The Bible as Literature

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The Bible as Literature
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Literary Forms in the Bible

• Mythic lit
• Legends
• Short stories
• Drama
• Poetry
• Allegory
• parable

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Subject of all books

• Mans relationship with God
• Old Testament vengeful god
• New Testament merciful god

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Mythic literature

• Mythic lit exposes a truth beyond history
• Truth rests on whether events make visible
  knowledge on a deeper level

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First five books Law

• In Hebrew the Torah
• In Greek the Pentateuch

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Genesis the creation and fall of mankind

• Mankind and world created by a Supreme Being
• Mankind is less than perfect and its our own
  darn fault!
• What happens in the world concerns God but man is
  a free agent

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Exodus, etc.

• Exodus through Deuteronomy
• Our tribal ancestors and the Patriarchs
• Attributed to Moses, but actually there were
  probably many authors
• Part of oral tradition
• theophany - a showing forth of God revealing
  the power and otherness of God

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Histories Legends/Legendary figures

• Historicized fiction these accounts use history
  but before the Bible was recorded, the oral
  tradition shaped these accounts, like legend.
• Fictionalized history takes liberties with
  historical fact in order to express and preserve
  a culture

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Writings

• Esther through Song of Songs short stories
  drama poetry
• Wisdom literature Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes
  Song of Songs, Psalms

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The Psalms

• Poems and songs which praise God and commemorate
  events in the history of Israel
• 70 out of 150 credited to David
• Express the range of human emotion joy, love,
  compassion, perplexity, sacrifice, anger,
  sadness you name it, the Psalms express it. Some
  of them are really good at vengeance!

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Themes in the Psalms

• Penance and contrition
• Elegy
• Lamentation
• Praise
• Awe
• Despair

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Poetic techniques used in the Psalms

• Iteration (listing)
• Personification
• Hyperbole
• Simile
• Parallelism
• metaphor

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Parallelism 3 types

• Synonymous parallelism A parallel segment
  repeats an idea found in the previous segment.
  With this technique a kind of paraphrase is
  involved line two restates the same thought
  found in line one, by using equivalent
  expressions.
• Wash me from my iniquity/and cleanse me from my
  sin

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Antithetic parallelism

• Antithetic parallelism By means of this poetic
  construction, the thought of the first line is
  made clearer by contrast - by the opposition
  expressed in the second line. Examples of
  antithetic parallelism may be found in Psalm 16
  "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, / But
  the way of the ungodly shall perish"

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Climactic Parallelism

• Climactic the thought in the first line builds
  to the climax over several verses
• The first idea is slowly built up and developed.
  A good example of this is Psalm 291,2 Give unto
  the LORD, O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory
  and strength. Give unto the LORD the glory due
  unto his name.

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Terms to know

• Covenant promise, contract, invioable
• Revelation inspiration, breath of God
• Canon accepted books
• Parable a simple story meant to illustrate
  religious or moral principles.
• Apocrypha books not included in Protestant
  bibles, but included in Catholic bibles.