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

by Leland Ryken

  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 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 abstract 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 th
an 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 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 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 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 psychological 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 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 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 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 interpretation 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 beauty, 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 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, poetry, 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 handles them. Letters, sermons, and orations, for example, can move in the direction of literature if they display the elements of literature discusse
d 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 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 untruth, 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 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.