When studying the Bible, recognizing the genre of each book or passage is essential for a deeper understanding of God’s Word. Without acknowledging the genre, we risk misinterpreting or misapplying Biblical teachings.
From narrative and poetry to prophecy and apocalyptic literature, the Bible encompasses a rich variety of genres, each revealing God’s wisdom in unique ways. By exploring these genres, we uncover the breadth and depth of Scripture, enriching our spiritual journey and encouraging a lifelong commitment to studying God’s truth. Discover how understanding Bible genres can transform your study of Scripture.
Check out our Complete Collection of Learning How to Study the Bible (Exegesis/Hermeneutics)
Bible Genres
When we sit down to study the Bible, we recognize what genre we are looking at in order to gain a head start in getting at the meaning. If we don’t account for genre we will certainly misunderstand and misapply the truth of God’s word. Genres also show how God’s word is wide and varied and deep, and worthy of a lifetime of study.
Narrative
This includes books of the Bible or sections of books which simply tell the story of what happened. Exodus is an expansive, epic narrative. Ruth focuses on the story of one family. Acts tells the spectacular events of the first generation of Christians, as they were led and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Narrative tells us what happened, according to the purposes of the author. Sometimes there are spiritual lessons from events, and sometimes we are just gaining the context of the history of God’s people.
Poetry
This is all of the Psalms and other excerpts sprinkled throughout the Bible. The power of poetry comes through the use of vivid figurative language (“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” Ps. 42:1.) Ideas are repeated, sometimes with the same words, other times with synonyms (synonymous parallelism).
Wisdom
Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes are collections of wise sayings meant to shape the moral and ethical lives of their readers. They cover many practical topics. The book of James in the New Testament in many ways is like Proverbs in the Old Testament.
Prophetic
The four major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel) and the 12 minor prophets (Hosea through Malachi) are all God’s word to his covenant people, warning them and bolstering them during periods of pronounced spiritual and national danger. They are mostly oracles, later written down.
We gain spiritual lessons from them about the disposition of God (e.g., disappointed, indignant, sorrowful, tender, caring), and the condition of the people addressed (frightened, disobedient, humbled, arrogant). We must read Old Testament prophetic books as God’s challenge to the original audiences, and then we apply the lessons to our day. We must read Old Testament prophetic books through the lens of looking for Jesus, every prophetic book points to Jesus.
Gospels
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are like the genres of narrative or biography, but they are more than these. The Gospels are proclamation. The people who wrote them were true believers relating first-hand accounts about the life and teachings of Jesus.
The genre of Gospel as faith documents, announcing a world-changing event centered in the person of Jesus. (The teachings of Jesus we know as parables are their own genre. These unique stories communicate lessons embedded in extended similes and metaphors.)
Epistles / Letters
The letters of the New Testament were communications to specific individuals or groups for specific and varied purposes. The apostle Paul meant Romans to be an overarching description of Christian faith, whereas 1 Corinthians was occasioned by problems, including a list of questions they had for Paul (“now concerning the matters you wrote about,” 1 Cor. 7:1), and the letters to Timothy were to encourage and guide a younger church leader in a challenging spot.
Epistles are “occasioned” texts, and so we need to get at the circumstances that led to them being written. The Epistles are letters, written to a specific people, during a specific time, for a specific reason—we must look for the timeless truths within them, examples of faithful followers in the church, and the beauty of how God moved throughout the New Testament World.
Apocalypse/ End Times
The book of Revelation and parts of the book of Daniel are revelations. Like other prophecies, they proclaim urgent messages to their original audiences, in particular, warning and comfort. To a greater degree than other prophetic books, they employ much symbolic language, which can be understood by studying preceding similar expressions in Scripture.
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