The Beginning of Things tells you Stuff: Determining Genre

tommy@signandshadow.com (Tommy Keene) — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In the previous two posts of this series argued that one of the reasons we have trouble understanding the Bible is because we do not read it in the ordinary way that books are to be read. ((This article original appeared on the Christward Collective.)) We assume that because the Bible is the Word of God (which it most definitely is), and because it is therefore inspired and inerrant, that it must consequently “break the rules” of ordinary human communication. I argued, by contrast, that the miracle of the Bible is that it speaks to us about extra-ordinary things (and with extra-ordinary accuracy) in a nevertheless ordinary way. We concluded, then, that one should read any biblical book, be it a letter or a narrative or a history or a compendium of wisdom or a doctrinal treatise, in the same way that you would read any other book of that type. Read any biblical discourse as if it were a particularly exemplary instance of other similar kinds of discourse, even though the ultimate author of this discourse is the One True God.

Beginnings on Sign and Shadow

The Beginning of Things tells you Stuff: Determining Genre