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

by Leland Ryken

  Proverbs Are Observations About Human Experience

  Creators of proverbs are also truly literary in their ability to observe life. To write literature of any type, a person must be a sensitive observer of the human scene. This is exactly what the wisdom teachers of the Bible are. They are the photographers of the Bible, says Robert Short in a book that is the best on the subject.3 In Hebrew culture there were three main classes of religious leaders—priests, prophets, and wise men. Jeremiah 18:18, referring to all three, attributes a distinctive type of writing or discourse to each: law, word, and counsel respectively. There is a crucial difference between law and prophecy on the one side and proverbial wisdom on the other. Law and prophecy are God’s direct word to people. The proverbs of wisdom teachers are wise human observations about reality. They rarely are direct moral commands like the Ten Commandments.

  Descriptive and Prescriptive Proverbs

  By placing proverbs in the context of the Bible’s moral law, we can usually sense at a glance whether a given proverb is descriptive or prescriptive. Unlike moral commands, proverbs tend to state general principles to which there might be exceptions. Those who utter proverbs do not worry about possible exceptions (neither do lyric poets); they trust people to use their common sense in recognizing that a proverb need not cover every possible situation. The Hebrew mind tends to state the general rule and not to worry about exceptions (as in the claim of Ps. 1 that the godly person prospers in “whatever he does”).

  Proverbs Are High Points of Human Insight

  Proverbs are high points of human insight. To use a literary term, a proverb is a moment of epiphany (insight, revelation). If proverbs appeared in a story or poem (as they sometimes do), we would recognize them as summing up the main thrust of the whole work. The modern story writer James Joyce once described a moment of epiphany as the point in a story where a spiritual or intellectual eye adjusts its vision to an exact focus. A proverb is just such a moment of intellectual focus. It masters a whole area of life by bringing it under the control of a verbal focus. A proverb captures the clearest and most affecting moment, the point of greatest light.

  The Urge for Order

  As a literary form, the proverb illustrates the human urge for order. Aphoristic thinking enables us to master the complexity of life by bringing human experience under the control of an observation that explains and unifies many similar experiences. How many times have we not observed people whose compulsion was to make money and acquire possessions, only to find themselves dissatisfied. The insight that puts the many instances of this phenomenon into focus is the proverb, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money.” Proverbs are a way of organizing what we know to be true of life. In the words of Norman Perrin,

  The essence of a proverbial saying is that it is based on observation of how things are in the world. It is a flash of insight into the repeatable situations of life in the world, and its aphoristic form not only represents insight but compels it. . . . Naturally, in the context of a firm belief in God, the proverb comes to express insight into the way things are, or should be, in the world ordered by God and a challenge to behaviour that God will reward.4

  Proverbs Are True to Human Experience

  It pains me to see the biblical proverb belittled as a repository of truth simply because it does not have the prescriptive all-inclusiveness of a moral command. “A maxim,” Coleridge correctly said, “is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact.”5 Proverbs are true in the same way a story or poem is true: they are true to human experience and to reality. Proverbs express truths and experiences that are continually being confirmed in our own lives or the lives of people around us. Proverbs are timeless and never go out of date. The one unanswerable proof that proverbs can be trusted to tell the truth is a long, hard look at what is going on around us in the world.

  Proverbs Belong to Real Life

  This experiential truthfulness of proverbs is reinforced by the fact that the environment in which a proverb truly lives is not a collection of proverbs but the everyday situation of life where it applies. The individual proverb is a self-contained unit. Its point of contact is not with the next proverb in a collection but with the real-life situation it illuminates. This is well illustrated by the pronouncement stories in the Gospels, where an aphorism of Jesus is recorded together with the event or encounter that prompted the saying.

  The Pervasiveness of Proverbs in the Bible

  Where do we find proverbs in the Bible? Everywhere. They are concentrated in the wisdom writings of the Old Testament, chiefly the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. But the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels are nearly as concentrated in their use of aphorism. The New Testament Epistle of James is also largely aphoristic in form.

  Indeed, the Bible is such an aphoristic book that it is hard to find individual parts of the Bible that do not contain proverbs. They appear in the brief stories of the Bible: “Am I my brother’s keeper?’’ (Gen. 4:9). Naturally we find aphorisms throughout the poetry of the Bible: “Taste and see that the LORD is good’’ (Ps. 34:8). The prophets are likewise aphoristic in style: “they will run and not grow weary, / they will walk and not be faint’’ (Isa. 40:31). And the New Testament Epistles frequently have the memorable, chiseled effect of aphorism: “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love’’ (1 Cor. 13:13 RSV). The aphoristic nature of the Bible is well attested by the large number of titles for books and works of literature that have been taken from the Bible, and by the frequency with which individual verses have been put on plaques.

  An additional word needs to be said about the Old Testament wisdom books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. Here we find series of proverbs collected into small anthologies. How can we best read and study these books?

  THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES

  The Quest for Meaning

  The Book of Ecclesiastes, the most misunderstood book in the Bible, is skillfully structured around two unifying patterns. One is the quest motif. As readers, we accompany the speaker as he recalls his quest to find meaning in life. In recounting this quest, he describes both the dead ends he pursued and the alternative to that futility, namely, a God-centered life.

  A Structure of Opposites

  The other structural principle is a dialectical system of opposites. The writer alternates between negative “under the sun” passages and positive “above the sun” passages. This dialectical principle accounts for the contradictions the book presents. When the writer describes the futility of life “under the sun” (that is, life lived by purely human or earthly standards), he is not offering his final verdict on life. In literary fashion, he is sharing his observations about how life should not be lived.

  The Positive Passages Throughout the Book

  Balancing the negative sections are positive ones in which the writer portrays a God-centered alternative to life under the sun. God and spiritual values are dominant in these sections, and they transform the very aspects of life (e.g., work, eating, drinking) that are declared empty in the under-the-sun passages. It is untrue that the Book of Ecclesiastes becomes positive only at the conclusion. The affirmations made at the end have already been repeatedly asserted in positive sections of the book (such as 2:24-26; 3:10-15; 5:1-7; and 5:18-20).6

  THE BOOK OF PROVERBS

  The Book of Proverbs presents more serious difficulties for a literary approach. There are some clusters of proverbs on a single topic, such as the passages on the drunkard (23:29-35), the king (25:2-7), and the sluggard (26:13-16). Chapters 1-9 are also more unified than the rest of the book. They are a coherent section of instruction unified by a common theme (wisdom), common images and characters, and a unifying plot conflict between wisdom and folly.

  A Topical Approach

  Beyond these sections, though, the structure is miscellaneous and the unity nonexistent. Two approaches to the collected proverbs are possible. One is a topical approach. It is relatively easy to arrange the Book of Pr
overbs into various topics (such as work, use of money, good and bad women, etc.). Once we have put such proverbs into their topical “family,” we can meditate on the complementary aspects of a single experience, much as we can turn a prism in the light to get various colors.

  Reading by Chapters

  The other approach is to read through a chapter as it stands. Such reading should be slow, reflective, and imaginative. This is a good way to become familiar with individual proverbs, so they will rise to our consciousness and lips when a real life situation fits a given proverb. Reading by chapters, noting the wide range of phenomena touched upon, is also true to the mixed nature of actual experience.

  Reading Reflectively

  Whatever approach we take, it is essential to respect the compression that is a hallmark of the proverb as a literary form. A single proverb covers a whole category of experiences. Instead of passing quickly from one proverb to the next, in the process reducing each proverb to a cliché, we need to pause at each one, making it come alive by thinking of examples or illustrations. One of the most helpful aids to a literary approach to the Old Testament books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes is to work at finding visual commentary on each proverb.

  SUMMARY

  As a literary form, the proverb meets the two basic criteria of literature: it is a form of verbal art, and its content comes from close observation of life. Biblical proverbs will come alive in our imagination if we will respect the consistency with which they appeal to our own experiences in the world. To interpret individual proverbs correctly, we also need to be alert to their figurative speech and to their uncanny way of capturing the universal through the particular.

  Further Reading

  The best single literary treatment of the biblical proverb is Robert Short’s book A Time to Be Born—A Time to Die (New York: Harper and Row, 1973); in addition to the photographic commentary on Ecclesiastes, it has excellent critical material. Traditional approaches by biblical scholars are well summarized in James G. Williams, Those Who Ponder Proverbs: Aphoristic Thinking and Biblical Literature (Sheffield: Almond, 1981), which contains full bibliographic apparatus. My book The Literature of the Bible, pp. 243-58, contains literary explications of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

  For New Testament aphorism, see Robert C. Tannehill, The Sword of His Mouth: Forceful and Imaginative Language in Synoptic Sayings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); and the works excerpted under “Proverb as a Literary Form” in The New Testament in Literary Criticism, ed. Leland Ryken (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984).

  1Literary Criticisms, ed. Terence L. Connolly (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948), 543.

  2Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 208.

  3 A Time to Be Born—A Time to Die (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).

  4The New Testament: An Introduction (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 296.

  5Quoted in Elton Trueblood, The Humor of Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 69.

  6For a more detailed explication of Ecclesiastes based on the framework I state here, see my book The Literature of the Bible, 250-58.

  Chapter Seven

  The Gospels

  Traditional Approaches to the Gospels

  BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON THE GOSPELS has been preoccupied with questions of historical authenticity, theological content, relation to the religious milieu of the first century church, literary precedents or models, and stages of oral transmission that can be traced backward to a primitive original from the written form in which we currently find the Gospels.

  A Literary Approach to the Gospels

  A literary approach substitutes an entirely different agenda of interests that are complementary to the traditional questions and that have been unjustifiably neglected. A literary approach begins with the conviction that the Gospels are first of all stories. Once this premise is accepted, the reader’s attention focuses on a cluster of related concerns: unifying plot conflicts that move toward a final resolution; the overall structure and progression of the story; narrative and artistic patterns such as repetition, contrast, and framing; the characters who generate the action; the settings in which events occur; the point of view from which the story is told, including patterns of approval and disapproval of characters and events that the story encourages the reader to adopt; image patterns and symbolism; style (with emphasis on economy of expression, choice of concrete details that suggest a bigger picture, the prominence of dialogue and speech patterns, and the poetic bent of Jesus); and the characteristics of the narrative “world” that each Gospel builds in the reader’s imagination.

  The Primacy of Story

  These matters have long received scattered attention, but not until recently have they been integrated into a systematic and popular approach to the Gospels. The main new factor is a growing consensus that the primary form of the Gospels is narrative or story, not sermon or saying. Above all, literary critics are now saying, the Gospels consist of characters doing certain things in a series of settings. “The genre characteristics of the gospel are. . .narrative characteristics,” writes a biblical scholar as he criticizes the inadequacies of traditional approaches.1 “The Gospel writers produced neither volumes of learned exegesis nor sermons,” writes another; “rather, they told stories; and if we wish to understand what the Gospels say, we should study how stories are told.”2 And a third warns that “there are special aspects of narrative composition which biblical scholars will continue to ignore if there is not greater awareness of how stories are told and how they communicate.”3 In short, the starting point for understanding the Gospels is what I said about stories in chapter 2.

  The Hybrid Nature of the Gospels

  If we come to the Gospels with the usual narrative expectations of cause-effect plot construction, a strict beginning-middle-end framework, and the principle of single action, we will be continuously frustrated. The Gospels are too episodic and fragmented, too self-contained in their individual parts, and too thoroughly a hybrid form with interspersed nonnarrative elements to constitute this type of unified story. The Gospels are an encyclopedic or mixed form. They include elements of biography, historical chronicle, fiction (the parables), oration, sermon, dialogue (drama), proverb, poem, tragedy, and comedy.

  The Realism of the Gospels

  This very mixture and randomness produce an unusually powerful realism. They capture a sense both of the kind of life that Jesus actually lived and of what it would have been like to live through the experiences narrated in the Gospels. The kaleidoscopic variety of scenes, events, characters, dialogues, speeches, and encounters, always revolving around Jesus at the center, conveys an astonishing sense of reality.

  The Portrait of Jesus in the Gospels

  The unifying focus of the Gospels is the central character, Jesus. How, then, is Jesus portrayed? Let us pause for a moment to analyze how three types of visual art—a photograph, a painted portrait, and an abstract painting—portray a landscape or person.4 The photograph is virtually objective: it shows every detail as it appears to the eye (with the corresponding limitation that it cannot highlight a given aspect of the scene or offer an interpretation of the subject). A painted portrait is more selective in its details, highlighting whatever features of the subject a painter wishes to call attention to as he or she tries to capture the spirit of a scene or event or character. An abstract painting conveys only a vague impression of its subject and depends almost wholly on the subjective response of the viewer for its final content.

  Given these three possibilities, the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is most like the portrait. The Gospel writers did not record everything about Jesus. They were highly selective in what they included. Through a combination of selection of material, arrangement, repetition, contrasts (foils), and interpretive commentary, each Gospel writer produced a verbal portrait in which certain features of Jesus and his message are highlighted.

  Complementary Perspect
ives in the Four Gospels

  Because the Gospel portraits are interpretive in nature, the four Gospels are complementary. Trying to harmonize them into a single photograph is, from a literary perspective, unnecessary (though I do not thereby imply that a literary approach is sufficient by itself). Someone has proposed the helpful analogy between the Gospels and the slow-motion replays that are familiar to us in television coverage of sports events:

  In these replays the action can be dramatically slowed down so that one is able to see much more than one was able to see in the action as it actually occurred. If one is given the full treatment—closeup, slow-action, forward-and-reverse, split-screen, the same scene from several perspectives, and with the verbal commentary and interpretation of an expert superimposed—one has a fair analogy of what the evangelists do. . . .One might add to the force of the analogy by pointing out that the true significance of certain plays can only be known after the game is over. Now they are often seen in a new light, their true meaning dependent on what subsequently transpired.5

  As we watch a television event from various angles, we often do not even see the same people or scenic details from one perspective to the next. Might the same thing not be true of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus?