Should we interpret every literature type in the Bible (such as proverbs versus teachings) the same way?

For example, when Solomon wrote, "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it" (Prov 22:6), can we take that as a guarantee that godly parenting will always produce godly children? I could name 4-5 couples who did an outstanding job with their children but in each case, one of the children turned into a wild oat. In their book, Cracking Old Testament Codes, Sandy and Giese tackle the center of this issue: Scripture literary types.

Why this topic effects your interpretation of Scripture...

To modernize it, if I tell my eight year old daughter, "Don't play on the freeway or you'll get hit by a semi," does that mean that no matter what, if she plays on the street a semi will run into her? No. It's a general truth. A principle that holds true normally, but not always in every case.

But when Paul writes, "[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15), we can be sure that this is always true no matter what. What made the difference? Genre. Literature type. Genre is the French word for "kind," and just as you wouldn't run for a bomb shelter after reading "Nuclear Attack!" in the comics section of the newspaper, so when Jesus compares Himself to a mother hen (Matt 23:37), we don't start believing that we were saved by a chicken.

Sandy and Giese bring together an army of sixteen theologians and scholars to pen a thorough and convincing volume defending, explaining, and applying the art of interpreting the literary genres of the Old Testament. Except for three, every contributor comes from a different seminary, church, college, or publisher, bringing a wide array of expertise to this significant subject.

Jasper sprinted through the courtyard and dove into the well. If you read this statement in the Daily News it might be a tragic story about a depressed teenager. If you read it in a comic, it might be the hero’s escape from an alien robot. If you read it on a billboard, it could be an advertisement for the convenience of Silver Springs Water delivering affordable water bottles to your doorstep (no more jumping down wells of financial destruction when you’re thirsty!). The same statement means three completely different things when placed in a different type of literature.

In the same way, the modern day reader must read the Bible with sensitivity to its genre, for genre type influences how he will interpret the text. The back cover of the book provides an excellent example:

Consider this example from Scripture: “He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters.” Could this be Jonah’s account of his deliverance from the sea? Or, is it Peter’s description of his rescue by Jesus when he tried to walk on water?

If you know that this verse comes from 2 Samuel 22, you may recognize it as part of a psalm by David. By knowing the genre of the text—poetry—you understand that David is not describing real drowning but is using a striking illustration to communicate profound gratitude for God’s protection in time of deep crisis.

In Giese’s own words, “This book is about context,” but not close context (immediate) or far context (canonical), but the context of literary form (see 5-6). This book is not like any before it, for it is the first “to be devoted specifically to the literary forms of the Old Testament, with the purpose of providing clear principles of interpretation for Bible readers and for teachers and preachers” (3). In the editors’ words, it was written to “help Christians understand their Bibles better, in particular the Old Testament” (2). The closest to its kind is Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart’s 2nd edition of How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993).

Summary of the book's content

Sandy and Giese set up the topic with the engaging example of a newspaper that contains all sorts of genres, each genre influencing how the reader interprets the text. Likewise, Old Testament Scripture is made up of a plethora of genres, some of which the believer today is very unfamiliar with. After Ronald L. Giese, Jr. explains what literary form is and lists its various types in chapter one, Branson L. Woodard, Jr. and Michael E. Travers distinguish genre criticism from other critical theories and explain the advantages and limitations of genre analysis and discuss its relationship to hermeneutics. In short, they show that once a reader identifies a genre it influences how he interprets the text. In the third chapter, John S. Feinberg tackles the relationships of genre to inspiration, asserting that God deliberately spoke through genre. In chapters four through thirteen, contributors address each specific genre per chapter by describing the genre, providing guidelines for interpreting that genre, and then studying a sample passage to show how identifying the proper genre guides interpretation. In the final chapter, Walter B. Russel III turns his pen to preachers and teachers, and answers two questions: “Why should preachers and teachers apply the genres of the Old Testament in their ministry? And if they should, How should preachers and teachers apply the genres of the Old Testament in their ministry?” (281).

Strength of the book

The strength of this book is its clarion call to recognize that the Old Testament books were written in literary types (genres) just as all sorts of literature we read today come to us through literary types. As Feinberg asserts in chapter three, it’s impossible to communicate anything outside of a literary type (52). Because of this diversity, it’s important that every reader of the Old Testament be able to recognize the genre so that he can interpret it accurately.

Weaknesses of the book

The weaknesses of this book are three. First, it is not very practical. The editors write, “Though this book is written by scholars, it is not written for scholars” (2). I would contend that the scholars still write like scholars and the book would require an unusual amount of mental energy and hermeneutical expertise for a typical Christian to read it through without a drifting mind, and even more mental energy for the Christian to boil it down into practical steps. For example, in the sixth chapter entitled “Law,” Richard E. Averbeck has a section entitled, “How Old Testament Law Applies to Christians” (123-125). Naturally, the reader expects some helpful insights and explanations to show how he can apply the Law. But instead of answering his own question, Averbeck begins by informing his reader that with this topic “the problems are insurmountable” (123). Then he makes the problem even bigger by writing off the popular categorizing of the Law into moral timeless laws versus civil ceremonial laws. He then tells the reader how he shouldn’t respond: bringing the whole Old Testament law wholesale into the Christian life or just ignoring it altogether.

At this point the reader is itching (and aching) for an answer since, so far Averbeck has only talked about the issue and all the challenges that come with it. Averbeck finally provides a solution: “…yet the law continues to demonstrate God’s expectation, though Christians live under the new covenant and have a different relationship to the Mosaic law “ (124). Averbeck uses Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as the connection between the old and new covenants. In that sermon Jesus expounded on the law, thus Christians today should obey it from their hearts. In spite of the few examples Averbeck provides in the remaining paragraph and a half, I suspect that this generalization about obeying the law is more confusing than helpful for the regular Christian today.

The irony of this book is that each chapter addressing a particular genre (chapters 4-13) includes a “Guidelines for Interpretation” section that apparently gives practical steps for interpreting a passage in that genre. But even a cursory look at the steps reveals that most of them are not readily understandable or very practical, but assume that the reader already possesses a wealth of Old Testament knowledge and exegetical savvy by which he can just pick up the steps and run with them. Taking one for example should suffice. For the second practical guideline in chapter seven, “Oracles of Salvation,” William A. VanGemeren writes, “Relate the assurances of promises and blessing to God’s previous commitments made with creation, Abraham, Moses, and David” (147). Following this instruction could be a six week study alone! But this is just the second guideline. VanGemeren suggest seven steps and the last one could be a dissertation subject all by itself! Is a serious student of the Word to be expected to apply all these guidelines as well as the steps of exegeting the text itself? That’s an incredible load that even full time pastors will be hard pressed to find time to apply.

Second, I believe this book gives genre more priority than it deserves. Defining context at three levels, immediate (word and sentence), middle (genre of the passage and the book), and distant (the whole Bible), the authors assert that the middle context—that is, the genre—is the most important context because, “Meaning does not come from the bottom up, but from the top down” (287-288). Just like an egg is just one ingredient of many ingredients that create a cake, so a single text is one of many others that make up a genre, and “meaning is shaped most significantly at the genre level where one decides to use an egg to create a cake, and not, for instance, an omelet” (287). I get the illustration but disagree with the conclusion. Although the genre level does influence interpretation, the cake would not be a cake were it not for each individual ingredient such as the egg! Nor would a genre be a genre were it not for the individual words and paragraphs that it’s made of. Identifying a genre is every bit as dependent on individual words as the meaning of words are dependent upon the type of genre. I believe this again illustrates the extreme position (could we say hobby horse?) that Sandy and Giese take literary types to, like dressing a private in the medals of a five star general.

The authors become so adamant about genres that one wonders if the Hebrew writers ever got this excited or particular about the genres in which they wrote! In chapter thirteen, Andrew E. Hill writes, “A second specialized type of narrative genre was developed by the Hebrew sages for the express purpose of communicating lessons of wisdom” (265). But Hill provides no historical, archeological, or even cultural backing to this statement. Did the sages sit down one day and say, “Let’s make a new genre!”? It seems more accurate to assume that this genre slowly emerged subconsciously over a period of time until it became its own literary type. Hill’s kind of thinking puts actions into the hands of the writers of the Old Testament that we have no verifiable proof of.

Imagine getting the Sunday morning paper one day and taped on the front is a slip of paper stating: “Today we have created a whole new genre, so before you read this newspaper, please read the definition of the new genre to make sure you don’t misinterpret anything.” To think that the Jewish writers of Scripture intentionally created genres is even more unbelievable. Should the modern day believer understand genre and its function? Yes! And especially those genre types that are less familiar to believers today such as apocalyptic and non-proverbial wisdom. But to spend all this time applying guidelines and steps to each genre and subgenre in each passage is unrealistic and probably impossible. Even Woodard and Travers admit that “…today genre criticism still lacks a formal theory accepted by a majority of literary critics” (35). If scholars are still debating how to define any genre type, and if Feinberg admits that “it is extremely hard to find an example of a piece of literature that illustrates any given genre in its pure form” (48), and if it is true that “genres as literary classifications are largely modern concepts” (181), should we not be slow in outlining an exact ten types of Old Testament genre that break down into three levels (18)? Woodard and Travers state:

…readers must remember that genre criticism is not a Semitic idea…the ancient Hebrews did not theorize about genres, and the idea of genre within literary criticism was not elaborated until Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. Though they wrote in a great variety of genres, the Old Testament writers did not posses a fully-developed aesthetic of genre criticism. Consequently, modern readers must not force Old Testament texts into detailed generic codes when those texts clearly do not correspond (40-41).

Giese’s statement that, “The categories of genres necessary to function effectively in the text of the Old Testament are ten” (19) is an overstatement and extremely dogmatic for something scholars are still trying to figure out how to define. Ten more scholars could come along and cut the pie ten different ways and all be equally dogmatic about their breakdown. How better it would be to say, “Here is one way of viewing genres that can help the reader identify different literature types,” and then propose his ten as a helpful method, not the number necessary for genres to “function effectively.” I would suggest that the “walls between genre types” (17) are far more watery than simply “less than rock solid” (17).

A final example of the over-emphasis on genre’s priority is the almost total rejection of Joseph’s flight from Potiphar’s wife as a valid text for teaching how to escape sexual temptation (295-296). I do agree that fleeing lust is not the main point of this passage, but does this cross out using Joseph’s example as an illustration of fleeing sin? I side with Tremper Longman III’s Making Sense of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998) who leaves room for still using Old Testament stories as moral examples, but never at the cost of eclipsing the main point of the text (127-128).

The third weakness I find in this book is its emphasis on the genre types at the expense of the unity of Scripture and the theme of God redeeming mankind from beginning to end. I understand that the goal of this book is addressing genres, but many could read this book and be tempted to focus so hard on genres that they lose sight of the unity of Scripture and Christ’s words in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.”

Concluding thoughts...

To understand genre in principle is more important than to be a master at listing Old Testament genres identified by modern day scholars who live close to two millenniums after the text was written.

What matters is that the reader understand the main genres, and know how to identify each—not even by name necessarily, but more importantly by type. This book has definitely increased my sensitivity to identifying genre and letting it influence my interpretation of any text. Beyond this it suggests far more than I could ever do with a clear conscience.

D. Brent Sandy and Ronald L. Giese, Jr. Cracking Old Testament Codes: A Guide to Interpreting the Literary Genres of the Old Testament. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995. 323 pp.