Having finished The Canon of Scripture last week, I am beginning a new book in the Bibliology category: How to Read the Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken.

Getting the most from God’s Word requires more than just casual reading. It requires work, and some knowledge of interpretive methods (hermeneutics). This is because the Bible is not a simple how-to book. It does not convey its message through propositional statements alone. Oh, it contains straight-forward propositions: “You shall not murder,” for example, and “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” are propositional statements that require no interpretation. But Scripture is also a literary work. This means that its contents are presented in various literary forms (genres) that engage the imagination and convey images and meanings that bare propositions cannot. Therefore, we cannot be satisfied with reading; we must learn to rightly interpret.

   Literature always calls for interpretation. It expresses its meaning by a certain indirection. The statement that “our neighbor is anyone 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 of the story add up to.
   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.
   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.
   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.

—Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Zondervan, 1984), 22–23.

The Bible is a literary work. For that reason, in order to comprehend what it says, we must seek to understand how it says what it says.

   A literary approach to the Bible is preoccupied with form, and that is for a very good reason. In any written discourse, meaning is communicated through form. The concept of “form” should be construed very broadly in this context: it includes anything that touches upon how a writer has expressed his content. Everything that gets communicated does so through form, beginning with language itself.
   While this is true for all forms of writing, it is especially crucial for literature. Literature has its own forms and techniques, and these tend to be more complex and subtle and indirect than those of ordinary discourse. Stories, for example, communicate their meaning through character, setting, and action. the result is that before we can understand what a story says we must first interact with the form, that is, the characters, settings, and events. Poetry conveys its meanings through figurative language and concrete images. It is therefore impossible to determine what a poem says without first encountering the form (metaphor, simile, image, etc.).
   The literary critic’s preoccupation with the how of biblical writing is not frivolous. It is evidence of an artistic delight in verbal beauty and craftsmanship, but it is also part of an attempt to understand what the Bible says. In a literary text it is impossible to separate what is said from how it is said, content from form.

—Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Zondervan, 1984), 28–29.

If you have not read the previous posts in this series, you may want to do that before continuing with this one.

The Bible contains a variety of literary forms. Story is one of them; in fact, the majority of the Bible is in the form of stories. Leland Ryken quotes Henry R. Luce, founder of Time Magazine, as saying, “Time didn’t start this emphasis on stories about people; the Bible did.” “Narrative,” writes Ryken, “is the dominant form in the Bible.”

Stories come in different types, and the stories of the Bible are no exception. All stories are either tragedy or comedy. Comedy is not humor, as we tend to think of the word. Comedy is a story with a happy ending. A comedy is, as Ryken calls it, a “U-shaped” story, beginning in happy circumstances, then descending into misery, before rising to its happy resolution. Sometimes it skips the first segment, beginning in misery, but the ending is always happy. Tragedy begins in a variety of circumstances, and ends in misery.

Among the tragedies of the Bible are the stories of Saul and Samson. The majority of the Bible’s stories, however, are comedies in which the protagonist or protagonists encounter difficulty and suffering but end in positive circumstances. The Gospels are comedies. Job and Revelation are comedies. The larger story of the Bible is most definitely a comedy.

Stories are also divided into more specific subtypes. One of these is the heroic narrative, which comprises the majority of biblical narratives. Heroic narratives are stories that are built around the life and actions of the protagonist.

So what? Well, if you want to get more than a shallow Veggie Tales-style “moral of the story,” you want to know how meaning is conveyed through stories. Leland Ryken describes the hero of the heroic narrative:

   A literary hero or heroine is representative. The purpose behind the storyteller’s selection of specific heroes and events is that they in some sense capture the universal human situation. It is commonplace that whereas the historian tells us what happened, the writer of a literary narrative tells us what happens. The hero of stories in the Bible do more than set the historical record straight. They also are models and paradigms of the religious experience of the human race. They capture what is true for us and for people around us. Characters like Joseph and Ruth and David do not stay within their stories in the Bible; they merge with our own experiences as we begin to “build bridges” between their stories and our own.
   Usually such representative heroes are exemplary of some ideal, though they need not be wholly good (in the Bible they rarely are completely idealized). Stories tend to get written about people whose character and exploits we can look up to. The stories of the Bible are no exception. They give us a memorable gallery of moral and spiritual models to emulate. On the other hand, stories can also includes a positive ideal by negative example. They can indirectly encourage good behavior by telling the story of a hero who failed to measure up to such a standard. Some of the most foolish misreadings of biblical stories I have encountered have come from a misguided assumption that we are intended to approve of the behavior of biblical heroes in virtually every episode in which they figure. One of the distinctive features of the Bible is how deeply flawed its heroes and heroines are. The Bible portrays most of its protagonists as Cromwell wished t be painted—warts and all.
   Of course, in describing hero stories as moral or spiritual examples, I run the risk of making them appear to be simplistic moral fables. This is emphatically not true of heroic narrative in the Bible. All we need to do is dip into biblical scholarship and literary criticism to sense that these stories are subtle, frequently complex to interpret, and usually characterized by a kind of cryptic understatement or mystery that requires the reader to supply and abundance of interpretation. The moment we reduce the moral or spiritual meaning of the hero’s experience to an ideal, we have turned the story into a platitude and robbed it of its power.
   The antidote lies in respecting how stories work. The values or virtues that are inculcated by a hero story like that of Joseph or Ruth are embodied in the protagonists character and life. The strategy of literature is to give form and shape to human experience by projecting it onto a character. A story can communicate truth or reality or knowledge simply by picturing some aspect of human experience. A story conveys truth whenever we can say, “This is the way life is.”
   In other words, “the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction” [Flannery O’Connor, Mysteries and Manners, 73]. To say that the story of Abraham embodies an ideal of faith is not to offer that interpretation as a substitute for the story but as a pair of eyes by which to see what the story itself means. As readers we must protect the integrity of the story, while at the same time realizing that “all narrative . . . possesses . . . some quality of the parable” [Frank Kermode, “Interpretive Continuity and the New Testament,” Rariton, Spring 1982, 36].

—Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Zondervan, 1984), 75–77.

Few Christians would dispute that the Psalms contain some of the most beautiful language in Scripture. Yet I dare say that a great many pass over much of the poetic language of the Psalms without understanding it. I know I have. Take, for example, Psalm 133: How good and pleasant it is / when brothers live together in unity! / It is like precious oil poured on the head, / running down on [Aaron’s] beard . . . Be honest now — how many of us have any idea what that means? Very few, I would guess. This is because poetry does not make simple propositional statements. It uses figurative language such as image, metaphor, and simile to cause the reader to enter into an experience with the author. That is what makes it poetry. We need to learn to identify and interpret these figures of speech. Using the example of Psalm 133, Leland Ryken gives us a lesson:

   Image, metaphor, simile, and symbol are the “basics” of poetry, but there are other figures of speech that we also need to identify and interpret. One is allusion. An allusion is a reference to literature or history. As with metaphor and simile, we first need to identify the source of allusion and then interpret what aspects of that earlier situation are relevant to the context in which the allusion appears.
   Psalm 133:1–2 provides a good example:

How good and pleasant is it
   when brothers live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
   running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
   down upon the collar of his robes.

The fellowship the pilgrims experience en route to Jerusalem to worship God in the temple is like oil (simile), but not just any oil. It is specifically like the oil of Aaron (allusion). The passage to which this alludes is Exodus 30:22–33, where we learn that this oil was a “sacred anointing oil” that was only used only in connection with official worship at the tabernacle or temple. Having identified the source of the allusion, we can interpret it: the fellowship of the pilgrims is, like the anointing oil a holy thing and a preparation for worship at the temple.

—Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Zondervan, 1984), 97.

You can see, I hope, how rich this passage is when its poetry is understood, and how meaningless it is otherwise. So it is with all of the poetry of Scripture.

Poetry, according to Robert Frost, is “saying one thing and meaning another.” And while that is quite true, poetry possesses an eloquence that direct propositions lack. Through figurative language, poetry is able to convey, with an economy of words, meanings that would otherwise require paragraphs.

As I’m reading How to Read the Bible as Literature, and learning about the various poetic devices used in Scripture, I thought I would just list several poetic devices with their definitions and some examples. The examples will be taken from Ryken’s book (chapter 4, The Poetry of the Bible).

Simile
   Simile compares one thing to another using the words “as” or “like.” Your tongue . . . is like a sharpened razor (Psalm 52:2).

Metaphor
   While a simile presents one thing as being like the other, metaphor presents the subject as actually being the other. The Lord God is a sun and shield (Psalm 84:11).

Metonymy
   A metonymy skips the comparison all together and simply replaces one thing with another with which it is closely associated. The sword will never depart from your house (2 Sam. 12:10). This phrase contains two metonymies, sword, and house. The meaning is that violence will persist in David’s family.

Synecdoche
   A part is used to represent the whole. Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:11). Bread represents all material needs.

Allusion
   Refers to a past event. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made (Psalm 33:6).

Personification
   Attributes human characteristics to inanimate objects. Then all of the trees of the forest will sing for joy (Psalm 96:12).

Anthropomorphism
   The portrayal of God in human terms. Your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy (Exodus 15:6). God, being spirit, doesn’t actually have hands.

Hyperbole
   Exaggeration. All night long I flood my bed with weeping (Psalm 6:6).

Paradox
   An apparent contradiction that the reader must resolve. The mercy of the wicked is cruel (Proverbs 12:10). A paradox makes no sense outside its context, but when analyzed in context can be seen to express truth.

Figures of speech are at times difficult to classify and overlapping. A good example of this is Exodus 15:6, cited above under anthropomorphism. Ryken writes:

   Consider the statement “your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy” (Exod. 15:6). Exactly what should we call this? It could be considered metonymy, inasmuch as it was God's power over nature, and not literally his hand, that conquered the Egyptians. It is synecdoche if we consider that the right hand stands for the whole being of God. The hand could be regarded as a metaphor for God’s power, or as a symbol of that power. The whole enterprise of labeling quickly collapses under the weight of its own complexity. The simplest solution is to be aware that the transcendent God of the Bible is repeatedly portrayed in earthly and human terms and that such descriptions are of course figurative rather than literal. The word “anthropomorphism” seems to cover the phenomenon as adequately as any other. —How to Read the Bible as Literature, 102–103.

What is the purpose of these figures of speech, and what are we to do with them?

   These diverse figures of speech tend toward similar effects. They are governed by the impulse to be concrete and vivid. They are usually a way of achieving tremendous concentration, of saying much in little. They tend to be a shorthand way of suggesting a multiplicity of meanings, connotations, overtones, or associations, and as such they are a way of achieving wholeness of expression. Most of these figures of speech use the principle of comparison. They use one area of human experience to shed light on another area. In one way or another, they operate on the principle that A is like B. This is not limited to the obvious examples of metaphor and simile. With personification, for example, the object is treated as though it were a person. In using such comparisons, poets obviously resort to poetic license. They operate on the principle “it is as though . . .” instead of confining themselves to what literally exists.
   We should note, finally, that all of the figures of speech cited above place similar responsibilities on reader. First a reader must recognize or identify the figure of speech. This usually involves sensing element of strangeness in an utterance, since figures of speech differ from our ordinary, straight-forward way of speaking. Then a reader must interpret the figure. This usually entails drawing a connection or correspondence between two things. It always involves determining how the figure of speech is apt or suitable for what is being discussed, and what meanings are communicated by the figure. “Why is this figure of speech here?” is always a good interpretive question to ask. —ibid., 100–101.

Parables are in part allegorical; that is, they contain fictional elements that are symbolic of real people and situations. But that is not to say they are not realistic. It is their realism that gives them life and makes them applicable to every place and time of our lives.

   There is no doubt that the parables of Jesus lend themselves to almost indefinite reflection and application, but why do they capture the listener’s attention in the first place? They are folk literature, originally oral. Indeed, they are the touchstone of popular storytelling through the ages.
   Virtually the first thing we notice about the parables is their everyday realism and concrete vividness. “It is ‘things’ that make stories go well,” writes P.C. Sandes of the parables; here “everything . . . is concrete and vigorous. Everything is described in solid terms.” The parables take us into the familiar world of planting and harvesting, traveling through the countryside , baking bread, tending sheep, or responding to an invitation. The parables thus obey the literary principle of verisimilitude (“lifelikeness”), and a perusal of commentaries always uncovers evidence of how thoroughly rooted in real life the parables are. There is no fantasy in the parables of Jesus—no talking animals or imaginary monsters, only people such as we meet during the course of a day. The parables reveal “an amazing power of observation.”
   This minute realism is an important part of Jesus’ parables. On the surface, these stories are totally “secular.” There are few overtly religious activities in the parables. If we approached them without their surrounding context and pretended that they were anonymous, we could not guess that they were intended for a religious purpose. An important by-product of this realism is that that it undermines the “two world” thinking in which the spiritual and earthly spheres are rigidly divided. We are given to understand it is in everyday experience that spiritual decisions are made and that God’s grace does its work.

—Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Zondervan, 1984), 139–140.