1. Is the Bible Literature?
2. The Stories of the Bible
3. Types of Biblical Stories
4. The Poetry of the Bible
5. Types of Biblical Poetry
6. The Proverb as a Literary Form
7. The Gospels
8. Parables
9. The Epistles
10. Satire
11. Visionary Literature
12. The Literary Unity of the Bible
Preface The one thing the Bible is not is what it is so often thought to be—a theological outline with proof texts attached. Asked to define neighbor, Jesus told a story (Luke 10:25–27). Likewise, Jesus’ aphoristic command “Remember Lot’s wife’’ (Luke 17:32) shows that he believed that truth can be embodied in concrete examples or images as well as in moral propositions. When asked by his disciples why he spoke in parables, Jesus outlined a theory of communication (Matt. 13:10–17) based on the lit- erary principle of indirection: he concealed the truth from immediate perception in order to reveal it to listeners who were willing to ponder his parables. Instances from the life of Jesus such as these suggest a literary approach to truth that frequently avoids direct propositional statement and embodies truth in distinctly literary forms. Furthermore, there is a preoccupation among biblical writers with artistry, verbal craftsmanship, and aesthetic beauty. The writer of Ecclesiastes presents a theory of writing that stresses beauty of expression as well as truthfulness of content; he labored to arrange proverbs “with great care’’ and “sought to find pleasing words’’ (Eccl. 12:9–10 RSV). If the Bible is an artistically beautiful as well as a truthful book, it demands a literary approach in addition to the historical and theological approaches. Traditionally, we have been so preoccupied with the hermeneutical question of how to interpret what the Bible says that we have been left impoverished in techniques to describe and interact with the text itself. In the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon argued that the church had done a good job of communicating the theological content of the Bible but had failed to make the literal level of the biblical text come alive in people’s imaginations. We are in a similar situation today, even though the literary emphasis on the primary or literal level of a biblical text actually builds upon the grammatico-historical method of interpretation, which likewise aims to take a reader as close as possible to the originally intended, plain meaning of the text. This book is an introduction to the literary forms of the Bible, with emphasis on the activities that those forms require of a reader. It is a “grammar” of literary forms and techniques. As such, it is a companion or supplement to similar handbooks by biblical scholars. I am happy for this occasion to thank my Wheaton College colleagues Alan Johnson of the Bible Department and Jim Wilhoit of the Christian Education Department for their unfailing helpfulness in pointing me to material from their disciplines and in sparing me from errors of ignorance. This book also benefited from criticism by Ron Allen of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary and Stanley Gundry, Editor-in-Chief at Zondervan. I am equally indebted to my wife, Mary, for serving as stylistic critic and proofreader. I have taken most of my biblical quotations from the New International Version. Where I have used the King James Version (KJ) or the Revised Standard Version (RSV), I have so indicated.
The one thing the Bible is not is what it is so often thought to be—a theological outline with proof texts attached.
Asked to define neighbor, Jesus told a story (Luke 10:25–27). Likewise, Jesus’ aphoristic command “Remember Lot’s wife’’ (Luke
17:32) shows that he believed that truth can be embodied in concrete examples or images as well as in moral propositions.
When asked by his disciples why he spoke in parables, Jesus outlined a theory of communication (Matt. 13:10–17) based on the lit-
erary principle of indirection: he concealed the truth from immediate perception in order to reveal it to listeners who were willing to
ponder his parables. Instances from the life of Jesus such as these suggest a literary approach to truth that frequently avoids direct
propositional statement and embodies truth in distinctly literary forms.
Furthermore, there is a preoccupation among biblical writers with artistry, verbal craftsmanship, and aesthetic beauty. The writer of
Ecclesiastes presents a theory of writing that stresses beauty of expression as well as truthfulness of content; he labored to arrange
proverbs “with great care’’ and “sought to find pleasing words’’ (Eccl. 12:9–10 RSV). If the Bible is an artistically beautiful as well as a
truthful book, it demands a literary approach in addition to the historical and theological approaches.
Traditionally, we have been so preoccupied with the hermeneutical question of how to interpret what the Bible says that we have
been left impoverished in techniques to describe and interact with the text itself. In the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon argued that the
church had done a good job of communicating the theological content of the Bible but had failed to make the literal level of the biblical
text come alive in people’s imaginations. We are in a similar situation today, even though the literary emphasis on the primary or literal
level of a biblical text actually builds upon the grammatico-historical method of interpretation, which likewise aims to take a reader as
close as possible to the originally intended, plain meaning of the text.
This book is an introduction to the literary forms of the Bible, with emphasis on the activities that those forms require of a reader. It
is a “grammar” of literary forms and techniques. As such, it is a companion or supplement to similar handbooks by biblical scholars.
I am happy for this occasion to thank my Wheaton College colleagues Alan Johnson of the Bible Department and Jim Wilhoit of the
Christian Education Department for their unfailing helpfulness in pointing me to material from their disciplines and in sparing me from
errors of ignorance. This book also benefited from criticism by Ron Allen of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary and Stanley
Gundry, Editor-in-Chief at Zondervan. I am equally indebted to my wife, Mary, for serving as stylistic critic and proofreader.
I have taken most of my biblical quotations from the New International Version. Where I have used the King James Version (KJ) or
the Revised Standard Version (RSV), I have so indicated.
Chapter One
Is the Bible Literature?
New Directions in Biblical Studies
THERE IS A QUIET REVOLUTION GOING ON in the study of the Bible. At its center is a growing awareness that the Bible is a work of liter-
ature and that the methods of literary scholarship are a necessary part of any complete study of the Bible. There are two sides to the
movement: literary scholars are showing increasing interest in applying their methods to the Bible, and Bible scholars are calling for a
literary approach.¹
A number of ingredients make up this new approach to the Bible: a concern with the literary genres of the Bible; a new willingness to
treat biblical texts as finished wholes instead of as a patchwork of fragments; a focus on the Bible as it now stands instead of con-
ducting excavations in the redaction (editing) process behind the text; an inclination to use literary instead of traditional theological
terms to discuss the stories and poems of the Bible; an appreciation for the artistry of the Bible; a sensitivity to the experiential, extra-
intellectual (more-than-ideational) dimension of the Bible.
Approaching the Bible as Literature
But above all, the new attitude toward the Bible involves a growing awareness that literature expresses truth in its own way, different
from ordinary propositional discourse. In other words, when the Bible employs a literary method, it asks to be approached as literature
and not as something else. In the words of C. S. Lewis, “There is a . . . sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot
properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”²
Defining the Term “Literature”
The purpose of this opening chapter is to identify what makes a text “literature.” I should say at once that by the term “literature” I do
not mean everything that is written. I use it in a more restricted sense to mean the types of writing that are often called “imaginative
literature” or “creative writing,” in contrast to expository writing. In this chapter, I am in effect defining those parts of the Bible that are
like the works covered in high school and college literature courses.
The Literary Continuum
By thus defining literature I am not establishing an “either-or” method of distinguishing between literary and nonliterary texts. The Bible
is obviously a mixed book. Literary and nonliterary (expository, explanatory) writing exist side by side within the covers of this unique
book. I have no intention of building a “great divide” that would make a biblical passage either literature or nonliterature. Instead, I am
describing a continuum, or scale, on which some parts of the Bible are more literary and other parts are less literary.
More Than One Approach Is Necessary
Nor do I wish to suggest that the literary parts of the Bible cannot be approached in other ways as well. I do not question that the lit-
erary parts can and should also be approached as history and theology. My claim is simply that the literary approach is one necessary
way to read and interpret the Bible, an approach that has been unjustifiably neglected.
Building on Biblical Scholarship
Despite that neglect, the literary approach builds at every turn on what biblical scholars have done to recover the original, intended
meaning of the biblical text. In fact, the literary approach that I describe in this book is a logical extension of what is commonly known
as the grammatico-historical method of biblical interpretation. Both approaches insist that we must begin with the literal meaning of
the words of the Bible as determined by the historical setting in which the authors wrote.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
The best way into the subject is to look at a couple of examples. One of the most memorable passages in the whole Bible is the parable
Jesus told when a lawyer asked him to define who his neighbor was. Here is the definition of “neighbor” that Jesus gave (Luke 10:30–
36):
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat
him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he
passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan,
as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds,
pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took
out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. “Look after him,” he said, “and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra
expense you may have.” Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
The Incarnational Nature of Literature
Everything about this passage makes it a piece of literature. We should notice first that Jesus never gives an abstract or propositional
definition of “neighbor.” Instead, he tells a story that embodies what it means to be a neighbor. This suggests at once the most impor-
tant thing about literature: its subject matter is human experience, not abstract ideas. Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as
possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an
experience. Jesus could have defined neighbor abstractly, as a dictionary does, but he chose a literary approach to the truth instead. This
is comparable to an experience we probably have all had when struggling with the assembly of a toy or appliance: when we have a good
picture, we may not even need the written instructions.
The Primacy of Imagination (Image-Making)
Because literature presents an experience instead of telling us about that experience, it constantly appeals to our imagination (the image-
making and image-perceiving capacity within us). Literature images forth some aspect of reality. Consider all the sensory images and
gestures we encounter in this parable: robbers stripping and beating a victim on a road, specific people traveling down the road, first-
aid equipment consisting of such tangibles as oil and wine, and such physical things as a donkey and an inn and money. We visualize
the Samaritan lifting the victim onto his donkey and see the money exchange hands and listen to the instructions at the inn.
The Genre of Story
The form of the parable is as literary as the content is. For one thing, it is a story or narrative, and this is a distinctly literary genre
(“type”). The story, moreover, is told with an abundance of literary artistry. It follows the storytelling principle of threefold repetition: a
given event happens three times, with a crucial change introduced the third time. The story begins with vivid plot conflict to seize the
listener’s attention, and from the very start the story generates suspense about its outcome. Jesus also makes skillful use of foils (con-
trasts that “set off” or heighten the main point of the story): the neighborliness of the Samaritan stands out all the more clearly by its
contrast with the indifference of the priest and of the Levite.
Unity, Coherence, Emphasis
Well-constructed stories have unity, coherence, and emphasis. Judged by these artistic criteria, this parable of Jesus is a small master-
piece. Nothing is extraneous to the unifying theme of neighborly behavior from an unlikely source. The very construction of the story
makes the emphasis fall on the good Samaritan. One critic describes it thus:
The aborted sequences with the priest and Levite provide a pattern which causes the listener to anticipate the third traveler and
build up tension. Since this threefold pattern is so common in popular story telling, we also anticipate that the third traveler will be
the one who will actually help. Our attention is focused on the third traveler before he arrives, and this heightens the shock when we
discover that he neither fits the pattern of cultural expectation nor the pattern of expectation created by the series of priest, Levite.³
Reader Involvement
Not only is the parable inherently literary; its effect on the reader is also literary. The story does not primarily require our minds to grasp
an idea but instead gets us to respond with our imagination and emotions to a real-life experience. It puts us on the scene and makes
us participants in the action. It gets us involved with characters about whose destiny we are made to care. Literature, in short, is
affective, not cool and detached. This, of course, made it such an effective teaching medium for Jesus, whose parables often drew his
listeners innocently into the story and then turned the tables on them after it was too late to evade the issue at hand.
SUMMARY
What makes the parable of the good Samaritan a work of literature? Everything about it: its experiential approach to truth, its sensory
concreteness, its narrative genre, its carefully crafted construction, and its total involvement of the reader—intellectually, emotionally,
imaginatively.
Psalm 23 as a Literary Work
As Exhibit B, we consider the world’s greatest poem, Psalm 23 (RSV):
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;
he makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness [right paths]
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
for ever.
The Genre of Poetry
What indicates that this is literary writing? We can tell at a glance that this is poetry, another distinctly literary genre. The recurring unit
is the poetic line, not the sentence. Furthermore, nearly every line follows the same grammatical pattern (God is identified as the actor,
and then an action is ascribed to him), and many of the sentences fall into a pattern of pairs in which the second repeats the thought of
the first in different words. In short, Psalm 23 is written in a verse form known as parallelism. It possesses a memorable, aphoristic
quality that ordinary discourse lacks.
Unity and Shapeliness
There is equal artistry in the unity and shapeliness of the poem as a whole. The poem begins by announcing the theme and the control-
ling metaphor (the sheep-shepherd relationship). It then proceeds to a catalog of the shepherd’s acts on behalf of his sheep, from the
noontime resting in the shade to the activities performed in the sheepfold at the end of the day. And the poem ends with a forward-
pointing note of finality. Psalm 23 has a self-contained, carefully crafted quality that we associate with art.
Literary Concreteness
Turning from the form to the content, we again sense how literary this text is. We see once more the literary impulse to be concrete in-
stead of abstract. Psalm 23 takes God’s providence as its subject. But the psalmist does not use the word providence and does not give
us a theological definition of the concept. To drive this point home, we might contrast the literary approach of Psalm 23 with the theo-
logical definition of providence in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
God the Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to
the least, by His most wise and holy providence. . . .
The approach of Psalm 23 is the opposite. It turns the idea of God’s providence into a metaphor in which God is pictured as a shep-
herd in the daily routine of caring for his sheep. The literary approach of Psalm 23 is indirect: first we must picture what the shepherd
does for his sheep, and then we must transfer that picture to the human level. Instead of using abstract, theological terminology, Psalm
23 consistently keeps us in a world of concrete images: green pastures, water, pathways, rod and staff, table, oil, cup, and sheepfold
(metaphorically called a house).
The Differentia of Literature
How does literature work? Psalm 23 again shows us. Literature is concrete and experiential. It uses tangible images to convey the very
quality of lived experience. It appeals to our imagination (image-making capacity). It conveys more meanings than ordinary expository
language does—it would take several pages of expository prose to paraphrase all the meanings Psalm 23 compresses into nineteen
lines. Psalm 23 is more concentrated, more consistently concrete, more obviously artistic, more eloquent and beautiful, than ordinary
prose discourse.
The parable of the good Samaritan and Psalm 23 are typical of the kind of literary writing we keep running into as we read through
the Bible. From these two examples I wish to branch out into a more systematic anatomy of the principles that underlie a literary ap-
proach to the Bible.
LITERATURE: THE VOICE OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE
The Subject of Literature: Human Experience
It is a commonplace that the subject of literature is human experience—not abstract ideas or propositions, but experience. The knowl-
edge or truth that literature gives us is an awareness of reality or truth as it is actually experienced.
Literature, in other words, shows human experience instead of telling about it. It is incarnational. It enacts rather than states. Instead
of giving us abstract propositions about virtue or vice, for example, literature presents stories of good or evil characters in action. The
tendency of literature is to embody human experience, not to formulate ideas in intellectual propositions.
The Difference Between Literary and Expository Writing
We can profitably contrast the literary and the expository, or documentary, use of language. Expository (“explanatory”) writing seeks to
tell us, as objectively and clearly as possible, facts and information about a subject. Literature, by contrast, appeals to our imagination.
Literature aims to recreate an experience or situation in sufficient detail and concreteness to enable the reader to relive it.
The Bible contains an abundance of both expository and literary writing. One is not inherently better or more effective than the
other, and we obviously need both types of writing to do justice to all sides of life and truth. The commandment “you shall not kill” is
expository in its approach to moral truth. The story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:1–16) embodies the same truth in the distinctly literary
form of a story (a story that implies but nowhere states that it is sin to murder someone). When asked to define “neighbor,” Jesus
avoided expository discourse and instead told a parable.
Because literature aims to recreate a whole experience, there is a certain irreducible quality to it. We may be able to deduce ideas
from a story or a poem, but those propositions are never an adequate substitute for the embodied vision that the literary work itself
conveys. The whole story or the whole poem is the meaning because the truth that literature communicates is a living through of an
experience. If the direct statement of an idea conveyed all that a story or poem does, the story or poem would be superfluous. But the
stories and poems of the Bible are emphatically not superfluous.
The Need to Respect the Bible’s Experiential Quality
What does it mean to approach the Bible as literature? It means first of all to be sensitive to the experiential side of the Bible. It means
to resist the tendency to turn every biblical passage into a theological proposition, as though this is what the passage exists for. The
one thing that the Bible is not, may I repeat, is a theological outline with proof texts.
THE CONCRETENESS OF LITERATURE
Concreteness in Biblical Poetry
The chief means by which literature communicates the very quality of human experience is concreteness. In literature we constantly en-
counter the sights and sounds and vividness of real life. This is most easily seen in the poetry of the Bible. For the biblical poets, noth-
ing remains wholly abstract. Longing for God becomes as tangible as thirst “in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps. 63:1).
Slander is pictured as weapon-toting ambushers “who sharpen their tongues like swords/and aim their words like deadly arrows” (Ps.
64:3). Pride becomes a necklace and violence a garment (Ps. 73:6).
The Concreteness of Biblical Stories
The impulse toward concreteness is no less prominent in the stories of the Bible. Even to express truth in the form of people doing
things in specific settings is to choose a concrete medium rather than the abstract form of expository writing. It is easy to deduce a
dozen ideas from the Bible’s story of origins (Gen. 1–3) and to state these ideas as propositions, but the account itself almost totally
avoids stating the truth about God and creation abstractly. It embodies everything in the concrete form of characters performing ac-
tions and saying things that we overhear.
Biblical stories exist on a continuum from a bare outline of what happened to a full account of how it happened. The more fully and
concretely the story is told, the more literary we should consider it to be, and the stories of the Bible usually lean in the direction of lit-
erary concreteness. Consider a random passage from the Book of Acts (3:1–5):
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from
birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple
courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter
said, “Look at us!” So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. . . .
A television camera could not have captured the event more vividly than this. If the writer’s purpose were to state only what happened,
there is a lot of excess baggage in the passage. But given the literary criterion of concreteness and vividness, the emphasis on how it
happened is exactly what we should expect.
The Prominence of Dialogue in the Bible
We might also note in passing that one of the most distinctive traits of biblical writing, especially biblical stories, is the prevalence of
direct speech and dialogue. Biblical storytellers are always busy quoting what characters said and giving us snatches of dialogue in-
stead of indirect summaries of conversations. This, too, is part of the Bible’s literary vividness. What could be more actual and imme-
diate than the very words a character used?
Concreteness in New Testament Epistles
The impulse toward concrete vividness is not limited to the poetry and stories of the Bible. We find it in the Epistles, for example, min-
gled with the predominantly theological mode:
Endure hardship with us as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. ... An athlete . . . does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes
according to the rules. The hard-working farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops (2 Tim. 2:3, 5–6).
Even the letter as a form is more experiential and literary, less systematic and expository, than an essay or sermon.
SUMMARY
At the level of content, biblical literature is characterized by experiential concreteness. It is filled with the settings and sensations and
actions of everyday life. It incarnates ideas in the form of poetic images, stories of characters in action, and living situations in which
readers can imaginatively participate. It appeals to the understanding through the imagination.
The Need to Be Imaginative Readers
What is the practical result of this concreteness? It means that we should read the Bible with our imaginations (image-making capacity)
as well as with our reason. If we are to read the Bible as literature, we must be active in recreating the experiences and sensations and
events it portrays. We must be sensitive to the physical and experiential qualities of a passage and avoid reducing every passage in the
Bible to a set of abstract themes. If we have “antennae” only for theological concepts or historical facts, we will miss much of what the
Bible communicates and will distort the kind of book it is.
The Importance of Images
The Bible appeals to our imagination and emotions as well as to our reason and intellect. It conveys more than abstract ideas because
its aim is to express the whole of reality. The Bible recognizes that a person’s world view consists of images and symbols as well as
ideas and propositions. A noted theologian has said that
we are far more image-making and image-using creatures than we usually think ourselves to be and . . . are guided and formed by
images in our minds. . . . Man . . . is a being who grasps and shapes reality . . . with the aid of great images, metaphors, and
analogies.⁴
There is no better illustration of this than the Bible, an authoritative religious book that conveys the truth about reality by means of sto-
ries and characters and images and lifelike situations far oftener than by theological abstraction.
Truthfulness to Life and Reality
All of this affects how we should read the Bible. Reading the Bible as literature includes reading it for its ideas and implied assertions
and themes, but it includes more than this. Literature conveys a sense of life—a sense of how the writer thinks and feels about what re-
ally exists, what is right and wrong, what is valuable and worthless. Literature can be true to reality and human experience as well as
being the embodiment of a true proposition. Literature is true whenever we can say about its portrayal of life, “This is the way life is.”
Reading the Bible to Absorb a Sense of Life
Reading biblical literature does not have to result in the intellectual grasp of an idea. We also read it to absorb or experience a sense of
the way things truly are. In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus did not have to add a definition of “neighbor”; the meaning of the
parable is complete if we recognize and experience the neighborly behavior of the Samaritan. This has big implications for what might be
called the devotional reading of the Bible. The stories and poems of the Bible achieve their devotional purpose whenever they reinforce
a reader’s general sense of the reality of God, or produce an awareness of what is moral and immoral, or influence a person’s estimate
of what is valuable and worthless. We are affected by more than ideas when we read literature, though, of course, ideas are part of the
total experience. We read literature not primarily to acquire information but to contemplate experience and reality as a way of under-
standing them better. One of the rewards of reading literature, including the Bible, is that our own experiences and beliefs are given
shape and expression.
Traditional approaches to the Bible lean heavily toward the conceptual and doctrinal. We have erroneously operated on the premise
that a person’s world view consists solely of abstract ideas—but it also includes stories and images. A literary approach to the Bible
can go a long way toward respecting the other half of a person’s world view—and the other side of the brain, to use contemporary psy-
chological theory. The Bible is more than a book into which we reach for proof texts. What would happen if, instead of tracing ideas
through the Bible, we traced a single image, such as light or food or garment or rock? We would have covered an amazing range of bib-
lical doctrine, in a manner completely in keeping with the kind of book the Bible is.
LITERATURE REQUIRES INTERPRETATION
The Need to Interpret
From what I have already said it is easy to see why literature requires more of a reader than straightforward expository writing. Literature
always calls for interpretation. It expresses its meanings by a certain indirection. The statement that “our neighbor is anyone whom we
encounter in need of our help” is direct and requires no interpretation. By comparison, Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan requires a
reader to determine what the details in the story add up to.
Interpreting Stories
The more concrete or complex a story is, the more open it becomes to interpretation. The story of David in the Old Testament illus-
trates this. What does the story of David communicate about God, people, and society? There is, of course, no single answer, nor is it
always easy to determine exactly what truth is communicated by this or that episode in the story. It is no wonder that the story of David
has elicited so many interpretations.⁵
Interpreting Poetry
Biblical poetry also requires interpretation on the part of the reader. Consider, for example, the most important of all figures of speech:
metaphor and simile. These figures of speech compare one thing to another: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water” (Ps. 1:3).
Exactly how is the godly person like a tree? How many of the suggested points of comparison are valid? These are questions of interpre-
tation that metaphor and simile always place before a reader.
Some Advantages of the Literary Approach
If the need to interpret literature and the unavoidable differences in interpretation from one reader to another strike us as a risk, we
should also note the advantages of literature as a medium. They include memorability, ability to capture a reader’s attention, affective
power, and ability to do justice to the complexity and multiplicity of human life as we actually experience it.
THE ARTISTRY OF LITERATURE
Literature is an interpretive presentation of human experience. But it is more than that. It is also an art form, characterized by beau-
ty, craftsmanship, and technique. Not merely what is said, but the how of a piece of writing is always important in literature.
The Elements of Artistic Form
The elements of artistic form that all types of literature (in fact, all art forms) share include pattern or design, theme or central focus,
organic unity (also called unity in variety, or theme and variation), coherence, balance, contrast, symmetry, repetition or recurrence,
variation, and unified progression. In stories these ingredients will take one form, in poems another, as subsequent chapters in this
book will show. But whatever the genre (literary type), the sheer abundance of literary technique and artistry that we find in many parts
of the Bible make it a literary masterpiece that we can enjoy for its beauty as well read for its truth. What the writer of Ecclesiastes said
about his own theory of composition applies equally to most biblical writers: he labored, he tells us, to arrange his material “with great
care,” and to “find pleasing words” or “words of delight” (Eccl. 12:9–10, RSV).
The Purposes of Artistry
What functions are served by this type of artistry? And why is it important to be aware of this dimension of the Bible? Artistic form
serves the purpose of intensifying the impact of what is said, but also the purposes of pleasure, delight, and enjoyment. Artistry satis-
fies the human urge for beauty and craftsmanship. If a person set out to spend some time every day reading in the so-called sacred
books of the world, I can predict which one most people would grow least tired of reading. Literary analysis is capable of showing why
the Bible is an interesting book rather than a dull book to read. A famous detractor of biblical religion called the Bible “unquestionably
the most beautiful book in the world.”⁶
Reading with Artistic Sensitivity
What does the artistry of the Bible require of the reader? We need to be prepared to identify and enjoy the elements of literary form we
find. A literary approach is sensitive to the artistic beauty of the Bible. It sees value in the craftsmanship of biblical writers. It relishes
the stories and poems of the Bible as products of verbal and imaginative skill. That the Bible possesses such artistry is indisputable;
the elements of artistic form and beauty I have mentioned are manifestly there. The only question is whether as readers we are prepared
to recognize and enjoy the artistry. The artistic excellence of the Bible is not extraneous to its total effect. It is one of the glories of the
Bible.
LITERARY GENRES
Literary and Expository Genres
The commonest way of defining literature is by its genres, or literary types. Through the centuries, people have agreed that certain gen-
res (such as story, poetry, and drama) are literary in nature. Other genres, such as historical chronicles, theological treatises, and ge-
nealogies, are expository (informational) in nature. Still others fall into one or the other category, depending on how the writer handles
them. Letters, sermons, and orations, for example, can move in the direction of literature if they display the elements of literature dis-
cussed in this chapter.
The Importance of Genres
Each literary genre has its distinctive features. Each has its own “rules” or procedures. This, in turn, affects how we read and interpret a
work of literature. As readers we need to come to a given text with the right expectations. If we do, we will see more than we otherwise
would, and we will avoid misreadings. If we know that stories are built around a central conflict leading to final resolution, we are in a
position to see something that the writer has built into the story. Literary genre is nothing less than a “norm or expectation to guide the
reader in his encounter with the text.”⁷ An awareness of genre will program our reading of a work, giving it a familiar shape and arrang-
ing the details into an identifiable pattern.
Knowing how a given genre works can spare us from misinterpretations. For example, exaggeration in a story that purports to be
factual history is a form of untruth, while that same type of exaggeration in lyric poetry is called hyperbole and is a standard way of ex-
pressing emotional truth. The reliability of documentary history depends partly on the writer’s inclusion of all the relevant historical
material, but as interpreters we realize that literary narrative is much more selective and interpretive, incorporating material only to
highlight the specific perspective a storyteller wishes to give to a character or event.
How important is the notion of genre to literature and the Bible? Two biblical scholars answer that question at the beginning of a
book on biblical interpretation:
. . . the basic concern of this book is with the understanding of the different types of literature (the genres) that make up the Bible.
Although we do speak to other issues, this generic approach has controlled all that has been done.⁸
A literary approach to the Bible agrees with this emphasis on literary genres, though it does not find the list of genres discussed by bib-
lical scholars to be wholly adequate, nor is it totally satisfied with the scholars’ descriptions of literary genres.
The Literary Genres of the Bible
The Bible is a mixture of genres, some literary, some expository, some mixed. The major literary genres are narrative or story, poetry
(especially lyric poetry), proverb, and visionary writing (including prophecy and apocalypse). Historical writing in the Bible frequently
moves in the direction of literary narrative by virtue of its experiential concreteness or the principles of pattern and design that per-
meate such writing. The epistles of the New Testament frequently become literary because their style is either poetic or artistic or both,
and biblical satire usually employs a literary vehicle to communicate its attacks.
The Bible also has its share of genres that are either unique or decidedly hybrid, but these are sufficiently similar to familiar literary
genres to yield their meanings if approached with literary tools. Biblical prophecy, for example, requires an ability to interpret poetry
and satire. Biblical apocalypse is not a typical story, nor is it ordinary poetry, yet narrative and poetry are exactly the right categories with
which to approach the Book of Revelation.
LITERATURE AS A SPECIAL USE OF LANGUAGE
Literary Language
Literature uses special resources of language in a way that people through the centuries have agreed to call literary. This quality cuts
across literary genres and, in fact, appears in texts that we would not consider to be primarily literary.
Literature exploits, for example, such devices of language as metaphor, simile, allusion, pun, paradox, and irony. Of course, these
resources of language are the very essence of poetry, but the important thing about the Bible is that they appear everywhere, not just in
the poetry. This is why, incidentally, a literary approach is necessary throughout the Bible and not just in the predominantly literary
parts.
Literary Language in Biblical Stories
The story of Cain’s murder of Abel (Gen. 4:1–16) illustrates how the stories of the Bible can use figurative language that we recognize
as distinctly literary. When Cain becomes angry at his brother, God warns him that “sin is crouching at your door” (v. 7). This state-
ment is an example of personification in which an abstract moral quality is figuratively treated as a person or animal. Biblical scholars
disagree on whether sin is pictured here as “couching” or “crouching” at the door, but in either case we have to interpret the statement
figuratively: sin is either a monster waiting to pounce on Cain if he does not get control of his anger, or it is a monster that, through
long acquaintance, has become a familiar part of the household.
Later in the same story God tells Cain, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. . .which opened its mouth to receive
your brother’s blood from your hand” (vv. 10–11). This, too, is figurative and an obvious deviation from normal language. It shows that
even in nonpoetic parts of the Bible the writers use literary and poetic resources of language. As readers we need to identify and inter-
pret figurative language throughout the Bible. Indeed, there is no book of the Bible that is not partly literary.
Literary Language in Epistles
This is true even of the most explicitly theological parts of the New Testament Epistles. Consider the following specimen:
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household,
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building
is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord (Eph. 2:19–21).
The passage is thoroughly theological, but the language is poetic. Almost everything is expressed through metaphors: an unbeliever is
an exile, a believer is a citizen and family member, Christians are a church building, and so on. It is hard to find a page in the Bible that
does not make at least some use of the resources of language that are distinctly literary.
Rhetorical Patterns in the Bible
Not only individual words and images but also larger rhetorical patterns are a pervasive literary presence in the Bible. Examples include
parallelism (two or more consecutive clauses arranged in similar grammatical form), rhetorical questions, question-and-answer con-
structions, imaginary dialogues, the aphoristic conciseness of a proverb, and any highly patterned arrangement of clauses or phrases
(such as the intricate system of threes in 1 Cor. 13). A biblical scholar has analyzed the presence of “tensive language,” or “forceful and
imaginative language,” in the New Testament; he shows how such language uses rhetorical devices to break through the clichés of
ordinary language and to reveal truth with power.⁹ Such literary resources pervade the entire Bible, even the sections that are not pre-
dominantly literary.
MEANING THROUGH FORM
The Primacy of Form in the Bible
A literary approach to the Bible is preoccupied with literary form, and that for a very good reason. In any written discourse, meaning is
communicated through form. The concept of “form” should be construed very broadly in this context: it includes anything that touches
upon how a writer has expressed his content. Everything that gets communicated does so through form, beginning with language itself.
Literature Uses Unique Forms to Communicate Meaning
While this is true for all forms of writing, it is especially crucial for literature. Literature has its own forms and techniques, and these
tend to be more complex and subtle and indirect than those of ordinary discourse. Stories, for example, communicate their meaning
through character, setting, and action. The result is that before we can understand what a story says we must first interact with the
form, that is, the characters, settings, and events. Poetry conveys its meanings through figurative language and concrete images. It is
therefore impossible to determine what a poem says without first encountering the form (metaphor, simile, image, etc.).
Form and Content Are Inseparable
The literary critic’s preoccupation with the how of biblical writing is not frivolous. It is evidence of an artistic delight in verbal beauty
and craftsmanship, but it is also part of an attempt to understand what the Bible says. In a literary text it is impossible to separate what
is said from how it is said, content from form.
LOOKING FOR LITERARY WHOLES
The Importance of Unity
The most basic of all artistic principles is unity. The literary approach to the Bible accordingly looks for literary patterns and wholeness
of effect. Richard G. Moulton, pioneer of the literary approach to the Bible, wrote, “No principle of literary study is more important than
that of grasping clearly a literary work as a single whole.”¹⁰ This literary preoccupation with the overall unity and pattern of biblical
works stands in contrast to traditional approaches. Austin Farrar, a biblical scholar with excellent literary intuitions, criticizes his own
discipline on precisely this point:
Form-criticism [as practiced by biblical scholars] is rather misleadingly so called, because the name suggests an attempt to appre-
ciate the form of a complete literary unit, say St Mark’s Gospel. Whereas what form-criticism studies is the form of the small con-
stituent parts of the Gospels; anecdotal paragraphs, for example, or even such small details as apparently self-contained gnomic
sentences. . . . In the literary realm, . . . the pattern of the whole comes first.¹¹
Traditional and Literary Approaches Contrasted
The tendency of biblical scholars to divide a biblical text into pieces has taken two forms. One is the penchant of liberal scholars for
undertaking textual “excavations” in an attempt to determine the various strata in the development of a text from its original form to its
final written form. The other is the practice of conservative scholars to organize the Bible into a theological outline and then treat var-
ious verses or passages as proof texts. Both procedures end up dividing a text into fragments, as does the verse-by-verse commentary
that is such a staple of biblical scholarship. The literary approach to the Bible, by contrast, accepts the biblical text in its final form as
the focus of study. It assumes unity in a text. The resultant ability to see the overall pattern of a story or poem is one of the greatest
gifts that a literary approach confers.
SUMMARY
The Bible demands a literary approach because its writing is literary in nature. The Bible is an experiential book that conveys the con-
crete reality of human life. It is filled with evidences of literary artistry and beauty, much of it in the form of literary genres. It also makes
continuous use of resources of language that we can regard as literary. A literary approach pays close attention to all of these elements
of literary form, because it is through them that the Bible communicates its message.
The literary approach to the Bible is becoming increasingly popular among both biblical and literary scholars. Traditional ap-
proaches to the Bible seem to have reached something of an impasse.¹²
Given the literary nature of the Bible, it is not surprising that biblical scholars are turning to the methods of literary criticism as a way of
understanding and discussing the Bible. “I would hope,” writes one of them, “that the new approaches will remain as receptive to lit-
erary analysis as they are at the present time. . . . It may well be—and I regard this as highly desirable—that biblical literary criticism will
be deparochialized and reintegrated with non-religious literary criticism in the future.”¹³ “Literary criticism is not. . . just the latest fad-
dish approach,” writes another; “it represents a significant shift in perspective. . . .”¹⁴ My purpose in the pages that follow is to make
the methods of literary criticism more accessible to anyone who reads and studies the Bible.
Further Reading
In keeping with the focus of the opening chapter, the sources that I list here deal in a theoretical way with what it means to approach
the Bible as literature. I must sound a note of warning in regard to sources that are sometimes included in lists such as this. Not every-
thing that claims to be a literary approach to the Bible actually is; in fact, most of what has been written to date has not been a genuinely
literary approach.
An immense quantity of literary criticism of the Bible has been collected in companion volumes to be published as part of Frederick
Ungar’s Library of Literary Criticism series; the editors are Alex Preminger and Edward L. Greenstein for the Old Testament and Leland
Ryken for the New Testament. The sources listed in another reference book, J. H. Gottcenťs The Bible as Literature: A Selective Bibli-
ography (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), are a mixed group, more indicative of the methods of biblical scholarship than of literary criticism.
Examples of biblical scholars whose theory of biblical analysis is essentially literary include William A. Beardslee, Literary Criticism of
the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970); Amos N. Wilder, Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1971), and Jesus’ Parables and the War of Myths: Essays on Imagination in the Scripture, ed. James Breech (Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1982); Robert C. Tannehill, The Sword of His Mouth: Forceful and Imaginative Language in Synoptic Sayings
Chapter One
Is the Bible Literature?
New Directions in Biblical Studies
THERE IS A QUIET REVOLUTION GOING ON in the study of the Bible. At its center is
a growing awareness that the Bible is a work of literature and that the methods of
literary scholarship are a necessary part of any complete study of the Bible. There
are two sides to the movement: literary scholars are showing increasing interest in
applying their methods to the Bible, and Bible scholars are calling for a literary
approach.¹
A number of ingredients make up this new approach to the Bible: a concern
with the literary genres of the Bible; a new willingness to treat biblical texts as fin-
ished wholes instead of as a patchwork of fragments; a focus on the Bible as it
now stands instead of conducting excavations in the redaction (editing) process
behind the text; an inclination to use literary instead of traditional theological
terms to discuss the stories and poems of the Bible; an appreciation for the
artistry of the Bible; a sensitivity to the experiential, extra-intellectual (more-than-
ideation-al) dimension of the Bible.
Approaching the Bible as Literature
But above all, the new attitude toward the Bible involves a growing awareness that
literature expresses truth in its own way, different from ordinary propositional dis-
course. In other words, when the Bible employs a literary method, it asks to
be approached as literature and not as something else. In the words of C. S.
Lewis, “There is a . . . sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot
properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different
sorts of literature they are.”²
Defining the Term “Literature”
The purpose of this opening chapter is to identify what makes a text “literature.” I
should say at once that by the term “literature” I do not mean everything that is
written. I use it in a more restricted sense to mean the types of writing that are
often called “imaginative literature” or “creative writing,” in contrast to expository
writing. In this chapter, I am in effect defining those parts of the Bible that are like
the works covered in high school and college literature courses.
The Literary Continuum
By thus defining literature I am not establishing an “either-or” method of distin-
guishing between literary and nonliterary texts. The Bible is obviously a mixed
book. Literary and nonliterary (expository, explanatory) writing exist side by side
within the covers of this unique book. I have no intention of building a “great di-
vide” that would make a biblical passage either literature or nonliterature. Instead,
I am describing a continuum, or scale, on which some parts of the Bible are more
literary and other parts are less literary.
More Than One Approach Is Necessary
Nor do I wish to suggest that the literary parts of the Bible cannot be approached
in other ways as well. I do not question that the literary parts can and should also
be approached as history and theology. My claim is simply that the literary ap-
proach is one necessary way to read and interpret the Bible, an approach that has
been unjustifiably neglected.
Building on Biblical Scholarship
Despite that neglect, the literary approach builds at every turn on what biblical
scholars have done to recover the original, intended meaning of the biblical text.
In fact, the literary approach that I describe in this book is a logical extension of
what is commonly known as the grammatico-historical method of biblical inter-
pretation. Both approaches insist that we must begin with the literal meaning of
the words of the Bible as determined by the historical setting in which the authors
wrote.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
The best way into the subject is to look at a couple of examples. One of the most
memorable passages in the whole Bible is the parable Jesus told when a lawyer
asked him to define who his neighbor was. Here is the definition of “neighbor”
that Jesus gave (Luke 10:30–36):
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands
of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving
him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when
he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he
came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan,
as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity
on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of
him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper.
“Look after him,” he said, “and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra
expense you may have.” Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to
the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
The Incarnational Nature of Literature
Everything about this passage makes it a piece of literature. We should notice first
that Jesus never gives an abstract or propositional definition of “neighbor.” In-
stead, he tells a story that embodies what it means to be a neighbor. This suggests
at once the most important thing about literature: its subject matter is human
experience, not abstract ideas. Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as
possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge
that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience. Jesus could have de-
fined neighbor abstractly, as a dictionary does, but he chose a literary approach to
the truth instead. This is comparable to an experience we probably have all had
when struggling with the assembly of a toy or appliance: when we have a good
picture, we may not even need the written instructions.
The Primacy of Imagination (Image-Making)
Because literature presents an experience instead of telling us about that expe-
rience, it constantly appeals to our imagination (the image-making and image-
perceiving capacity within us). Literature images forth some aspect of reality. Con-
sider all the sensory images and gestures we encounter in this parable: robbers
stripping and beating a victim on a road, specific people traveling down the road,
first-aid equipment consisting of such tangibles as oil and wine, and such phys-
ical things as a donkey and an inn and money. We visualize the Samaritan lifting
the victim onto his donkey and see the money exchange hands and listen to the
instructions at the inn.
The Genre of Story
The form of the parable is as literary as the content is. For one thing, it is a story
or narrative, and this is a distinctly literary genre (“type”). The story, moreover, is
told with an abundance of literary artistry. It follows the storytelling principle of
threefold repetition: a given event happens three times, with a crucial change
introduced the third time. The story begins with vivid plot conflict to seize the lis-
tener’s attention, and from the very start the story generates suspense about its
outcome. Jesus also makes skillful use of foils (contrasts that “set off” or heighten
the main point of the story): the neighborliness of the Samaritan stands out all the
more clearly by its contrast with the indifference of the priest and of the Levite.
Unity, Coherence, Emphasis
Well-constructed stories have unity, coherence, and emphasis. Judged by these
artistic criteria, this parable of Jesus is a small masterpiece. Nothing is extraneous
to the unifying theme of neighborly behavior from an unlikely source. The very
construction of the story makes the emphasis fall on the good Samaritan. One
critic describes it thus:
The aborted sequences with the priest and Levite provide a pattern which caus-
es the listener to anticipate the third traveler and build up tension. Since this
threefold pattern is so common in popular story telling, we also anticipate that
the third traveler will be the one who will actually help. Our attention is fo-
cused on the third traveler before he arrives, and this heightens the shock
when we discover that he neither fits the pattern of cultural expectation nor the
pattern of expectation created by the series of priest, Levite.³
Reader Involvement
Not only is the parable inherently literary; its effect on the reader is also literary.
The story does not primarily require our minds to grasp an idea but instead gets
us to respond with our imagination and emotions to a real-life experience. It puts
us on the scene and makes us participants in the action. It gets us involved with
characters about whose destiny we are made to care. Literature, in short, is
affective, not cool and detached. This, of course, made it such an effective teach-
ing medium for Jesus, whose parables often drew his listeners innocently into the
story and then turned the tables on them after it was too late to evade the issue at
hand.
SUMMARY
What makes the parable of the good Samaritan a work of literature? Everything
about it: its experiential approach to truth, its sensory concreteness, its narrative
genre, its carefully crafted construction, and its total involvement of the reader—
intellectually, emotionally, imaginatively.
Psalm 23 as a Literary Work
As Exhibit B, we consider the world’s greatest poem, Psalm 23 (RSV):
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;
he makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness [right paths]
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
for ever.
The Genre of Poetry
What indicates that this is literary writing? We can tell at a glance that this is po-
etry, another distinctly literary genre. The recurring unit is the poetic line, not the
sentence. Furthermore, nearly every line follows the same grammatical pattern
(God is identified as the actor, and then an action is ascribed to him), and many
of the sentences fall into a pattern of pairs in which the second repeats the
thought of the first in different words. In short, Psalm 23 is written in a verse form
known as parallelism. It possesses a memorable, aphoristic quality that ordinary
discourse lacks.
Unity and Shapeliness
There is equal artistry in the unity and shapeliness of the poem as a whole. The
poem begins by announcing the theme and the controlling metaphor (the sheep-
shepherd relationship). It then proceeds to a catalog of the shepherd’s acts on be-
half of his sheep, from the noontime resting in the shade to the activities
performed in the sheepfold at the end of the day. And the poem ends with a for-
wardpointing note of finality. Psalm 23 has a self-contained, carefully crafted qual-
ity that we associate with art.
Literary Concreteness
Turning from the form to the content, we again sense how literary this text is. We
see once more the literary impulse to be concrete instead of abstract. Psalm 23
takes God’s providence as its subject. But the psalmist does not use the word
providence and does not give us a theological definition of the concept. To drive
this point home, we might contrast the literary approach of Psalm 23 with the
theological definition of providence in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
God the Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all crea-
tures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most
wise and holy providence. . . .
The approach of Psalm 23 is the opposite. It turns the idea of God’s providence
into a metaphor in which God is pictured as a shepherd in the daily routine of car-
ing for his sheep. The literary approach of Psalm 23 is indirect: first we must pic-
ture what the shepherd does for his sheep, and then we must transfer that picture
to the human level. Instead of using abstract, theological terminology, Psalm 23
consistently keeps us in a world of concrete images: green pastures, water, path-
ways, rod and staff, table, oil, cup, and sheepfold (metaphorically called a house).
The Differentia of Literature
How does literature work? Psalm 23 again shows us. Literature is concrete and ex-
periential. It uses tangible images to convey the very quality of lived experience. It
appeals to our imagination (image-making capacity). It conveys more meanings
than ordinary expository language does—it would take several pages of expository
prose to paraphrase all the meanings Psalm 23 compresses into nineteen lines.
Psalm 23 is more concentrated, more consistently concrete, more obviously artis-
tic, more eloquent and beautiful, than ordinary prose discourse.
The parable of the good Samaritan and Psalm 23 are typical of the kind of lit-
erary writing we keep running into as we read through the Bible. From these two
examples I wish to branch out into a more systematic anatomy of the principles
that underlie a literary approach to the Bible.
LITERATURE: THE VOICE OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE
The Subject of Literature: Human Experience
It is a commonplace that the subject of literature is human experience—not ab-
stract ideas or propositions, but experience. The knowledge or truth that literature
gives us is an awareness of reality or truth as it is actually experienced.
Literature, in other words, shows human experience instead of telling about it. It
is incarnational. It enacts rather than states. Instead of giving us abstract propo-
sitions about virtue or vice, for example, literature presents stories of good or evil
characters in action. The tendency of literature is to embody human experience,
not to formulate ideas in intellectual propositions.
The Difference Between Literary and Expository Writing
We can profitably contrast the literary and the expository, or documentary, use of
language. Expository (“explanatory”) writing seeks to tell us, as objectively and
clearly as possible, facts and information about a subject. Literature, by contrast,
appeals to our imagination. Literature aims to recreate an experience or situation
in sufficient detail and concreteness to enable the reader to relive it.
The Bible contains an abundance of both expository and literary writing. One is
not inherently better or more effective than the other, and we obviously need both
types of writing to do justice to all sides of life and truth. The commandment “you
shall not kill” is expository in its approach to moral truth. The story of Cain and
Abel (Gen. 4:1–16) embodies the same truth in the distinctly literary form of a
story (a story that implies but nowhere states that it is sin to murder someone).
When asked to define “neighbor,” Jesus avoided expository discourse and instead
told a parable.
Because literature aims to recreate a whole experience, there is a certain irre-
ducible quality to it. We may be able to deduce ideas from a story or a poem, but
those propositions are never an adequate substitute for the embodied vision that
the literary work itself conveys. The whole story or the whole poem is the meaning
because the truth that literature communicates is a living through of an expe-
rience. If the direct statement of an idea conveyed all that a story or poem does,
the story or poem would be superfluous. But the stories and poems of the Bible
are emphatically not superfluous.
The Need to Respect the Bible’s Experiential Quality
What does it mean to approach the Bible as literature? It means first of all to be
sensitive to the experiential side of the Bible. It means to resist the tendency to
turn every biblical passage into a theological proposition, as though this is what
the passage exists for. The one thing that the Bible is not, may I repeat, is a theo-
logical outline with proof texts.
THE CONCRETENESS OF LITERATURE
Concreteness in Biblical Poetry
The chief means by which literature communicates the very quality of human
experience is concreteness. In literature we constantly encounter the sights and
sounds and vividness of real life. This is most easily seen in the poetry of the
Bible. For the biblical poets, nothing remains wholly abstract. Longing for God be-
comes as tangible as thirst “in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps.
63:1). Slander is pictured as weapon-toting ambushers “who sharpen their
tongues like swords/and aim their words like deadly arrows” (Ps. 64:3). Pride be-
comes a necklace and violence a garment (Ps. 73:6).
The Concreteness of Biblical Stories
The impulse toward concreteness is no less prominent in the stories of the Bible.
Even to express truth in the form of people doing things in specific settings is to
choose a concrete medium rather than the abstract form of expository writing. It is
easy to deduce a dozen ideas from the Bible’s story of origins (Gen. 1–3) and to
state these ideas as propositions, but the account itself almost totally avoids stat-
ing the truth about God and creation abstractly. It embodies everything in the con-
crete form of characters performing actions and saying things that we overhear.
Biblical stories exist on a continuum from a bare outline of what happened to a
full account of how it happened. The more fully and concretely the story is told,
the more literary we should consider it to be, and the stories of the Bible usually
lean in the direction of literary concreteness. Consider a random passage from the
Book of Acts (3:1–5):
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—
at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to
the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those
going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he
asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter
said, “Look at us!” So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get some-
thing from them. . . .
A television camera could not have captured the event more vividly than this. If
the writer’s purpose were to state only what happened, there is a lot of excess bag-
gage in the passage. But given the literary criterion of concreteness and vividness,
the emphasis on how it happened is exactly what we should expect.
The Prominence of Dialogue in the Bible
We might also note in passing that one of the most distinctive traits of biblical
writing, especially biblical stories, is the prevalence of direct speech and dialogue.
Biblical storytellers are always busy quoting what characters said and giving us
snatches of dialogue instead of indirect summaries of conversations. This, too, is
part of the Bible’s literary vividness. What could be more actual and immediate
than the very words a character used?
Concreteness in New Testament Epistles
The impulse toward concrete vividness is not limited to the poetry and stories of
the Bible. We find it in the Epistles, for example, mingled with the predominantly
theological mode:
Endure hardship with us as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. ... An athlete . . .
does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules.
The hard-working farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops (2
Tim. 2:3, 5–6).
Even the letter as a form is more experiential and literary, less systematic and
expository, than an essay or sermon.
SUMMARY
At the level of content, biblical literature is characterized by experiential concrete-
ness. It is filled with the settings and sensations and actions of everyday life. It
incarnates ideas in the form of poetic images, stories of characters in action, and
living situations in which readers can imaginatively participate. It appeals to the
understanding through the imagination.
The Need to Be Imaginative Readers
What is the practical result of this concreteness? It means that we should read the
Bible with our imaginations (image-making capacity) as well as with our reason. If
we are to read the Bible as literature, we must be active in recreating the experi-
ences and sensations and events it portrays. We must be sensitive to the physical
and experiential qualities of a passage and avoid reducing every passage in the
Bible to a set of abstract themes. If we have “antennae” only for theological con-
cepts or historical facts, we will miss much of what the Bible communicates and
will distort the kind of book it is.
The Importance of Images
The Bible appeals to our imagination and emotions as well as to our reason and
intellect. It conveys more than abstract ideas because its aim is to express the
whole of reality. The Bible recognizes that a person’s world view consists of im-
ages and symbols as well as ideas and propositions. A noted theologian has said
that
we are far more image-making and image-using creatures than we usually
think ourselves to be and . . . are guided and formed by images in our minds. .
. . Man . . . is a being who grasps and shapes reality . . . with the aid of great
images, metaphors, and analogies.⁴
There is no better illustration of this than the Bible, an authoritative religious book
that conveys the truth about reality by means of stories and characters and images
and lifelike situations far oftener than by theological abstraction.
Truthfulness to Life and Reality
All of this affects how we should read the Bible. Reading the Bible as literature in-
cludes reading it for its ideas and implied assertions and themes, but it includes
more than this. Literature conveys a sense of life—a sense of how the writer
thinks and feels about what really exists, what is right and wrong, what is valuable
and worthless. Literature can be true to reality and human experience as well as
being the embodiment of a true proposition. Literature is true whenever we can
say about its portrayal of life, “This is the way life is.”
Reading the Bible to Absorb a Sense of Life
Reading biblical literature does not have to result in the intellectual grasp of an
idea. We also read it to absorb or experience a sense of the way things truly are. In
the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus did not have to add a definition of
“neighbor”; the meaning of the parable is complete if we recognize and experience
the neighborly behavior of the Samaritan. This has big implications for what might
be called the devotional reading of the Bible. The stories and poems of the Bible
achieve their devotional purpose whenever they reinforce a reader’s general sense
of the reality of God, or produce an awareness of what is moral and immoral, or
influence a person’s estimate of what is valuable and worthless. We are affected
by more than ideas when we read literature, though, of course, ideas are part of
the total experience. We read literature not primarily to acquire information but to
contemplate experience and reality as a way of understanding them better. One of
the rewards of reading literature, including the Bible, is that our own experiences
and beliefs are given shape and expression.
Traditional approaches to the Bible lean heavily toward the conceptual and
doctrinal. We have erroneously operated on the premise that a person’s world
view consists solely of abstract ideas—but it also includes stories and images. A
literary approach to the Bible can go a long way toward respecting the other half of
a person’s world view—and the other side of the brain, to use contemporary psy-
chological theory. The Bible is more than a book into which we reach for proof
texts. What would happen if, instead of tracing ideas through the Bible, we traced
a single image, such as light or food or garment or rock? We would have covered
an amazing range of biblical doctrine, in a manner completely in keeping with the
kind of book the Bible is.
LITERATURE REQUIRES INTERPRETATION
The Need to Interpret
From what I have already said it is easy to see why literature requires more of a
reader than straightforward expository writing. Literature always calls for interpre-
tation. It expresses its meanings by a certain indirection. The statement that “our
neighbor is anyone whom we encounter in need of our help” is direct and requires
no interpretation. By comparison, Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan requires a
reader to determine what the details in the story add up to.
Interpreting Stories
The more concrete or complex a story is, the more open it becomes to interpre-
tation. The story of David in the Old Testament illustrates this. What does the
story of David communicate about God, people, and society? There is, of course,
no single answer, nor is it always easy to determine exactly what truth is commu-
nicated by this or that episode in the story. It is no wonder that the story of David
has elicited so many interpretations.⁵
Interpreting Poetry
Biblical poetry also requires interpretation on the part of the reader. Consider, for
example, the most important of all figures of speech: metaphor and simile. These
figures of speech compare one thing to another: “He is like a tree planted by
streams of water” (Ps. 1:3). Exactly how is the godly person like a tree? How many
of the suggested points of comparison are valid? These are questions of interpre-
tation that metaphor and simile always place before a reader.
Some Advantages of the Literary Approach
If the need to interpret literature and the unavoidable differences in interpretation
from one reader to another strike us as a risk, we should also note the advantages
of literature as a medium. They include memorability, ability to capture a reader’s
attention, affective power, and ability to do justice to the complexity and multi-
plicity of human life as we actually experience it.
THE ARTISTRY OF LITERATURE
Literature is an interpretive presentation of human experience. But it is more
than that. It is also an art form, characterized by beauty, craftsmanship, and tech-
nique. Not merely what is said, but the how of a piece of writing is always impor-
tant in literature.
The Elements of Artistic Form
The elements of artistic form that all types of literature (in fact, all art forms) share
include pattern or design, theme or central focus, organic unity (also called unity
in variety, or theme and variation), coherence, balance, contrast, symmetry, repe-
tition or recurrence, variation, and unified progression. In stories these ingre-
dients will take one form, in poems another, as subsequent chapters in this book
will show. But whatever the genre (literary type), the sheer abundance of literary
technique and artistry that we find in many parts of the Bible make it a literary
masterpiece that we can enjoy for its beauty as well read for its truth. What the
writer of Ecclesiastes said about his own theory of composition applies equally to
most biblical writers: he labored, he tells us, to arrange his material “with great
care,” and to “find pleasing words” or “words of delight” (Eccl. 12:9–10, RSV).
The Purposes of Artistry
What functions are served by this type of artistry? And why is it important to be
aware of this dimension of the Bible? Artistic form serves the purpose of inten-
sifying the impact of what is said, but also the purposes of pleasure, delight, and
enjoyment. Artistry satisfies the human urge for beauty and craftsmanship. If a
person set out to spend some time every day reading in the so-called sacred
books of the world, I can predict which one most people would grow least tired of
reading. Literary analysis is capable of showing why the Bible is an interesting
book rather than a dull book to read. A famous detractor of biblical religion called
the Bible “unquestionably the most beautiful book in the world.”⁶
Reading with Artistic Sensitivity
What does the artistry of the Bible require of the reader? We need to be prepared
to identify and enjoy the elements of literary form we find. A literary approach is
sensitive to the artistic beauty of the Bible. It sees value in the craftsmanship of
biblical writers. It relishes the stories and poems of the Bible as products of verbal
and imaginative skill. That the Bible possesses such artistry is indisputable; the
elements of artistic form and beauty I have mentioned are manifestly there. The
only question is whether as readers we are prepared to recognize and enjoy the
artistry. The artistic excellence of the Bible is not extraneous to its total effect. It is
one of the glories of the Bible.
LITERARY GENRES
Literary and Expository Genres
The commonest way of defining literature is by its genres, or literary types.
Through the centuries, people have agreed that certain genres (such as story, po-
etry, and drama) are literary in nature. Other genres, such as historical chronicles,
theological treatises, and genealogies, are expository (informational) in nature.
Still others fall into one or the other category, depending on how the writer han-
dles them. Letters, sermons, and orations, for example, can move in the direction
of literature if they display the elements of literature discussed in this chapter.
The Importance of Genres
Each literary genre has its distinctive features. Each has its own “rules” or proce-
dures. This, in turn, affects how we read and interpret a work of literature. As read-
ers we need to come to a given text with the right expectations. If we do, we will
see more than we otherwise would, and we will avoid misreadings. If we know that
stories are built around a central conflict leading to final resolution, we are in a
position to see something that the writer has built into the story. Literary genre is
nothing less than a “norm or expectation to guide the reader in his encounter with
the text.”⁷ An awareness of genre will program our reading of a work, giving it a
familiar shape and arranging the details into an identifiable pattern.
Knowing how a given genre works can spare us from misinterpretations. For
example, exaggeration in a story that purports to be factual history is a form of un-
truth, while that same type of exaggeration in lyric poetry is called hyperbole and is
a standard way of expressing emotional truth. The reliability of documentary his-
tory depends partly on the writer’s inclusion of all the relevant historical material,
but as interpreters we realize that literary narrative is much more selective and
interpretive, incorporating material only to highlight the specific perspective a
storyteller wishes to give to a character or event.
How important is the notion of genre to literature and the Bible? Two biblical
scholars answer that question at the beginning of a book on biblical interpre-
tation:
. . . the basic concern of this book is with the understanding of the different
types of literature (the genres) that make up the Bible. Although we do speak to
other issues, this generic approach has controlled all that has been done.⁸
A literary approach to the Bible agrees with this emphasis on literary genres,
though it does not find the list of genres discussed by biblical scholars to be
wholly adequate, nor is it totally satisfied with the scholars’ descriptions of literary
genres.
The Literary Genres of the Bible
The Bible is a mixture of genres, some literary, some expository, some mixed. The
major literary genres are narrative or story, poetry (especially lyric poetry), proverb,
and visionary writing (including prophecy and apocalypse). Historical writing in
the Bible frequently moves in the direction of literary narrative by virtue of its ex-
periential concreteness or the principles of pattern and design that permeate such
writing. The epistles of the New Testament frequently become literary because
their style is either poetic or artistic or both, and biblical satire usually employs a
literary vehicle to communicate its attacks.
The Bible also has its share of genres that are either unique or decidedly hy-
brid, but these are sufficiently similar to familiar literary genres to yield their
meanings if approached with literary tools. Biblical prophecy, for example, re-
quires an ability to interpret poetry and satire. Biblical apocalypse is not a typical
story, nor is it ordinary poetry, yet narrative and poetry are exactly the right cate-
gories with which to approach the Book of Revelation.
LITERATURE AS A SPECIAL USE OF LANGUAGE
Literary Language
Literature uses special resources of language in a way that people through the
centuries have agreed to call literary. This quality cuts across literary genres and,
in fact, appears in texts that we would not consider to be primarily literary.
Literature exploits, for example, such devices of language as metaphor, simile,
allusion, pun, paradox, and irony. Of course, these resources of language are the
very essence of poetry, but the important thing about the Bible is that they appear
everywhere, not just in the poetry. This is why, incidentally, a literary approach is
necessary throughout the Bible and not just in the predominantly literary parts.
Literary Language in Biblical Stories
The story of Cain’s murder of Abel (Gen. 4:1–16) illustrates how the stories of the
Bible can use figurative language that we recognize as distinctly literary. When
Cain becomes angry at his brother, God warns him that “sin is crouching at your
door” (v. 7). This statement is an example of personification in which an abstract
moral quality is figuratively treated as a person or animal. Biblical scholars dis-
agree on whether sin is pictured here as “couching” or “crouching” at the door,
but in either case we have to interpret the statement figuratively: sin is either a
monster waiting to pounce on Cain if he does not get control of his anger, or it is
a monster that, through long acquaintance, has become a familiar part of the
household.
Later in the same story God tells Cain, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me
from the ground. . .which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from
your hand” (vv. 10–11). This, too, is figurative and an obvious deviation from nor-
mal language. It shows that even in nonpoetic parts of the Bible the writers use lit-
erary and poetic resources of language. As readers we need to identify and inter-
pret figurative language throughout the Bible. Indeed, there is no book of the Bible
that is not partly literary.
Literary Language in Epistles
This is true even of the most explicitly theological parts of the New Testament
Epistles. Consider the following specimen:
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with
God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of
the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple
in the Lord (Eph. 2:19–21).
The passage is thoroughly theological, but the language is poetic. Almost every-
thing is expressed through metaphors: an unbeliever is an exile, a believer is a cit-
izen and family member, Christians are a church building, and so on. It is hard to
find a page in the Bible that does not make at least some use of the resources of
language that are distinctly literary.
Rhetorical Patterns in the Bible
Not only individual words and images but also larger rhetorical patterns are a
pervasive literary presence in the Bible. Examples include parallelism (two or more
consecutive clauses arranged in similar grammatical form), rhetorical questions,
question-and-answer constructions, imaginary dialogues, the aphoristic concise-
ness of a proverb, and any highly patterned arrangement of clauses or phrases
(such as the intricate system of threes in 1 Cor. 13). A biblical scholar has analyzed
the presence of “tensive language,” or “forceful and imaginative language,” in the
New Testament; he shows how such language uses rhetorical devices to break
through the clichés of ordinary language and to reveal truth with power.⁹ Such lit-
erary resources pervade the entire Bible, even the sections that are not predom-
inantly literary.
MEANING THROUGH FORM
The Primacy of Form in the Bible
A literary approach to the Bible is preoccupied with literary form, and that for a
very good reason. In any written discourse, meaning is communicated through
form. The concept of “form” should be construed very broadly in this context: it
includes anything that touches upon how a writer has expressed his content.
Everything that gets communicated does so through form, beginning with lan-
guage itself.
Literature Uses Unique Forms to Communicate Meaning
While this is true for all forms of writing, it is especially crucial for literature. Liter-
ature has its own forms and techniques, and these tend to be more complex and
subtle and indirect than those of ordinary discourse. Stories, for example,
communicate their meaning through character, setting, and action. The result is
that before we can understand what a story says we must first interact with the
form, that is, the characters, settings, and events. Poetry conveys its meanings
through figurative language and concrete images. It is therefore impossible to
determine what a poem says without first encountering the form (metaphor, sim-
ile, image, etc.).
Form and Content Are Inseparable
The literary critic’s preoccupation with the how of biblical writing is not frivolous.
It is evidence of an artistic delight in verbal beauty and craftsmanship, but it is
also part of an attempt to understand what the Bible says. In a literary text it is
impossible to separate what is said from how it is said, content from form.
LOOKING FOR LITERARY WHOLES
The Importance of Unity
The most basic of all artistic principles is unity. The literary approach to the Bible
accordingly looks for literary patterns and wholeness of effect. Richard G. Moul-
ton, pioneer of the literary approach to the Bible, wrote, “No principle of literary
study is more important than that of grasping clearly a literary work as a single
whole.”¹⁰ This literary preoccupation with the overall unity and pattern of biblical
works stands in contrast to traditional approaches. Austin Farrar, a biblical schol-
ar with excellent literary intuitions, criticizes his own discipline on precisely this
point:
Form-criticism [as practiced by biblical scholars] is rather misleadingly so
called, because the name suggests an attempt to appreciate the form of a com-
plete literary unit, say St Mark’s Gospel. Whereas what form-criticism studies
is the form of the small constituent parts of the Gospels; anecdotal para-
graphs, for example, or even such small details as apparently self-contained
gnomic sentences. . . . In the literary realm, . . . the pattern of the whole comes
first.¹¹
Traditional and Literary Approaches Contrasted
The tendency of biblical scholars to divide a biblical text into pieces has taken two
forms. One is the penchant of liberal scholars for undertaking textual “excava-
tions” in an attempt to determine the various strata in the development of a text
from its original form to its final written form. The other is the practice of conser-
vative scholars to organize the Bible into a theological outline and then treat var-
ious verses or passages as proof texts. Both procedures end up dividing a text
into fragments, as does the verse-by-verse commentary that is such a staple of
biblical scholarship. The literary approach to the Bible, by contrast, accepts the
biblical text in its final form as the focus of study. It assumes unity in a text. The
resultant ability to see the overall pattern of a story or poem is one of the greatest
gifts that a literary approach confers.
SUMMARY
The Bible demands a literary approach because its writing is literary in nature. The
Bible is an experiential book that conveys the concrete reality of human life. It is
filled with evidences of literary artistry and beauty, much of it in the form of lit-
erary genres. It also makes continuous use of resources of language that we can
regard as literary. A literary approach pays close attention to all of these elements
of literary form, because it is through them that the Bible communicates its
message.
The literary approach to the Bible is becoming increasingly popular among
both biblical and literary scholars. Traditional approaches to the Bible seem to
have reached something of an impasse.¹²
Given the literary nature of the Bible, it is not surprising that biblical scholars are
turning to the methods of literary criticism as a way of understanding and dis-
cussing the Bible. “I would hope,” writes one of them, “that the new approaches
will remain as receptive to literary analysis as they are at the present time. . . . It
may well be—and I regard this as highly desirable—that biblical literary criticism
will be deparochialized and reintegrated with non-religious literary criticism in the
future.”¹³ “Literary criticism is not. . . just the latest faddish approach,” writes an-
other; “it represents a significant shift in perspective. . . .”¹⁴ My purpose in the
pages that follow is to make the methods of literary criticism more accessible to
anyone who reads and studies the Bible.
Further Reading
In keeping with the focus of the opening chapter, the sources that I list here
deal in a theoretical way with what it means to approach the Bible as literature. I
must sound a note of warning in regard to sources that are sometimes included in
lists such as this. Not everything that claims to be a literary approach to the Bible
actually is; in fact, most of what has been written to date has not been a genuinely
literary approach.
An immense quantity of literary criticism of the Bible has been collected in
companion volumes to be published as part of Frederick Ungar’s Library of Lit-
erary Criticism series; the editors are Alex Preminger and Edward L. Greenstein for
the Old Testament and Leland Ryken for the New Testament. The sources listed in
another reference book, J. H. Gottcenťs The Bible as Literature: A Selective Bibli-
ography (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), are a mixed group, more indicative of the
methods of biblical scholarship than of literary criticism.
Examples of biblical scholars whose theory of biblical analysis is essentially lit-
erary include William A. Beardslee, Literary Criticism of the New Testament (Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1970); Amos N. Wilder, Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of
the Gospel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Jesus’ Parables and the
War of Myths: Essays on Imagination in the Scripture, ed. James Breech (Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1982); Robert C. Tannehill, The Sword of His Mouth: Forceful and
Imaginative Language in Synoptic Sayings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); James A.
Fischer, How to Read the Bible (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1981) , pp. 30–45;
J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel, vol. 1 (Assen, The
Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1981), especially pp. 1–18; Norman R. Petersen, “Lit-
erary Criticism in Biblical Studies,” in Orientation by Disorientation, ed. Richard A.
Spencer (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1980), pp. 25–50.
Literary scholars who have applied their methods to the Bible include Roland
M. Frye, “A Literary Perspective for the Criticism of the Gospels,” in Jesus and
Man’s Hope, //, ed. Donald G. Miller and Dikran Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh: Pitts-
burgh Theological Seminary, 1971), pp. 193–221; and also “The Synoptic Problems
and Analogies in Other Literatures,” in The Relationships among the Gospels: An
Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. William O. Walker, Jr. (San Antonio: Trinity
University Press, 1978), pp. 261–302; Leland Ryken, The Literature of the Bible
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974); selected contributors to Literary Interpretations
of Biblical Narratives, vols 1, 2, ed. Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis (Nashville: Abingdon,
1974 and 1982); Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books,
1981); Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Har-
court Brace Jovanovich, 1982) .
Most promising of all is the model represented by a literary critic and a biblical
scholar who combined their respective areas of expertise: David Rhoads and Don-
ald Michie, Mark as Story (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982).
¹For selected examples, see the sources listed in the “Further Reading” section
at the end of this chapter.
²Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), 3.
³Robert C. Tannehill, “Critical Discussion,” Semeia 2 (1974): 115.
⁴H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self (New York: Harper and Row, 1963),
151–52, 161.
⁵For an overview, see The David Myth in Western Literature, ed. Raymond-Jean
Frontain and Jan Wojcik (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1980).
⁶H. L. Mencken, Treatise on the Gods, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1946), 286.
⁷Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975),
136.
⁸Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 11.
⁹Robert C. Tannehill, The Sword of His Mouth: Forceful and Imaginative Lan-
guage in Synoptic Sayings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975).
¹⁰The Modern Reader’s Bible (New York: Macmillan, 1895), 1719.
¹¹A Study in St Mark (London: Dacre, 1951), 21–22.
¹²It is hard to pick up a scholarly religious journal these days without catching
hints of a discipline in transition. For a concentrated initiation into the current
state of the discipline, the best source is the essays collected in Orientation by Dis-
orientation: Studies in Literary Criticism and Biblical Literary Criticism, ed. Richard A.
Spencer (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1980).
¹³William G. Doty, Letters in Primitive Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973),
79, 81.
¹⁴Robert M. Fowler, “Using Literary Criticism on the Gospels,” Christian Cen-
tury, 26 May 1982, 627.
