

 

Another thing we can do with individual units within the Gospels is to identify the 

precise subtype to which a given unit belongs. The Gospels are made up of sev- 

eral general types of material. Many of them can be further subdivided (see chart 

on following page). There are, for example, six specific types of pronouncement 

stories: correction stories, objection stories, commendation stories, quest stories, 

test stories, and inquiry stories.⁸ 

 

How Knowing the Genre Helps a Reader 

 

What does such a taxonomy of genres achieve? It tells us what to look for in a 

given Gospel passage. It usually provides the best descriptive framework for orga- 

nizing a given unit. And sometimes the correct interpretation of a unit depends on 

identifying the precise genre of the passage. It is important for the interpretation 

of a pronouncement story, for example, to know that story and saying correlate 

with each other as stimulus and response. Frequently some of the details in a 

story will seem irrelevant until we place the passage into the right literary family, 

when suddenly every detail falls into place. 

Nonnarrative Elements in Gospels 

 

The list of subtypes reveals that, although narrative is the overriding framework 

for the Gospels, much of the material falls into genres covered elsewhere in this 

book. The sayings and discourses of Jesus need to be approached with the tools 

appropriate to poetry, proverb, parable, satire, and apocalypse (visionary liter- 

ature). 

 

SUMMARY 

 

The Gospels are stories about Jesus. To describe and interpret them, we need to 

apply all that we know about narrative as a literary form. Within that general cate- 

gory, there is much that is unique about these stories, including the range of spe- 

cific literary types into which they can be divided. 

 

Further Reading 

The best overview of literary commentary on the Gospels is the excerpts col- 

lected under “Gospel as a Literary Form” and the four individual Gospels in The 

New Testament in Literary Criticism, ed. Leland Ryken (New York: Frederick Ungar, 

1984). David Rhoads and Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the 

Narrative of a Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), is a model for approaching a 

Gospel as literary narrative. On a briefer scale, I conduct a sequential literary anal- 

ysis of the Gospel of John in The Literature of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 

1974), pp. 276–91. Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis does something similar with the 

Gospel of Mark in Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives (Nashville: Abing- 

don, 1974), pp. 296–329. John Drury’s Luke (New York: Macmillan, 1973) is an 

example of a commentary that shows great sensitivity to the narrative qualities of