Classroom Snippets: Biblical Genres and Interpretation

For the last part of the Inductive Bible Studies class this semester, we have gone through the final chapters of Duvall and Hays, which deal with some of the particulars of the various genres in the Bible. Since IWU's curriculum has no place where they are made aware of higher critical issues in each of these genres, I have also at least mentioned to them broader issues in the history of interpretation relating to these parts of the Bible.

Here is the final exam review of these chapters and issues:
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How Genre Can Impact Interpretation

Letters
· Ancient letters had a format, knowing it can impact interpretation.
· For example, thanksgiving sections were a standard feature—the fact that Paul says similar things at this point of his letters does not imply insincerity.
· Expansions of prescripts were not typical. So Paul’s expansions imply meaning.
· Paul’s “grace and peace” embodies his theology—it is half Jewish (peace) and half Gentile (grace).
· Paul’s thanksgiving sections anticipate things he will say later in the letter.
· Non-evangelicals would consider several NT letters to be pseudonymous, that is, written under the name of, say, Paul or Peter although not actually by Paul or Peter. In this scenario, several decades after the deaths of Paul and Peter someone would have written what they believed God would have said to their generation through these individuals if they were still alive. The letters about which such discussions are held in scholarly circles include Ephesians (maj.), Colossians (min.), 2 Thessalonians (min.), 1-2 Timothy (maj.), Titus (maj.), James (50), 1 Peter (50), 2 Peter (maj.), Jude (50).

Biography
· Matthew, Mark, and John probably come closest to ancient biography.
· Ancient biographies focused on the character, the focal characteristics of a person (quote from Plutarch).
· Character was not thought to develop in some Freudian way but to be inherent in a person from birth. Thus the way a person was born often said something about who they were as an adult.
· Jesus seems to have used simile, metaphor, irony, and hyperbole extensively, not to mention parable, of course.
· Source criticism is the branch of biblical studies that asks what sources might stand behind a book or series of books.
· The majority of scholars currently believe that Mark was a source behind Matthew and Luke, and that Matthew and Luke also drew on another source, called “Q” for short.
· Redaction criticism asks how each individual gospel (in this case) has edited its sources in keeping with its own particular themes.
· The synoptic gospels do not seem to want to be read as minutely harmonizable. To harmonize them on the level of detail often requires the creation of a story that is so different from the original four gospels that the essential form of any of the original stories is lost.
· This is not error since the genre seems to have allowed for creativity in presentation.

History
· Luke-Acts seems to come closest to the ancient genre of history.
· Thucydides the Greek historian writes that he sometimes composed speeches when he could not remember exactly what had been said. This corroborates that the sense of precision for such writing was not exactly the same as ours and opens the possibility that the speeches of Acts might not be exactly what was said on those occasions. Yet this would not constitute an error.

Apocalypse
· The NT book of Revelation partakes of several genres: it is a letter to seven churches, a prophetic writing, and an apocalypse.
· There are four different approaches to Revelation as prophecy: the preterist (about John’s time), the futurist (still to come yet), the historicist (events fulfilled throughout history), and the idealist (symbolic in a more general, all time kind of way).
· An apocalypse of Revelation’s type involved a visit to an important earthly figure by a heavenly one in which the earthly person sees a “revelation” of what is going on behind the scenes in the heavenly realm and what is soon to happen on earth (this pushes Revelation in the preterist direction).
· This can imply things for interpretation as well. So the fact that Jesus does not tell John to get up and not worship him would have been noticeable and mean that Jesus is worthy of worship. We also have to wonder if some of the angelic appearance is more following the form of the genre rather than a literal blow by blow.

Narratives
· Narratives can be analyzed by looking for key events, characters, and settings. This is true of any kind of narrative, whether historical or fictional.
· Narratives have an “evaluative point of view,” which is the point of view that allows you to evaluate the other points of view of other characters. In biblical stories, God’s point of view or that of Jesus is the evaluative point of view.
· So in Job, God’s perspective at the end allows us to put in proper perspective the points of views expressed of Job and his comforters. Job’s perspective is mostly, though not completely correct, and that of his comforters is quite wrong.
· Many scholars believe that the Pentateuch was also based on source material as well. The theory in its late 1800’s version was called JEDP.

Law
· From a standpoint of our appropriation today, we can divide the legal material of the OT into moral, ceremonial, and civil material, although neither the OT nor NT used such distinctions.
· The civil material, which was a matter of Israel’s governance is variously applied. No one applies the specific punishments today, but some streams of Christian thinking would replace the general spirit of these laws with the Sermon on the Mount (Yoder), while others would set up similar theocratic structures in society if they could (e.g., Calvin).
· Hebrews implies that the sacrificial codes are no longer valid. Paul dismisses the necessity of many other “ceremonial” codes for at least Gentiles. What is left is most of the Ten Commandments, the love command, and the sexual prohibitions of Leviticus 18.
· Several OT books are a mixture of legal and narrative material (e.g., Numbers).

Prophets (Former)
· The Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) are sometimes called the Deuteronomistic history, not least because they seem to embody the theology of the book of Deuteronomy, which was arguably that to which the phrase “the Book of the Law” referred in these books.

Prophets (Latter)
· We should not think of prophetic collections as written down in the order in which the prophecies came. Nor is it necessarily the case that the prophets themselves put their prophecies in their current form. We know, for example, in the case of Jeremiah that Baruch edited some of his material. Several of these prophets prophesied over long periods of time.
· Many scholars believe that the prophetic traditions of some authors continued long after their deaths. So for example many believe that Isaiah reflects continued prophecies both from the time of the exile (chaps. 40-54) and after (55-66).
· Prophecy was not mainly directed at the distant future but at the present. Common topics included idolatry, social injustice, particularly while emphasizing cultic practices at the same time. In response Israel was told to repent or be judged. If in the process of judgment, restoration was promised on repentance.
· Some prophecies push us toward having a sense of a near and a far fulfillment. Many of the prophecies the NT takes to be about its own time (far) were also about the prophet’s own day (near). The prediction of the virgin birth is a good example.

Wisdom/Poetry
· Hebrew poetry functioned by way of parallelism rather than auditory rhyme: synonymous, antithetical, and synthetic. Hays and Duvall add illustrative and formal.
· Some figures of speech mentioned by Hays and Duvall include simile, metaphor, hyperbole, anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, metonymy, synecdoche, apostrophe, etc.