A literary approach to the Bible applies the familiar tools of literary analysis without great concern for validating the content with external sources. It highlights the artistic excellence of the Bible, one of its glories.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 112, 126)
The Bible self-demonstrated as literature
The writers of the Bible were self-conscious literary craftsmen in the way they apply technical generic labels to works in the Bible, such as chronicles, sayings, proverbs, songs, hymns, complaints, parables, gospels, apocalypses, epistles, and prophecies. They had a relatively sophisticated knowledge of literary genres.
Biblical writings also show literary qualities. Stories are structured on a principle of beginning-middle-end. Techniques are employed of dramatic irony, foreshadowing, and climax. Praise psalms have three main parts (introduction, development, and resolution) and lament psalms have five (invocation, complaint or definition of the crisis, petition, statement of confidence in God, and vow to praise God). Writers were adept at discovering metaphors and similes and employing personification, apostrophe, and hyperbole.
The writers were also aware of the literary context of their work. The Ten Commandments and book of Deuteronomy (and whole Pentateuch) bear all the marks of a suzerainty treaty. Psalm 29 is a parody of Canaanite poems written about the exploits of Baal. The Song of Solomon contains poems resembling Egyptian love poetry. Acts contains elements of similarity to travelogues and trial defenses in Greek literature.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 113-114)
Ecclesiastes
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. - Ecclesiastes 12:9-10
The writer outright states his philosophy of writing is a thoroughly literary view of composition. He is a self-conscious composer, carefully choosing from available options to select and arrange his material. He is preoccupied with artistry and beauty of expression. He is aware he is writing in a definite literary genre by using proverbs.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 112-113)
Augustine's literary approach
Augustine's approach is defined in On Christian Doctrine IV, 6-7.
- He asserted the writers of the Bible followed the ordinary rules of classical rhetoric. He explicated passages from Amos and the Epistles to prove the Bible can be compared to familiar literature.
- He admired the eloquence and beauty of the Bible as having inherent value.
- He foreshadowed a cornerstone of modern literary theory when he claimed that the style of the Bible is inseparable from the message that it expresses
- For all his enthusiasm over the literary eloquence of the Bible, he showed an uneasiness about viewing the Bible as being totally similar to other literature, claiming, for example, that the eloquence of the Bible was not "composed by man's art and care" but instead flowed "from the Divine mind."
Though he had a minority opinion among church fathers, his view became the majority opinion during the Renaissance and Reformation and was expanded to champion a many-sided literary inquiry into both the content and form of the Bible. Exegetes (Luther, Calvin, and the Puritans) and writers of imaginative literature alike analyzed the Bible as literature.
Writers were motivated to form a Christian defense of imaginative literature. Sir Philip Sydney's Apology for Poetry is a typical example. He appealed to the concreteness or "figuring forth" of human experience in the Bible, as well as emphasizing the importance of literary genres and figurative language in the Bible.
Barbara Lewalski's Protestant Poetics and the Seventeeth-Century Religious Lyric documents the extent to which Reformation exegetes and Renaissance poets agreed on a set of postulates about the literary nature of the Bible. The chief principles were that the Bible is made up of literary genres, that the texture of the Bible is frequently figurative and poetic, and that the Bible relies heavily on a system of symbolism. Literary interpretation of the Bible went hand in hand with a religious belief in the Bible as a sacred book.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 114-116)
Highlights from a literary approach
The Bible has God as the leading character in a way without parallel in other literature. The Bible is more consistent in portraying the interpenetration of a divine world into the ordinary realm of early life than any ancient literature.
The Bible makes stronger claims to inspiration and authority than ordinary literature. Erich Auerbach in "Odysseus' Scar" compares the storytelling technique in Homer's Odyssey to Genesis. The "religious intent" of stories in the Bible "involves an absolute claim to historical truth...not only far more urgent than Homer's, it is tyrannical--it excludes all other claims." C. S. Lewis also observed in The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version, "In most parts of the Bible everyuthing is implicitly or explicitly introduced with 'Thus saith the Lord.' It is . . . not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite, it excludes or repels, the merely aesthetic approach."
The Bible is a unique mingling of historical, theological, and literary writings. A passage will be predominantly one without excluding the others. A literary approach yields more in more literary-dominant texts, while still inviting historical and theological approaches in a way that cannot be applied to literature in general. On the other hand, the plea for literary criticism of the Bible does not imply the sufficiency of such an approach by itself.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 120-121)
Objections to approaching the Bible as literature
Literature is equated with fiction
A literary approach depends on a writer's selectivity and molding of the material. Fictionality itself is not an essential feature of literature, and literary properties have nothing to do with the historicity or fictionality of the material.
The question of whether the Bible is historically factual and accurate belongs not to literary criticism but to the debate over historicity. The presence of artifice and convention in a biblical text does not imply fictionality.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 118-119)
A literary approach excludes the special religious beliefs Christians have and the authority of the Bible
The Bible is a special book unlike ordinary literature, so it can be argued the Bible cannot be studied with the ordinary tools of linguistics, grammar, or history. However, the Bible obviously uses ordinary language and grammar, contains history, and employs the techniques of literature. We can use a literary approach to reveal the points at which the Bible is like and unlike the familiar literature we find elsewhere.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 119-120)
The New Testament's literary form is distinct and lesser than the Old Testament's form
Ryken feels scholars are led to this idea by the Old Testament's promise of chronicles, psalms, and prophets implying a difference from the New Testament's gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypse. But underlying the books are literary forms that cut across the external labels - the deep structure of biblical literature that make the Bible literary in nature.
The Bible has literary unity as a whole with its foundational literary forms of story or narrative, poetry, proverb, satire, oration, and visionary writing. What changes from the Old Testament to the New is not the literary forms (except for the addition of the epistle) but the theological content that those forms carry.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 121-122)
A literary approach defies the atomisticity of traditional biblical scholarship and theories of divine dictation
Biblical commentaries and the patchwork that results when scholars undertake excavations into the stages of composition that lie behind a finished text often consist of atomistic analysis. Literary analysis cannot reduce the Bible to a theological outline with proof texts attached. Also, it assumes the Bible was self-consciously composed, rather than transcribed divine dictation or the result of impersonal evolution of texts through various stages of transmission. You also can't approach the Bible as one type of material when it emphasizes a variety of literary genres.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 127-128)