The Bible is Just so… Extra

I’ve finally finished Hurtado’s Destroyer of the Gods, which is an excellent historical argument for the uniqueness of Christianity within the Roman world. Highly recommended. One of the points he makes along the way is that Christian literature is unique. Christianity is not just unique religiously, but also literarily—it’s an unprecedentedly “bookish” religion. His point coordinates well with another book I’m working through, Andrew Judd’s Modern Genre Theory: An Introduction for Biblical Studies. Judd’s aim is for reader’s to better appreciate the way in which genre affects the way we read, and so if you want to understand how the Bible means what it means, you need to understand the kinds of literature represented in the Bible.

The point of all this is, while it’s incredibly important to read the Bible in the ordinary way required by the genre of the book in question, it’s also important to recognize that each work is unique and, in some ways, innovative.

Every book of the New Testament challenges the conventions of their respective genre. They each attempt something unique, even unprecedented, and must therefore bend the literary rules of the time to fit their purpose. (This is true for most great literature, but I’d argued that there’s something different going on with the Bible). A brief tour is in order, but I intend what follows to be more suggestive than definitive, and I’m also refraining from footnotes–if you´re interested in more, the two aforementioned books will get you started!

The Gospels are too Religious to be Biographies

On the one hand, the four Gospels read like ancient biographies. There are, of course, some “oddities” with them, like there is almost nothing about Jesus’ childhood, and the last week of Jesus’ life receives an exceptional amount of attention, and it is not at all normal to write a biography about a poor Jewish carpenter rather than an important senator or ruler, but in general they behave like biographies. Except that these biographers are writing, to quote John, “that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ… And that in believing you might have life in his name” (John 20:31). Sure, they want you to understand–Luke writes “an orderly account” because he wants to set the record straight (Luke 1:1-4)–but they want more than simply intellectual assent. To a man the evangelists want you to worship. And they want you to worship the one they are describing, name Jesus of Nazareth.

It’s an odd tension, perhaps best illustrated by Mark. On the one hand, he is writing “ordinary” history; it’s not mythic or romantic or highly stylized. Mark does not tell you why he is writing, nor does he advertise his main themes and agenda. It’s subtle because, on the surface, Mark’s goal is simple: to tell you the history of Jesus. On the other hand, at the center of Mark’s Gospel is Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ.” It’s an ordinary biography, but it should lead you to bow the knee before the King, God’s true Son.

Acts is too Spiritual to be History

The book of Acts (and we can throw Luke in here too) is also self-consciously “history.” It is ancient historiography, to be sure, but Luke believes it’s important for his readers to know when things happened, where people lived, who said what to whom, etc. Luke-Acts is full of extraneous historical details that demonstrate these books are not meant as stories or myths or novelizations, but as a record of “the things that happened among us” (Luke 1:1-4 again).

However, especially in Acts, the Holy Spirit is a prevalent, even primary, character in the historical account. It is the Spirit that fills the disciples, directs the deacons, sends Paul (and later prevents Paul from going where he wishes), and establishes the church of Christ “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:7). It’s almost like this is not an early church history at all, but rather an (historical) account of how the Holy Spirit, using the apostles and prophets chosen by Jesus, established the Apostolic Church.

The Epistles are too Long to be Letters

The letters of the NT are surprisingly anomalous. Letter writing is itself a relatively “new” invention at the time, and the letters that are being written are usually between elites. Most letters are “official,” short (60 words on average), and to the point. This makes sense; literacy is low, official post does not exist, papyrus is expensive, and the physical act of writing is a chore. Literary letters do exist, to be sure. Cicero was a great letter writer, for example. But even Cicero’s letters are short compared to Paul’s. Just the first sentence of Romans is longer than most Roman letters! What is more, an entire industry arises as Paul’s letters are copied and distributed to other churches. This is new, and as we all know, necessity is the mother of invention. The epistles are what they are because they are being fitted to their pastoral purpose. Among other things, they provide this new cross-cultural, trans-local, and world-wide organization with a network, a world-wide-web that knits these churches together around a common cause but without a “capital city” and despotic ruler.

Revelation is too Cohesive to be an Apocalypse

There is only one Apocalypse in the New Testament, but it is not the first of its kind. The careful reader will spot that Revelation pays homage to Daniel and Ezekiel even in its opening verses, and the similarities will persist throughout the work. We also have a lot of apocalyptic literature outside the biblical canon, pride of place going to 1 Enoch. And yet, when compared to other examples of the genre, Revelation is unique in a number of ways, the most obviously of which is that, unlike these others, Revelation is not a compilation of multiple visions and oracles. Revelation is composed in response to one single vision, written down as a cohesive whole, and then distributed as a letter to seven churches. What is more, the composition is organized as a single linear narrative–one story that has a beginning, middle, and end.

This linear and narratival ordering is unique among the apocalypses. Revelation begins with Jesus opening the scroll and ends when he brings the New Jerusalem, and everything in between happens in a pretty straightforward before-and-after sequencing. It’s not a collage, but a story. This is not to say that there are not other ways of describing the structure of Revelation (there are also seven cycles of seven, and chiastic structures are popular), nor does it imply that the events described by Revelation are linear, but from a literary perspective it is significant that Revelation works like an ordinary story. There is a unity and cohesion and simplicity here that contrasts with other apocalypses.

Conclusion

Again, all this is meant to be suggestive rather than final, but what it suggests is that the literature of the New Testament, while conforming to already established genres, is nevertheless everywhere pushing the envelope. It uses the established literary forms creatively and experimentally. The NT writers are not doing this arbitrarily, or simply to be “different.” No, they need to push the conventions because their occasion and purpose demand it. The NT writers shape and twist the conventions of their time in order to better accomplish their purpose: to proclaim the name of Christ to the ends of the earth. This event–the coming of the Christ and the call to establish His Church–is unique and unprecedented, and as such cannot be contained within the established conventions of the day.