How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It Read online

  ZONDERVAN

  How to Read the Bible as Literature

  Copyright © 1984 by Zondervan

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  ePub Edition © October 2016: ISBN 978-0-3105-3633-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ryken, Leland.

  How to read the Bible as literature.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 0-310-39021-4

  1. Bible as literature. 2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. . I. Title.

  BS535.A9 R89 1984

  220.6’6

  84-19667

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Edited by: Ed van der Maas

  Designed by: Louise Bauer

  15 16 17 18 19 20 /DCI/ 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40

  For my parents

  Contents

  Preface

  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

  Appendix: The Allegorical Nature of the Parables

  Index of Persons

  Index of Subjects

  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 literary 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 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 finished 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-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 ma
ke 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 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 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 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 (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 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 controlling 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 forwardpointing 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 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 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 shepherd 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).