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Biblical Forms: Myths, Legends, and Poetry

Explore the depth and beauty of the Bible's literary forms, from mythical tales to poetic Psalms, reflecting on man's profound relationship with God. Discover allegories, parables, and historical dramas woven into the text.

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Biblical Forms: Myths, Legends, and Poetry

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  1. The Bible as Literature

  2. Literary Forms in the Bible • Mythic lit • Legends • Short stories • Drama • Poetry • Allegory • parable

  3. Subject of all books: • Man’s relationship with God • Old Testament: vengeful god • New Testament: merciful god

  4. Mythic literature • Mythic lit exposes a truth beyond history • Truth rests on whether events make visible knowledge on a deeper level

  5. First five books: Law • In Hebrew: the Torah • In Greek: the Pentateuch

  6. Genesis: the creation and fall of mankind • Mankind and world created by a Supreme Being • Mankind is less than perfect and it’s our own darn fault! • What happens in the world concerns God but man is a free agent

  7. Exodus, etc. • Exodus through Deuteronomy: • Our tribal ancestors and the Patriarchs • Attributed to Moses, but actually there were probably many authors • Part of oral tradition • “theophany” - a “showing forth” of God; revealing the power and “otherness” of God

  8. Histories: Legends/Legendary figures • Historicized fiction: these accounts use history but before the Bible was recorded, the oral tradition “shaped” these accounts, like legend. • Fictionalized history: takes liberties with historical fact in order to express and preserve a culture

  9. Writings • Esther through Song of Songs: short stories; drama; poetry • Wisdom literature: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes; Song of Songs, Psalms

  10. The Psalms: • Poems and songs which praise God and commemorate events in the history of Israel • 70 out of 150 credited to David • Express the range of human emotion: joy, love, compassion, perplexity, sacrifice, anger, sadness… you name it, the Psalms express it. Some of them are really good at vengeance!

  11. Themes in the Psalms: • Penance and contrition • Elegy • Lamentation • Praise • Awe • Despair

  12. Poetic techniques used in the Psalms • Iteration (listing) • Personification • Hyperbole • Simile • Parallelism • metaphor

  13. Parallelism: 3 types • Synonymous parallelism: A parallel segment repeats an idea found in the previous segment. With this technique a kind of paraphrase is involved; line two restates the same thought found in line one, by using equivalent expressions. • “Wash me from my iniquity/and cleanse me from my sin”

  14. Antithetic parallelism • Antithetic parallelism: By means of this poetic construction, the thought of the first line is made clearer by contrast - by the opposition expressed in the second line. Examples of antithetic parallelism may be found in Psalm 1:6: "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, / But the way of the ungodly shall perish";

  15. Climactic Parallelism • Climactic: the thought in the first line builds to the climax over several verses The first idea is slowly built up and developed. A good example of this is: Psalm 29:1,2 Give unto the LORD, O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory and strength. Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name.

  16. Terms to know: • Covenant – promise, contract, invioable • Revelation – inspiration, “breath of God” • Canon – accepted books • Parable – a simple story meant to illustrate religious or moral principles. • Apocrypha – books not included in Protestant bibles, but included in Catholic bibles.

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