Approaching Scripture

The Bible has been called a bottomless well: We can always draw new refreshing waters every time we put our bucket into the well. Because it is God's living Word, no passage of Scripture can be exhausted by a single explanation. It offers fuller meaning and richness to each person and to each generation, without sacrificing its essential truth. Every passage in Scripture is multilayered. 

When engaging with Scripture, there are two primary senses with which to look at any passage: the literal and the fuller senses. The literal sense is the primary layer of a passage's meaning; it's what the original human author meant to say in the historical context that it was written. (N.B. To read in the literal sense does not mean taking everything literally, i.e., taking the texts completely at face value while not having any historical understanding.) Understanding this context is essential to being able to properly probe at deeper meanings. In contrast, the fuller (or spiritual) sense could not possibly have been understood by the original human authors; it is the divinely inspired revelations woven throughout Scripture. This is indicative of the fact that God is the primary author of all Scripture: The Holy Spirit, through the style, understanding, creativity, and limitations of the human author reveals Himself and His truths to us. Some of this can only be seen within the context of the Bible as a whole: There are connections between the texts which no author could have foreseen, and these connections enlarge the overall meaning of each text. St. Augustine speaks directly to this fuller meaning contained within faithful interpretation when he says that "the Old Testament is concealed in the New, and the New Testament is revealed in the Old."

Within the fuller sense there are 3 sub-categories. First, the allegorical: the symbolic or metaphorical meaning within the text—the way in which it points to a deeper theological or spiritual reality. Allegorical examples include the typologies of Christ in the Old Testament (such as Moses). Second, a moral interpretation discerns from the text the lesson it is trying to teach on how to live a virtuous life and applies that message to our own lives today. Third, the anagogical sense relates the passage to our eschatological end, that is, to death, judgement and the final destiny of the soul and humanity. It points towards our eternal destiny and the Heavenly realm.

So, when we read any Scripture, we should look at it first as it was originally written,  and secondly, with that knowledge in hand, we can begin to see it in the light of its greater context—a context that God planned from the beginning. These ways of looking at Scripture—the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical—are cumulatively referred to as the "four senses." According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church" (CCC, 115). We are encouraged and expected to utilize these senses in order to be fully open to all of the revelations and graces God wants to pour into us through Scripture.   

In order to read passages as they were originally intended (in the literal sense), it is vital to understand and read them as whatever kind of literature they are. There are many genres contained in the Bible—it is composed of many works, spanning across a wide array of times and literary types. What types of literature can we expect to find in the Bible? Click through the genres below to learn about each one’s distinctive features and discover which biblical books are representative of the genre.

Histories/Historical Accounts

Distinctive Features: Either entirely meant to be historical records of God's people or have parts/aspects containing detailed history.

Biblical Examples: 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Acts

Mythologies

Myths are traditional stories that unfold part of the worldview or ideals of a people. It embodies a culture's most essential truths.

Mainly applies to the book of Genesis, but there are mythological aspects in other books, especially in the first 5 books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy).

Epic History

Narratives that sit between history and mythos: They tell potentially true aspects of the origins of the people as it actually happened in history while incorporating more mythological aspects.

Exodus, Judges, and Joshua

Poetry

N.B.: Ancient Jewish poetry and the poetry that we know today are wildly different. It uses distinct literary techniques, unique ideas of word play, an entirely different language, etc..

Lamentations, Ecclesiastes

Lyric Poetry

Often intended for singing.

Song of Songs, Psalms

Didactic poetry

Specifically designed to teach the wisdom discovered through life experiences.

Job, Proverbs, Sirach

Epic Poetry

Contains elevated language & themes.

Song of Moses (Exodus 15)

Prophecy

Most, if not all, ancient cultures have prophetic writings, but a tell-tale sign of ancient Jewish prophetic writings is "garden language": Israel's prophets often use garden imagery because Israel and Judah were meant to be new gardens of Eden. The purpose of these prophetic writings was to call God's people back to the covenant that they had broken.

Major Prophets (longer length): Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel. 

Minor Prophets (shorter length): Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

Didactic Fiction

Not meant to just entertain but to teach—similar to a fable.

Jonah

Jesus, through His parables, uses a lot of didactic fiction.

Religious Novel

There is a focus on plot, pacing, character development. It is trying to be a well-written, engaging story for the audience, in order to convey the religious truths that it seeks to get across.

Tobit

Gospel

Before Christianity, the Gospel (literally, “Good News”) genre existed in some form in most cultures. They were often accounts, brought by messengers, proclaiming war victories of kings. The term was repurposed by the early Church to describe Christ's ultimate victory over death.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

As you begin to engage with Scripture, don't be surprised if you uncover a number of challenges. For example, you may encounter two accounts of the same event, but they are slightly different, or you may find dates that don't line up across books, or people living for a thousand years, or even passages that seem to contradict one another. Many people don't even realize that this is the case and pass over it, but these details that look like discrepancies invite us deeper into both the literal and the fuller sense of the Scriptures.

Take for example Matthew's genealogy of Christ. Matthew 1: 10-11 says, "Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon." This would lead you to believe that the order of kings just before the Babylonian Exile was Amos, Josiah, then Jechoniah. However, this isn't the case—as is stated specifically in the books of some prophets as well as Kings and Chronicles. In those accounts we see that the order goes Josiah, Jehoahaz (Josiah's youngest son), Jehoiakim, (Josiah's eldest son), then Jechoniah who is actually the son of Jehoiakim (so Josiah's grandson). Now, it would be easy to look at this as an error of some sort, or maybe an act of trying to rewrite history. But most likely it was neither.

Jehoahaz was only ruler for a very very short time before he was exiled to Egypt and lived out the rest of his days there. Jehoiakim was one of the worst kings in all of Judah's history—to the point that some prophets blame Jehoiakim singularly for the fall of Judah. And so, it can be speculated that, while fully being inspired by the Holy Spirit, the human author of Matthew, when writing out the lineage of Christ, could have chosen to exclude Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, perhaps as an intentional dig at the sons of Josiah for not being faithful to God, essentially saying that they don't have a spot in the true lineage of Christ. Now, this may seem like an incredibly small point, and in some ways it is; but little points like this make up so much of studying Scripture. Each and every small catch like this feeds directly into the fuller context and understanding of the greatest truths and mysteries that the Bible holds! When we encounter these seeming inaccuracies in the Bible we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that they are necessarily errors; instead we do well to consider that they are likely a dimension of the human aspect of the Biblical writing that God used in order to set up for the fuller meaning to be revealed later. 

After trying to understand what the Scriptures themselves mean as intended by the original authors, it is important that we go on to ask the question "what does this mean to me and my time," guided by the tradition of the Church. Through such personal reading of the Scriptures, accompanied by genuine and intentional prayer and reflection, we can begin to apply the message of the Scriptures to our own lives. And this can lead us to a continually more full understanding of the Bible.

Works Cited: St. Augustine, Questions on the Heptateuch, Question 2: Section 73.

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Elijah Coburn-McDonald is currently enrolled in the New England Catholic Biblical School, a four-year program that provides a rich study of Scripture. This post is a modification of a talk he delivered at one of the Ablaze Discipleship Group gatherings at St. Therese Little Flower Church.