How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature--Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference and What It Means for Faith Today

by Steven L. McKenzie

McKenzie argues that to comprehend the Bible we must grasp the intentions of the biblical authors themselves--what sort of texts they thought they were writing and how they would have been understood by their intended audience. In short, we must recognize the genres to which these texts belong. McKenzie examines several genres that are typically misunderstood, offering careful readings of specific texts to show how the confusion arises, and how knowing the genre produces a correct reading. The book of Jonah, for example, offers many clues that it is meant as a humorous satire, not a straight-faced historical account of a man who was swallowed by a fish. Likewise, McKenzie explains that the very names "Adam" and "Eve" tell us that these are not historical characters, but figures who symbolize human origins ("Adam" means man , "Eve" is related to the word for life ). Similarly, the authors of apocalyptic texts--including the Book of Revelation--were writing allegories of events
that were happening in their own time. Not for a moment could they imagine that centuries afterwards, readers would be poring over their works for clues to the date of the Second Coming of Christ, or when and how the world would end.

For anyone who takes reading the Bible seriously and who wants to get it right, this book will be both heartening and enlightening.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Theology, Old Testament, Faith, Reference

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 11, 2005

About the author

Steven L. McKenzie is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Rhodes College. He holds a B.A. (summa cum laude) and an M.Div. from Abilene Christian University and the Th.D. from Harvard University. His research and teaching interests include: the history of ancient Israel, the literature of the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew language, the Dead Sea Scrolls, methods of biblical interpretation, and archaeology. He is a past president of the board of governors of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis. He is also a co-leader of the Middle East Travel Seminar, which tours Syria, Jordan, the Sinai, Israel, and Greece each Spring.

Reviews

[Trevor Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good intro to some of the genres that exist in the Bible. The familiar stories (e.g. Jonah) make for much more readable analysis than the more obscure stories, so the book feels a little uneven.

But all in all, it's a good book to understand why you shouldn't take scripture at face value.

[Jared Donis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is misleading. It actually is telling us how to doubt the Bible. It begins with the claim that most of the Old Testament stories are inventions, and not actual events. He carefully chose literature which support his views only, and there is nothing for modern readers that he recommended as to how best they can approach the different books in the Bible. It rather encourages them to quit reading it. I was looking for simple guidelines. Disappointed :(

[Larry · Rating 2 out of 5]

“When they are learned they think they are wise...”

It is enlightening, intriguing, even mind-stretching to read and contemplate this book. The discipline associated with the science of interpreting historical texts is worthy of respect and appreciation.

Epistemology, the science of how knowledge is acquired (roughly), suggests 7 means of knowledge acquisition: authoritarianism, empiricism, statistical empiricism, pragmatism, rationalism, skepticism, and mysticism. The science does not acknowledge the idea of revelation, except for example, as a hallucinatory byproduct of mysticism. Nor does it acknowledge pre-existing knowledge of good and evil, sometimes spoken of as the light of Christ with which every human is endowed.

Lacking a belief in or correct understanding of how God speaks to humankind, the theories put forth in this book are logical. It would be a mistake to believe they are more than theories or postulates based on the set of rules defined by the science of interpreting historical texts.

Those rules seem to have been well adhered to. And the interpretation necessarily constrained.

[Douglas Fyfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great (relatively) little book, which tries to open up the question of genre in the Bible. He slays a few sacred cows on the way, such as Jonah is fiction, Daniel was written in the 2nd century, Genesis (and indeed much of the Bible's "history" section) is more interested in aetiology than history, and so on. I was particularly intrigued by this latter suggestion, and will have to think more on what I think of it.

I did pick up this book because I was interested in how he described prophecy, which is that it is short-range, specific to the context it was written in. That is, there are no specific long-range prophecies. I don't think this is difficult within scholarship, but it will certainly sit uncomfortably with the average pew-sitter. What McKenzie didn't sufficiently fill out was the next step, that is, what does that mean when we read of "fulfilled prophecies" in the New Testament? But he's an OT prof, so we can forgive him that.

It was a good book, and will be great food for thought for those with eyes to see!

[Monique Américo · Rating 4 out of 5]

O livro apresenta a bíblia como um livro com vários gêneros literários diferentes, cada um com um determinado propósito para um determinado povo em uma determinada época, passando pelas cartas de Paulo até o Apocalopse. O autor demonstra muito estudo sobre o tema, e a leitura é fácil, embora uma pena que não exista versão em PT-BR. Na minha opinião, é como a bíblia deve ser entendida.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good introduction to the genres of Biblical writings and their interpretation.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Scripture, those from my own faith and those of other faiths. One of the reasons I love Scripture is because I believe there are an almost infinite number of ways to read, view, and interpret Scripture, so there's always something new to discover and always something personally applicable within them. Or, as the author of this book puts it, "The Bible is bigger than all of us."

So it's always fun to get new perspectives on how to read Scripture and see it from a different angle. In How to Read the Bible, Steven McKenzie approaches this book of Scripture in a way I'd never considered before: by looking at genre and how we view certain genres differently today than the ancient writers did.

McKenzie groups his book into five sections which each explore one genre: history, prophecy, wisdom literature, apocalyptic literature, and epistles. The first section addresses the vast difference in how modern civilization defines "history" and how ancient cultures defined it. For cultures such as ancient Israel, the role of history writing was to explain its present to itself by looking at its past and interpreting its meaning for the contemporary culture, kind of a cause and effect approach that identified what core values and principles were of highest value. One example McKenzie points out is the use of genealogies in the Bible. "In the ancient world...genealogies were a powerful tool for supporting a nation's or people's identity and traditions" and they were, therefore, "not static but were constantly shifting to reflect changes in social relationships." Very different from how we consider history and genealogy today!

I'll admit that I struggled with his views on the genre of prophecy, particularly Isaiah. McKenzie states: "Hebrew prophecy was always intimately tied to the prophet's own time and place...The objective of prophecy was the effect change in the religious and social practices of its hearers or readers." So far so good, but he goes on to say, "the genre of Hebrew prophecy in its original setting was unconcerned with the distant future. Therefore, the Hebrew Bible does not contain any prophecy intended as a prediction of Christ." McKenzie views these interpretations as later Christian readings, not necessarily illegitimate, but not initially intended by the original prophets. Contemporary events, he claims, rather than ones in the far distant future are being referenced in all those well-known verses about "a virgin shall conceive," and "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

Isaiah has always been one of my favorite books in the Bible because of its beautiful language and its seemingly multi-layered prophecies of Isaiah's time, Christ's time, and the latter days. Having sung Handel's Messiah from a young age, I will never be able to separate Isaiah's prophecies from the interpretation that identifies them with Christ.

To read the rest of this review, visit Build Enough Bookshelves.

[Andrew Watson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Then why does Jesus refer to Jonah in Matthew 16:4 directly? There doesn't seem to be any hidden message or meaning apart from being separated from God and the world. Too many Christians writing 'get out' doctrine so we can understand the word of God. The fact is, Jesus affirmed the scriptures at true and from God when he walked the earth, including this piece. How are we supposed to understand everything God did? We are so easy to dismiss things the world can't believe and we try to apply our own earthly logic when the fact is our earthly logic is folly in the eyes of God.

If you think this story is crazy and unbelievable then how do you believe that God himself died for us!? That the creator God, all powerful God who is most revered put Himself on a cross and died for the sin filled disgusting people we are?

False teaching has never been more prominent through use of Internet and is now worldwide for all access.

I would encourage anyone to read this book and discern, with the Holy Spirit, what God is saying to you and not what you want God to say to you.

Maybe the whole point of the sory of Jonah is so that Gods people can understand how Important sharing His word is and how we must obey His calling when asked or we may face serious consequences.

Who are we to question God? Isaiah 45:9-12.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores the Bible's literary genres and looks at the effects that has on what the author's original intent was and how that book or set of verses should be interpreted.

It starts by looking at Jonah and how it is often misunderstood as history when it is actually closer to fictional satire. The genre of history was not the same in the days the Bible was written as it for us today; it's primary intent was not to present what happened in the past. These points and others mentioned in the book caused me to rethinking my thinking about how I read the Bible and my expectation of it as a God's word.

Here is a quote from the last paragraph of the book that I think sums up it nicely:

Genres are be definition situational; as I hope this book has made clear, they are situated within specific human cultures and institutions. This is not to deny the divine inspiration of the Bible. It is, rather, to affirm that whatever the origin of biblical literature-whether divine or human-recognition of its different genres is an essential part of the process of communication and is therefore crucial to understanding it. And that has been the goal of the exploration of genres in this book-to contribute to a better understanding of the Bible.

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christians have inherited an unfortunate tradition of literal Biblical interpretation. Such interpretations cause believers to doubt and struggle with many stories and issues that were never meant to be a stumbling block for faith. This book demonstrates how a person can read scripture responsibly and avoid gross misreadings by understanding the purposes of specific genres in Hebrew literature. For example, readers were not meant to interpret Jonah literally, lest we miss the satirical point against people like Jonah. Or apocalyptic literature was never meant to predict events leading to the end of the world; if we do, we miss the point that the work was written to encourage those within an oppresive culture that persecuted noncomforming religious radicals. I think this book will help me avoid the shallow readings of scriptures in order to get more out of what it was meant to offer.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm almost done with this one. It has to be one of the most intelligent pieces of literature I've ever read about the Bible. Truly eye-opening. It was so interesting to learn about the different ways to categorize the type of writing in the Bible and how to sort out the literary elements from historical information. This book describes the author and conditions of the author at the time the book of the bible was written. That is so important to understanding the text, is to understand the context of what's written.

The only bad thing about reading this book is that you wonder how anyone in their right mind could believe a literal interpretation of the bible, and then it makes you sad because you realize that it is so much of America.

[Johanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book very interesting and gave me a new insight into understanding old/ancient texts, not the least, the bible itself. I have yet to read the entire bible, even though I've tried many times. However, I have in the last few months planned to, and recently bought the NRSV Study Bible for this reason. Reading this book has put me in a position to, hopefully, grasp the real contexts of the books of the Bible - and I will definetely get back to this book as reference.

[Andrea Hickman Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't absolutely amazing, but it was very interesting. Knowing the context and the intention of the literature found in the Bible is something that's very relevant in a time where there is an increasing return to fundamentalism. If only those people would bother to read books like this one and examine why they believe what they believe.

[Michael Porco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting points but I didn't like his writing style and I thought things got a little bogged down in extraneous details.