Decoding The Bible: Why Genre Matters

🎙️ In this episode of the Navigating an Ancient Faith Podcast, we kick off our new series, Decoding the Bible! 📖 We explore the rich variety of genres found in Scripture—from history and wisdom literature to poetry, prophecy, letters, and apocalyptic visions. ✨ By recognizing these diverse styles, we uncover how ancient audiences understood the Bible and how we can move beyond a flat, literal reading toward a more symbolic and layered understanding. 🔮 Join us as we dive into the beauty, depth, and mystery of the biblical text—and how its ancient genres still speak to us today. 🌿

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Listen 🎧: The Gospel Announcement series

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Chapters

• 0:00 Personal Journeys and Rediscovering the Bible
• 12:32 Historical Books: Genesis to Esther
• 22:24 Wisdom Literature: Job to Song of Solomon
• 33:08 Understanding the Prophets
• 39:34 The Gospels: Stories of Jesus
• 43:02 Epistles: Personal Letters
• 47:11 Apocalyptic Literature: The Book of Revelation
• 53:17 The Importance of Biblical Genres

Transcript

Know the Genre

JR: [00:00:00] It's sort of like being the subject of a Taylor Swift song.

You don't wanna be the subject of Taylor Swift song, 'cause you're gonna get bashed. You know what I mean? So if Paul writes multiple, yeah, yeah. If Paul writes multiple letters to your church, then that's not a good sign. It's like, oh yeah, we're doing something wrong. 

David: Alright, we're gonna start our series on Decoding the Bible. And actually I think this is the end of season three, right?

JR: Yeah.

David: Yeah. So, wow. It flies by, 'cause it seemed like we were just planning it, but we're going to talk about decoding the Bible. And you and I were just talking before we hit record about this is a bit of an ambitious project and we don't want to oversell it either.

JR: Yeah, yeah. All your questions about the Bible will be answered.

David: Yeah, this isn't the definitive guide to understanding this ancient document.

JR: Right.

David: But we do actually with this series, we want to distill some of our ideas about what we talk about on every episode, but we thought [00:01:00] it would be helpful to distill some of our ideas to say, this is how you and I have learned to read the Bible over time.

I'm not saying that's how I always read the Bible. This is helpful framework in understanding where we get some of the ideas that we draw from, that may seem kind of out there from time to time.

JR: Right. Well, we pointed out before that people often open the Bible and try to read it like a modern textbook and expecting it to behave like a scientific manual, rather than recognizing that it's a layered library of genres, and so you can read parts of the Bible a certain way that doesn't apply to other parts.

So this is kinda like a 10,000 foot view of how to tackle different genres and figure out how to maybe read and interpret a particular book of scripture and how that doesn't really apply across the entire Bible, and certainly not across the Old Testament versus the New Testament.

David: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And I also say that a lot of these aren't our ideas. [00:02:00] There's been a lot of people who have written about this. So whether or not you're maybe new to reading the Bible, maybe this will be a helpful guide pay attention to what you're reading, depending on where you're reading.

If you've read the Bible a long time, maybe this will bring in some different perspectives about why you're hearing some of the things you're hearing that go against maybe how you've always thought, right? And I don't wanna say a legitimate way to read the Bible, but why it's a helpful way.

JR: Yeah.

David: To read

JR: it's helpful.

David: this goes back to the early church fathers, right?

JR: Right.

David: Some of the ways they've read the Bible. So again, this is nothing new. This isn't some modern twist on how to read the Bible, but we're going to talk today about understanding what genre of scripture you're reading.

'cause there are different types of genres that we're gonna talk about that today. Next episode we're going to talk about the layers of meaning. Okay? So it's a little different take on the same thing. How one story can mean several different things and those aren't contradictory things. And then we're going to finish up [00:03:00] with, is the Bible literal or is it figurative? And what does it mean that the Bible is true? And we're gonna bat that idea around.

JR: Right, right. Well, it's just yours and my story is similar. We grew up in the church. We both went to Christian Colleges, Christian High School, and you went to seminary.

And recently, in the past 10, 15 years, we're in our fifties. In the past 10 or 15 years, we've had this renewed understanding on how to approach the Bible, and it really has kind of opened up for me the Bible in a way, stories that I've read a hundred times that I've heard sermons on things that I've even taught other people in Sunday school.

But it opens up in a different way and it gives me a new way to read the Bible. And so, kind of what yours and my journey is, is rediscovering the Bible in middle life. And that's part of what we're trying to share with Navigating An Ancient Faith. What was that turning point that made the Bible pop in a different way?

And so we'll try to synthesize down what we've been [00:04:00] talking about on the podcast and on our website for the past three years. And hopefully we will have a pretty good high level view of the way to view it.

David: Yeah.

JR: At least we'll give it a shot.

David: Yeah. And I can think of times where a book or a theological figure, something like that, has made me read the Bible differently. So, again, if you grow up in church, look, I went to seminary, so there's not a story in the Bible that I haven't heard and read multiple times, right. But there's always something kind of magic when someone else says, Hey, have you thought about this angle or this approach? And all of a sudden, both of us had this experience where this story just becomes new again.

JR: Yeah.

David: Right? And I can think of times like that. I'll be mentioning some of these throughout this series, but when I read a book, it's a guy named Bruce Feiler. He wrote a book called Walking the Bible, and then he did a PBS series.

JR: Right. Yeah, I remember that. I was about to say, it rung a bell.

David: one of those, yeah. That was one of those moments where I thought, he's taking the Bible and [00:05:00] he's literally going to these places and discovering what he can learn about it. And it was fascinating. And then of course, when you travel, right, we've experienced this. So you go to Israel and you go to Egypt and all of a sudden all these stories take on different meanings.

JR: Oh, yeah.

David: Right?

JR: When you're walking in that place, it has a whole new context and it's hard to explain, but I don't know. It happened at the Dead Sea. I remember going to the Dead Sea and there would be these columns that were shooting up out of the ground. And it's because scientifically what's going on is you got the Dead Sea and it's all this salt and minerals and things like that.

That's why you can float in the Dead Sea, and it pushes out, you know, in different spots in the rock. And so these columns of salt emerge kind of spontaneously in the surrounding area. And you said to me, oh, that's called Lot's wife, or they call those columns Lot's wife. And I was thinking,

David: That's right.

JR: I was thinking that's like a little too coincidental and weird [00:06:00] to say that there are these columns and they did, they look like people, you know, they look like a standing person or a statue out there in the middle of nowhere. And I don't know. It was the first time it got me thinking, well, I wonder if that's a metaphor for something.

Is that something that the locals understood that, for the first time, this is controversial, so we may be cutting this out, but for the first time I thought of the Bible as myth in the sense of, not that it's untrue, but in the sense that, oh, it's trying to tell you a deeper understanding of where something came from.

Do you know what I mean? How something emerged, how an idea emerged. You know, I'm not getting into whether or not Lot's wife really turned into a pillar of salt or not. I just thought it was one of many things that I saw that I was like, man, that's weird.

That's weird that there's this connection between the two. And it felt mythic, maybe, and so it kind of opened up the idea in my mind to kind of dig into the Bible a little bit with, through this mythic lens and see what we can find. And what we find is, man, there's stuff all over the [00:07:00] place that I've never noticed.

David: Yeah, that's right. So one of the first times I went, with a couple of buddies of mine, were driving through Egypt into Israel, and as we were driving out in the distance was this I don't know, call 'em a dust devil or something like that. It was basically a funnel of dust. And we all looked at each other and we just said, there's the pillar of smoke leading us through the desert.

JR: Yeah.

David: And so you can't help but notice some of those things when you travel and start to think about, okay, so what is it they're actually trying to say in these stories? But that's what we're gonna get into in this series. We're gonna try and shed some understanding on some of those things.

JR: Yeah.

David: Well, okay, so why is this important? And then we'll jump into the different genres. And I just wrote down kind of two opposite end of the spectrum that we tend to insist that the Bible is literal or true without a clear understanding of what those things mean, right?

JR: Yeah.

David: We're trying to defend the literalness or trueness of the Bible but sometimes we don't [00:08:00] even know what we're defending.

JR: Yeah, we think literal and true are the same thing. And that's a rational way to look at it. And rational sounds right, but when you're talking about pre rational writers, meaning that they weren't writing these things out as a cause and effect, A equals B leads to C leads to D, right? That's not the way ancient writers wrote. And so they were pre rational, meaning that they understood natural phenomenon, not in a scientific way, but it had its own personality, you know? The storm comes for a reason. Now, if you ask a rational person, Hey, it's storming in your neck of the woods today, they would say, well, oh yeah, that's because a hurricane was in the Gulf a couple weeks ago. And all that moisture is coming up through the states, and it's dumping rain on us, right?

That's the rational way to look at it. The pre rational way to look at it is to say there's a reason behind the storm. Not a scientific reason, but let's say a spiritual reason. And that's why they're always looking for witches when crops go bad. And what did you [00:09:00] do wrong?

That's why Job's friend sat him down and said, well, you've got some sin in your life. 'cause this much bad stuff doesn't happen to anybody without some kind of terrible sin in your life. And of course, they wrestle with that idea. We'll get into that. But yeah, it's just, it's a pre rational way of thinking.

I can't think of a better way to say it, but, that's just the way they viewed the world. And when you put yourself in that mindset, then some of these ideas make more sense.

David: Yeah.

JR: To go back to Lots wife, to go back to the pillar of smoke that you were talking about.

Some of these things make more sense through that lens.

David: Yeah, I was just watching a TV show and one of the detectives threw out an idea, said, well, this could be coincidence. And the detective, you know, really straight faced said, there are no coincidences.

But that's more of the maybe pre-modern way of thinking. If a storm comes, there are no coincidences.

There's a reason that storm is here right now. As opposed to more of the, well, once you understand how all these things work, that's just a coincidence that a storm came through.

JR: Right, right.

David: So, yeah, I thought of that when that [00:10:00] detective said that line. I'm like, oh yeah, there's some symbolism there too, right? That's the way of seeing the world.

JR: Yeah. When you get into this scientific mindset, you lose the ancient way of thinking. And that's all we're trying to kind of point out. Maybe this is too much of a rabbit trail.

It's what I've been wrestling around with in my own mind, trying to adopt the ancient way of thinking, you know, and our rational way of thinking, we lose that. It's almost like if we rode around on, scooters all day long, our legs would start to not work and it would be difficult to walk.

And it's sort of the same thing. It's like when you don't think that way, you lose an ability that our mind was actually meant to think through in a certain way to rationalize. Anyway, we can move on from that. 

David: Well, so the other side of the spectrum then is if something doesn't make sense to us in the Bible, and you see this too commonly that it, we just relegate it to myth or morality tales,

JR: Yeah,

David: We either try to defend everything as this is literally true. This is how it happened, this is why they wrote it down this way. [00:11:00] And if it doesn't make sense, we swing to the other extreme and say, well, look, they're just writing stories. Right?

JR: Right. Or we skip it all together.

David: Yeah. In fact, I was watching an interview where someone was talking to Pierce Morgan and they said, you probably know what I'm talking about.

They said, I think there's something spiritual behind this. And Pierce Morgan's response was, what , are you talking like the devil? You know.

JR: Yeah.

David: The pitchfork, the devil is doing this. And I thought, well, there you go. You know, that's a spiritual worldview versus just a materialistic worldview. You say something is spiritual, well or malevolent spirit,

JR: Yeah.

David: just picture the red devil with a pitchfork. And you go, really? You believe in that?

JR: No, I heard that episode, I forget what it was, but yeah, it was the same thing. There's one with a hyper materialistic worldview that says, are you talking about ghosts or angels that fly around? What are we talking about here? And it's like you're desperately grabbing onto the material way of viewing something when somebody's commenting, no, there's a [00:12:00] spiritual force behind this world that is the cause of all kinds of different things, you know? And sometimes we give it too much power in our narratives and sometimes we don't give it enough. But yeah, it's the tension between those things.

David: All right, so let's talk about some of these genres of scripture. And this Is very high level and we can talk about each one of these, but today we're gonna focus on what type of literature are we reading, when we're reading different sections of the Bible, right?

But when we're talking about the genres of scripture, I think I have about five broad genres. Okay?

JR: Okay.

David: The first one is, we can think of history, alright? And that's roughly Genesis through Esther. Now, I know the first question is, well, are you saying the rest isn't history? No, that's not what we're saying. It's just that those books of the Bible starting in Genesis and roughly running through Esther, and this will become clear as we go on, you could categorize that as a genre of history. Okay? Now what do we mean by history? 

JR: Right.

David: So when we're talking about [00:13:00] history, we're talking about, books that are trying to recount the history of the Israelite people. Okay? Now that's important

JR: Right.

David: These aren't histories as we think of them today, these aren't Ken Burns documentaries.

JR: Right.

David: These are written to tell the story of the Israelite people and the Jewish people,

JR: Yeah, it's the history of the Jewish people.

David: Yeah.

JR: Okay. So you can look at it as kind of the history of the world but it's better to look at it as the history of the Jewish people and their relationship to Yahweh God as opposed to other people groups at the time that had other gods.

David: Yeah, now they come into contact with other people groups, obviously. And they mention their other gods. But it's primarily, yeah, the history of the Jewish people, and that means a couple things. First thing it means is they're not trying to write a history of everything that was going on during that time.

JR: Right.

David: A common thing you hear sometimes is why didn't the Bible talk about the pyramids? The Bible's not trying to [00:14:00] document all of the Egyptian structures that were built, right?

JR: Right.

David: It happens to mention the time that the Israelites or the Hebrew people were in Egypt, but it's not trying to say, oh, and by the way, you should see these pyramids. They're amazing. We wouldn't expect to find that in the Bible.

JR: Right.

David: But some people do, right?

JR: Well, I mean, one of the keys to these historical books of the Bible is genealogy. And so they're not trying to say, here's all the great kings of all the world. It's saying this is the genealogy from Adam to Abraham, from Abraham, to Moses, and so obviously it picks up in the New Testament and there's a genealogy all the way to Jesus.

But the point of it is to tie this thread from Adam all the way to, the modern Jewish people of the time. It's saying here is the genealogy from Adam all the way up to modern, meaning modern Old Testament, the original readers of the Old Testament. And so it kind of catches you up to date, but it's genealogy, it's not [00:15:00] world history.

It's very specific history tied from the Israelite people and the God, Yahweh.

David: Yeah. And the other thing that it means that it's telling the history of the Jewish people is it's telling history from the perspective that it's trying to explain how we got here. Right? I think a lot of it was actually written down during exile and Babylon, that's where a lot of these come from. It doesn't mean that they just made it up, then it means that's when scribes actually started writing this down. So for that example, they're saying, this is how we got here. And as such, and this is gonna sound a little bit weird they're not trying to document year by year what happened. They're trying to highlight the key events and what they meant for how the people got where they are.

And that's a little bit different idea of writing history than say our modern idea of writing history.

JR: Yeah. 

David: So when we talk about history, big thing that this means is this is not our idea of modern[00:16:00] history. Modern history is our meant to be neutral, right? So if I'm gonna write a history of World War II, I'm gonna give you key battles, the generals who fought, like, who won. I'm gonna give you the casualty numbers, right?

JR: Yeah.

David: I'm focusing on the facts, right?

JR: Right.

David: When ancient, and I'm not talking about just the Bible, but when ancient write history, that's not their approach. In other words, they're not trying to be as factually correct as possible. They're actually trying to frame a narrative with their histories.

Whether you're talking about Heroditus you know, Suetonius who writes about the Roman Empire. Yeah. You've gotta understand about any ancient historian. They're framing a narrative.

JR: Exactly. And in that way, history wasn't just written, it was inhabited, it was lived out in a real way that we miss when we try to read it like a textbook, like a history textbook.

David: Yeah. And from that perspective, even I think we've said this before, we heard this at [00:17:00] a conference, is, you can't view the world from nowhere. We have this modern idea that I can write a history completely unbiased.

JR: Right.

David: That right there is not true.

JR: Sure.

David: But we like to think that we can.

JR: Yeah. Just tell me the facts and the unbiased facts, and that will be an unbiased review of any situation, and it doesn't work that way. That was a great talk. We listened to that guy talked about, say everything is viewed from some place and it doesn't matter if you set up a camera to record something, it's still at a particular angle. It's still seeing it from only one perspective. And the idea that you could write this unbiased review of history is pointless. And to your point, that's not what they were even trying to do. They're not trying to write you know, this is just the facts and this is how we got here and this is completely unfiltered.

They're actually saying, no, this is a biased narrative. This is how our people got to where we are right now in the Old Testament [00:18:00] and our journey along that path and the things that brought us here.

David: Yeah. Yeah. So, the ancient and more specifically the writers of the Old Testament, they didn't even have this notion of trying to write an unbiased account of everything that happened.

They were telling the story through the patriarchs, through battles, through the kings, right? Through all these different events to frame a narrative. And that's different from how we think of history today. This helps explain parts of the Old Testament when you realize this, because a first question probably if you say Genesis is history.

It's like, okay, what about Genesis one and two? Are you saying that's history? Well, when you understand that they are framing a narrative of how these people developed and came together and got to where they were, maybe at that time actually in exile, maybe later back in Jerusalem. But in that sense then, yes, Genesis one and two is history from a standpoint that is, it's the [00:19:00] foundation myth, right? Of their people

JR: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

David: When we use the word myth, don't hear the word it's not true. It's made up. Okay. It's a foundation story of how all this began.

JR: Yeah, it's mythic. And so Genesis has this cosmic feeling to it. It's cosmic in its scope, but the function of it is much more covenantal, right? It explains Israel's role in creation, not the mechanics of creation itself.

David: Right.

JR: Yeah. It's also important to realize that most of these, especially Old Testament, probably started out as a narrative, right? It's an oral tradition. So it was passed down from camp to camp, from generation to generation, spoken around the campfire, and at some point somebody said, you know, these are our foundation stories. We need to write these things down. And so they wrote 'em down. But it is important to realize that there was kind of a transition that it went through from the oral tradition down to the written tradition.

And it wasn't written from the beginning to say, [00:20:00] we are trying to have a written account of exactly what happened on the day of creation or whatever it is, right? It started out as an oral tradition.

David: Yeah, that's right. And oral traditions, they're actually pretty reliable because they take great care in passing them down. So even though some of these may have been written down during the exile in Babylon, oral tradition goes back a long way.

These are stories that, would've been passed down for hundreds and hundreds, maybe even a thousand years.

JR: Right?

David: Right. And again, in our mind we think that makes that story suss, but it doesn't. In the ancient mind, this is the story, right, because this is the way it's been told for hundreds of years.

JR: Yeah, exactly.

David: Yeah. Alright. I'll mention a couple more things. When you look at the book of Deuteronomy, it's basically one big speech by Moses.

JR: Right.

David: Deuteronomy 1:1 says, these are the words of Moses as he spoke to all Israel in the wilderness.

And then Deuteronomy something like 23 chapters. And when you realize that, you may go, [00:21:00] man, that is a long church service. Right?

JR: Yeah.

David: That's one long speech. But again, the ancient recorded speeches like this.

JR: Right.

David: Right? It doesn't mean Moses literally one day got up and said, okay, record this. 'Cause this is gonna be the book of Deuteronomy. Right?

And everyone was like, oh gosh, we're in for a long one. This is a synthesis of everything that Moses had taught in the form of a speech to the people of Israel before he died and departed. Right?

JR: Right.

David: And

JR: Yeah. It was sort of his parting words. It,

David: were.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's important to understand things like that. That was perfectly legitimate way to write history in the ancient world.

JR: Well, that's how all history kind of came from the ancient, well, everything we know about the ancient world, aside from Israel and the Bible, that's how it's passed down is speeches that have been written down.

David: Yeah. Anything else you wanna say about the history part?

JR: There's so we're, we're flying so high. That's the problem. It's like, there's [00:22:00] a million things I want to actually comment on, but then I'm thinking, yeah, we've got five different genres that we're gonna try to roll through, and there's no way to kind of dig in.

But each one of these man is a whole podcast in itself, kind of exploring and digging about what that means for history at the time. The way they set it and the way they passed it down, that, man, it's gonna be hard to stay on track this episode.

David: So that brings us to the Book of Job. Job through Song of Solomon can generally be categorized as poetry, or a better way to say it might be wisdom literature.

JR: Right.

David: And again, wisdom literature isn't a genre of literature that we are used to. What closest thing might be? Psychology or self-help or something like that.

But it's not even that good a comparison. So when you think of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, those five books roughly are books of poetry, but more broadly, wisdom literature.

JR: Well, you and I have both read Marcus Aurelius Meditations. I don't know if I [00:23:00] got through the whole thing, but Meditations is sort of, wisdom literature. It's not in any particular context. It's just saying, here's what I've learned being the emperor of Rome for, my tenure. And he kind of wrote down these, it's similar to Proverbs, I guess, but yeah. Pass my wisdom along.

David: What's interesting about Marcus Aurelius, Meditations is there's no indication that he actually thought it was gonna be quote, published.

JR: Yeah.

David: It was his journal.

JR: Right.

David: People got ahold of it and thought, wow, this guy's not a dummy, right? He knew what he was doing.

JR: He wrote it down for his own reference so he could go back and kind of, these are my thoughts for this day, and that's just another way of explaining the different genres, how these things get written down. If you have the idea that somebody sat down and said, I'm gonna write the book of Deuteronomy, the people need this, then you miss the subtleties of how those books came to be, and that's why genre matters.

David: Yeah. So starting with the Book of Job, maybe. Now job is interesting because [00:24:00]again, categories aren't mutually exclusive. So when you say Job is wisdom literature, the first objection might be, well, you're saying Job isn't a true story. Now that's not what we're saying. We're saying it's primarily wisdom literature because Job is interesting. Every now and then I'll go back and I'm like, ah, I wanna read the Story of Job again.

But the story of Job is like two chapters.

JR: Right. The story, you know of Job. 

David: Yeah, the story you know, the actual narrative of what's going on, right? And then it's like 35 to 40 chapters of just these dialogues that he's having with his friends, dialogues he's having with God.

JR: Right.

David: It very much resembles wisdom literature.

JR: Right. Well, it resembles like a Greek philosophical symposium. You know, you read the works of Plato, how they just dig into one idea and they go back and forth and what about this and what about this? And they just go on and on. That's what Job reads like, at least the rest of the book of Job after the first couple chapters.

But instead of searching for abstract [00:25:00] truth, they're kind of wrestling with a relational God or something like that. You know, they're wrestling with the ideas of God.

David: Yeah. I just heard a podcast on Plato's Republic, and it was a really good podcast because it summarized the 10 books, I think in 45 minutes. It's another one where it's supposed to be this dialogue that Socrates was having at this dinner party. When you hear that, you think, really this is, 

JR: this is what they talked about.

David: of literature. This is what they talked about for like two hours. And people write books on the meaning of this?

But that's the way they wrote, right? They took all this thought and they put it into this dialogue form that very much, yeah, resembles Job.

JR: Yeah. 

David: It's neat. 'cause a lot of these genres are also found in other ancient works as well.

So I was doing some research on this and there's a writing called the Babylonian Theodicy. So this is purely Pagan, right? Babylonian. And one of the books in this [00:26:00] Babylonian Theodicy is this guy kind of dialoguing with the gods. And he says, "in my youth, I sought the will of my God. With prostration and prayer, I followed my goddess." Cause it's pagan, right?

JR: Mm-hmm.

David: "But I was bearing a profitless wage as a yoke." Okay, now that just means I'm not making any money here. Right? "My God decreed instead of wealth destitution." Now that's interesting 'cause that sounds a lot like Job. What this person is writing in this Babylonian Theodicy is basically, look, I've tried to obey the gods. I've said my prayers, I've made my prostrations to the goddess. And instead of wealth and prosperity I'm destitute.

JR: Yeah.

David: This is not just, right?

JR: Yeah. Well, it's this wrestling of an idea and you can see it, the tension in the writing of this, and you see the tension in some of the psalms. This, why have you forsaken me? They're not trying to outline theology that God forsakes us sometimes. [00:27:00] You know, they're trying to say, this is my wrestle with the God, Yahweh.

This is how I wrestle with these ideas. It feels like I'm in the valley of the shadow of death. And why have you for, you know, you're not around, I feel distant. It's wrestling with ideas. And when you do that in an honest way, well that's the book of Job. It's this wrestling in an honest way of what have you done wrong?

You know, his wife saying, curse God and die because clearly you've done something to upset him. And it's just this dialogue of this wrestle saying, no, I think there's something more going on. And Job never figures it out, by the way. It's not like he says, Hey, I just got a memo.

This is a wager man. This was all between God and the devil, right? But yeah, it's just Job wrestling with what seems like injustice in the world. And that's what a lot of these old dialogues, that's what they did is they wrestled with ideas.

David: Yeah, that's right. And so , I'm glad you brought that up. 'cause that statement you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I think it's from the Psalms, that's [00:28:00] not a theological statement.

JR: Right.

David: That God abandoned him.

JR: Right.

David: In fact, that Jesus quotes that on the cross. And there have been people who have said, see, Jesus is saying that at that moment, God abandoned him.

And no, that's not theological statement. Jesus is actually quoting poetry, he's quoting Psalms that sums up how he was feeling in that moment, right?

JR: Right. 

David: But, it's not a theological statement that God abandoned him. Does that make sense?

JR: Sure.

David: Yeah.

JR: Yeah, it's, well, again, it's just honest, honest conversation. You know, we've all had conversations that have gotten real, you know, and it's like, here's the way I'm feeling. Sometimes the thoughts that are in your head have to come out of your mouth before you can process them in a real way, you know what I mean?

And so, you know, you've heard the term say it out loud. It's like, well, we think things, we bat ideas around in our head. But sometimes when I say it out loud, if I'm talking to you and I say it out loud, I'm like, look, now that I say it out loud, that [00:29:00] really sounds crazy, or this sounds like a terrible idea.

But that's just the way our minds work. And sometimes you have to put words to your ideas and put them out in the world so that you and other people can wrestle with these ideas. You can't just leave 'em in your head. And so some of these dialogues, that's what they're doing. They're spitting out saying, okay, this sounds crazy, but I think God's forsaken me.

What do you think about that? And it's like, okay, let's break this down. So you go back and forth about it. But yeah, it's almost like you have to speak it into existence in order to wrestle with the idea itself.

David: Yeah, and you're right that sometimes you have to write something down

JR: Yeah,

David: to see it. You know, there's something about writing something down and seeing it and that becomes more tangible. It becomes real, rather than just all these random ideas, bouncing it around in your head, right? Or speaking it into existence.

So yeah, that's a lot of what wisdom literature is.

JR: Yeah.

David: And so we get to the Psalms then, and we think of the Psalms as poems, but they're [00:30:00]also songs. They're hymns, it's this weird kind of mix of what we don't have today.

JR: Yeah, yeah.

David: Well, it's like our worship music. No, it's more than that. Right?

JR: Right.

David: They were written in such a way, let's say they contained these theological ideas that were written in such a way that made them memorable, right? Because people didn't have their iPhones, they memorized a lot of this. So, you know, we know that they were put to music because there's these notes sometimes even says, it says to the tune of this, you know, so it'd be like you reading something and then it's like to the tune of Metallica's, Enter Sandman, right?

JR: Right.

David: You're like, oh wow.

JR: That would make it memorable. 

David: Yeah, it might make it easier to sing. But you know, that's what Psalms and hymns, it became this genre of its own. So much so that when the Apostle Paul, he commonly wrote to some of the churches in the New Testament, in fact, Colossians, he says, "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord," [00:31:00] because this is a way to keep things memorable, right?

Especially in maybe illiterate societies. You can always memorize a song, right?

JR: Sure, sure. Well, you think about nursery rhymes or children's songs, you know, they always teach a lesson. They're memorable, they're put to a different tune. And then when they get a little bit older, you can point back to that and say, do you remember this song as a kid? This is why you sang this.

And so it's kind of a teaching thing. Now, obviously it gets deeper and deeper. The older you get, the more mature you get. But yeah, I mean, look at our music today.

It's so, it pops in your head, you know, it's like, who lives in a pineapple under the sea type of stuff. It immediately pops in your head when you know the lyrics. 'cause you know the song, right?

If you read the lyrics without the music in your head, it almost is absurd.

And maybe that's the effect of sometimes we read Psalm and since we don't know the context of the music, since that didn't survive the ages, then, it's missing something.

I'm sure it meant more to them at the time, even though [00:32:00] they're obviously profound today, just the lyrics. But imagine putting the music on top of it, the effect that would have, especially if you grew up hearing it.

David: Yeah. I have this prayer book that I read through, every day. In the evening it's the Vespers and there's always a hymn. And it's weird 'cause it's just the words, and sometimes I recognize the words. Sometimes it is just a poem, but sometimes it's an old hymn and I'm thinking, oh, I haven't heard that in a long time.

So I'll YouTube it and I'll actually play the YouTube video. But it always amazes me how that song then sticks in my head the rest of the evening. 

JR: Oh yeah.

David: That's the purpose of it.

JR: Sure. Supposed to, what is it? They call it earworms.

David: Yeah. It's the power of music, right? And so, yeah, I think that's what Psalms is supposed to be. It's not only deep theological wrestling with God, but it's also written in a way that makes it memorable. And then you add music on top of it. And that's why the Apostle Paul again tells his churches sing to [00:33:00] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, right? So in that sense, it is kind of like our modern worship as well.

JR: Right.

David: Alright. So after Song of Solomon, we get to the prophets and this kind of rounds out the Old Testament. So Isaiah through Malachi. but yeah, the rest of the Old Testament is these prophetic oracles. Now, here again, you start to go, well, isn't that history? Well, it's primarily prophetic oracle, but it's all set in historical context, right? Because it's always a prophetic oracle in response to something,

JR: Right.

David: right?

JR: Yeah. And these are tricky because there's a tendency to read the Bible thinking that it means something for me, JR. In 2025, right?

David: Yeah. 

JR: The minor profits especially are difficult to read through that lens. You're just not gonna get it, you know? There's obviously things to be learned, but , again, it's not this universal wisdom of this is the way the world works.

It's [00:34:00] specifically time and place dependent, and these are the patterns that we saw. These are the prophecies that we made, and this is how it came to pass. Right. So it's sort of like a documentation of the prophets that made the prophecy and it came true, and how that moved the Israelites forward.

David: Yeah. So there was this whole period where different events were happening. The prophets were people who were trying to call people back to God, trying to call people back to the covenant. They were trying to explain why did the Northern Kingdom go into exile to Assyria? Why did the Southern Kingdom go into exile to Babylon?

And so prophets were people who were trying to explain, here's what's going on in the spiritual realm. Why this is happening. So what you can't do is you can't think of prophet as someone who just predicts the future.

JR: Right. Like Nostradamus, right.

David: Yeah. So some people try and read these as predicting the future.

They're trying to say how the world is gonna end. There's [00:35:00] maybe a small element in some of the prophetic books, but mainly they're trying to explain, Hey, this is what's happening as a result of our disobedience to the covenant with God and here is how we get back to the covenant, right?

JR: Right. Well, we talked in another episode, we talked about that prophets see patterns and they present that to the people.

And so part of reading the prophets is picking up on this pattern that they see. And there is probably a modern benefit in that, in seeing that history repeats itself. But the other thing that you said that's really beneficial in reading the prophets is this idea of the spiritual realm mirroring the physical realm.

And they thought that way, and that's how they presented things. And so there is always this explanation of what's going on in the spiritual realm that's actually affecting where we are as Israelites today. You know what I mean? That's kind of the way they frame a lot of these things.

And so it's helpful today reading this, recognizing that this is where we get a lot of our ideas [00:36:00] that help us flesh out what's going on in the spiritual realm and what's behind the things that we can't see, right? And it's comes from a lot of the prophetic writings in the Old Testament.

David: Yeah. Well, you mentioned Joel, 'cause one of the things I wrote down here has to do with Joel. And Joel starts out, you know, I think you said this idea of Joel says, "Has anything ever happened like this in our time?" Right?

JR: Right.

David: But Joel's talking about, so Joel's this actual prophet Israel, right? But he says on this day that whatever's happening, this calamity is taking place.

He says, "the sun and moon grow dark, the stars lose their brightness," right? Joel 2:10. So that's not an astronomical explanation of what's happening. 

JR: Yeah.

David: That is a description of what's happening in the heavenly realm, right? And it's almost literally like heaven is collapsing just as things are collapsing here on earth.

JR: Right. And it's mirroring. Yes.

David: Yeah. That's right. And I [00:37:00] don't know, maybe the last thing I'll say, you brought some of this up, but prophecy often has layers of fulfillment. So when we read stuff in some of the prophets and we said, well, this took place back in Isaiah's time, right? Or Joel's time, and this prophecy was fulfilled. But there's a sense of these prophecies because they are based on patterns of how the world work. You can also say but they are also continually being fulfilled, right?

JR: There's rhythms that are echoing still today.

David: Yeah. And so some of the same patterns are still applicable, even though it may have been something that was talked about 2,800 years ago or something like that.

And that's why there is some validity of looking at prophecy and saying, well, look, it happened back in Isaiah's time. Let's not be so foolish to think that doesn't happen in our time as well, right?

JR: Yeah. And this, may be a better conversation for the Layers episode, but you're exactly right. There are layers to it, that there is the immediate prophecy that this is about to happen in the life of [00:38:00] Joel or in the life of the prophet, that this is gonna happen right away.

But then there's also ripples of it that keep coming and that you can see the pattern of it and see it emerge. It's kinda like seeing mountains off in the distance and they all appear to be close. But then, you know, in reality they may be miles apart, they may be separated by valleys and rivers and things like that, but at a distance it all looks like one flat group of mountains, right? And so prophecy is kind of like that. The closer you get to the prophetic word, a particular mountain emerges, but then there's mountains that go on behind it, so it kind of ripples out a little bit. And so anyway, it's easy to read it thinking that it's about this one particular time and place, and it may be, but there's also echoes of it that can be applicable through

David: Yeah.

JR: other times of history.

David: Alright, so that brings us to the New Testament and the first section of the New Testament is the gospels. This is probably gonna make a little more sense to people, but the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. [00:39:00] Okay, so we actually talked about this during our gospel announcement series, and I could put a link to that in the show notes too. But gospels are accounts of the life of Jesus. But here again, a gospel was a very specific genre of literature that wasn't even unique to the Bible because in the Roman Empire, people had gospels, right? And what they were doing is these were declarations of good news about how the world was about to change, usually based on who was the new emperor or a big battle that had just been won.

JR: Right,

David: But that was a gospel announcement. And so the gospels are written, you could think of it this way, a little bit similar to the Old Testament history part is these are not written as a travel log of Jesus' life,

JR: right.

David: right? These are written as stories of Jesus that leads up to this larger announcement, which is he is ushering in a new kingdom. 

JR: Right. Yes. If Genesis told [00:40:00] Israel's origin story, then the gospels tell the Gentiles origin story, so to speak, right? Or at least how the rest of us become partakers in God's divine plan.

David: That's a good way to think of that.

JR: Yeah.

David: So several places, Matthew 4:17 says, "From that time on, Jesus began to preach, repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near." Like that's the heart of a gospel story right there. The world is about to change based on what I'm going to preach and do ultimately, right?

JR: Right. 

David: And so the last thing I'll say on this, 'cause I think people are probably pretty familiar with the gospels, is that it's also why that different gospel writers say Luke versus John can put stories in different orders. That frustrates us because we want the chronology of what in AD 28, what was Jesus doing?

Why does Mark put this at a different place? Right?

JR: Yeah.

David: They're not trying to write the chronology of Jesus. They're trying to tell the stories of Jesus [00:41:00] in a way that reinforce the larger idea. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near, right?

JR: Yeah. And it comes from their individual point of view too. Have you ever seen a movie where the first part of the movie is from one person's point of view, and then the second part of the movie is from somebody else, then they're the third person, you know? And those are always kind of interesting movies because through all these different people saying, this is how I saw this, whatever, this murder mystery type thing, this is how I saw this murder. And then somebody else says, well, here's what I saw. And they explains their part of it. It paints a broad picture of who done it, right? Well, that's kind of what you can kind of look the gospels that way.

Not that they disagree. 'cause they really do, they go together well. But again, if you're trying to say, well, look, if Luke and Matthew were trying to do an exhaustive day-to-day history of Jesus, how come Matthew left this out and Luke included it. And it's like, that's from Luke's point of view.

This was an integral story in the way he saw the life of Jesus. And then Matthew [00:42:00] and Mark did the same thing. And so when you have the four gospels come together, it paints a complete picture. But just like that movie that comes from different angles, that's kind of what you get, when you read all four gospels together.

David: Yeah. That's a good way to think of it. I can't actually think of a movie off the top of my head, but I have seen movies like that.

There was a man, people either loved it or they just go, I don't understand. But I feel like it was one of those, it was Tom Cruise.

JR: Magnolia.

David: Magnolia. That's what it was,

JR: Yes.

David: that.

JR: Magnolia, yes. It was very much like that. And Magnolia was, I hated it. And then I sat down with some people and talked about it and I said, I've gotta watch it again. And I watched it again. I'm like, this is genius.

David: I would probably appreciate a lot more if I watched it again, but it was one of those movies that confused me. But I heard people raving about it. People loved it or hated it, let's put it that way. 

JR: Yeah. Right, but anyway, yes. From different points of view it either fell flat or it painted an amazing picture that you're like going, [00:43:00] I can't believe what genius wrote this.

David: Alright, so after the gospels, most of the rest of the New Testament is what we would call letters, personal letters or epistles, right? That's the biblical word for them. These are the writings of Paul. These are the writings of Peter. John to specific churches or individuals. And the best way to think about epistles, this is an easy one. It's personal correspondence.

JR: Right.

David: It's very personal between the writer and a person or a group of people. We have done a bunch of series on Paul's letters, so people should be familiar with that. There's a couple things to keep in mind. So not everything written in a personal letter can be applied across all space and time.

JR: Sure.

David: Right? So when Paul says to one church Hey, you should wear head coverings and men don't wear your hair long, and, women should be silent. Even when He's backing it up with a theological argument, he's not saying, This is the rule across all churches. If that [00:44:00] makes sense.

JR: Yeah. This is the new law, you know, from now on.

David: Yeah,

JR: Yeah. The 11th commandment. Women shouldn't speak in church. No. He's addressing a, specific issue in that church. And those things can again repeat themselves in history, and so you can learn from it of specific issues in other churches.

But yeah, recognize that this is a specific one-on-one correspondence, and we can draw theological components out of that, but when you try to drill down and say, everything that he said is trying to establish theology, permanent theology, you're going to get off kilter there, you know?

David: Yeah, and you're gonna come up with some weird theology.

JR: Yeah. Right,

David: It's always interesting because you can tell the churches that actually things are going pretty well. I think Philippians is one of those letters where man, you know, they kind of had their act together. Paul didn't have a lot of bad to say, as opposed to the Corinthian church where,

JR: right.

David: God only knows what was going on there. Paul's probably pulling his hair out. But, the church is where things are going well, he doesn't give them a lot of rules.

JR: [00:45:00] Right.

David: know, he doesn't have to say Hey, do this, wear this in church, do that, because they got it down. Just keep doing what you're doing. And sometimes we read Paul's letters to try to get a list of rules to live by. When Paul is really, I think saying if you deepen your relationship with Christ, you wouldn't need all these rules I have to write to you all the time, right?

JR: Yeah. I wouldn't have to spell it out. And we all know that there was other churches that Paul never writes, or at least we don't have letters for, you know? And the assumption is, yeah, maybe they were doing it right. It's sort of like being the subject of a Taylor Swift song.

You don't wanna be the subject of Taylor Swift song, 'cause you're gonna get bashed. You know what I mean? So if Paul writes multiple, yeah, yeah. If Paul writes multiple letters to your church, then that's not a good sign. It's like, oh yeah, we're doing something wrong.

David: Guys, we got the fourth letter coming in. 

JR: This is gonna go viral. We're in trouble now. To your point,

David: at Antioch is going, Paul never wrote us letters.

JR: Yeah, he never says anything to us. It is [00:46:00] kinda like reading, like imagine love letters that you and your spouse wrote back and forth. It'd be like taking a love letter from your spouse and reading it for grammar. You know what I mean? Checking for grammar mistakes. Well, did she punctuate?

You know, it's like you're missing the whole point. The whole point of it's to get the emotions from it. That's what it's trying to communicate. And a lot of times that's what Paul's doing. He's trying to communicate an idea sometimes in response to an emotional situation that's going on at that particular church.

David: Yeah, yeah. And sometimes Paul comes across as pretty emotional.

JR: Sure.

David: I think at one point with the Corinthians, he has to basically apologize and like guys, I was pretty ticked off when I wrote that last letter.

JR: Yeah, I was being dramatic there. I should have dialed it back, but just destroy that letter. Nobody's gonna read it.

David: Yeah, that's the missing letter actually. 

JR: Just throw that away if you would.

David: Wouldn't that be interesting to find that letter?

JR: Oh, yep. Man, I'm telling you.

David: 'cause there is that missing- there might be even two, but he talks about his harsh letter. That would be fascinating if [00:47:00] someone unearthed that.

JR: Well, we need to go back to Qumran and start digging around.

David: You know it hadn't all been found.

JR: Yeah, there's caves all up in there, man. We just gotta do the searching, let's be committed to it.

David: Yeah, that's right. So the last genre is apocalyptic and we're talking about the book of Revelation. And there's a lot to say here, on the other hand, I feel like we've talked about some of this when we talked about, say, the end of the world.

JR: Right.

David: But apocalyptic is definitely its own unique genre of literature.

JR: Yeah. It's tough.

David: Yeah. The main point, I think we said this during one of our episodes previously, is, you know, we think of apocalyptic as confusing and hidden, but the word apocalypse means unveiling or revealing. So it's actually meant to show you what's happening.

JR: Right. Yeah. 

David: Kind of the opposite of how we often take it.

JR: Oh yeah. You read it and you're just more confused when you end it, you know? But we talked about this in The End of the World episode that we think of apocalypse as well, the end of the world, right? And it really, [00:48:00] the word literally means unveiling, which is ironic because it's tough to read.

I don't feel enlightened when I read it. I don't feel like, oh wow, that makes perfect sense. This is great.

David: Oh, now I know what's gonna happen. 

JR: Yeah. There we go. If you hadn't brought in the Dragon and the Beast.

David: and yeah. What I'm supposed to do with any of that.

JR: Now it all makes sense. 

David: Well, no, there's a lot of symbolism used in apocalyptic literature. And look, you even see some of this in Daniel and some of the prophets. So there again, these genres aren't mutually exclusive.

But, you know, Revelation is kind of the main one we talk about. There again, it's describing a pattern, right?

It's describing, here's how a world is going to end. And so that's kind of where we get confused sometimes in Revelation because we say, well, is John talking about the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A D, which would've been on his mind, or is he talking about a future event?

Or is he talking about something in the past? And the answer is yes, he's talking about all that.

JR: Every bit of it. Yes.

David: Yeah, [00:49:00] because it's a pattern that repeats itself. And if you understand the pattern, you can see how these things repeat themselves. So yes, it is about the fall of Jerusalem, and yes, it will be about how God's kingdom ultimately comes as well.

JR: Right. The reason it's difficult for us to understand is 'cause we've lost that ancient way of thinking. And so they use metaphors that I think was probably pretty common in the ancient mindset. You know, you talked about the beast in Daniel, a revelation, with seven horns and then the horn had a one horn that came up and destroyed all the other horns.

Right. All this kind of stuff that the modern person thinks, what is this? I mean, trying to visualize what he's saying in your mind. But I think the ancient person recognized beasts as kingdoms and recognized horns as leaders, and I think it was probably more common in their everyday apocalyptic conversations.

You know, apocalyptic letters to each other that these were common metaphors that were used. And some of that stuff is lost on [00:50:00] us.

David: Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. And you're exactly right. When he talks about a beast with seven horns, people are going, oh, he's going back to Daniel. We all know Daniel, right?

JR: Yeah.

David: They would have known that.

JR: Sure.

David: But we often don't. And look, he's also making a political commentary on the Roman Empire.

So when he says, you know, the whore of Babylon rides in on a Beast , people are going, oh, that's not gonna go well in Rome.

JR: I was about to say, you're getting too close.

David: know, yeah, we might say, well, how did they make that connection? But they would've made that connection.

JR: Sure.

David: Fairly quickly.

JR: Yeah. And you're right, they're probably gritting their teeth saying he's getting a little bit too close to just saying it, right? You better watch it, you know?

David: Right. But if you just come out and say it, then you're not writing apocalyptic literature, right?

Because it has to apply today and tomorrow and a hundred years from now. And a thousand years from now, right?

So that's why it has to be the beast was seven horns and the whore riding the beast into the ocean and all these kind of crazy images.

JR: Yeah. I hadn't thought about that, but you're [00:51:00] right. If he was talking about one specific instance, he might come out and say that specific instance. But he's talking about a pattern, something that could apply to multiple times in history. So yeah, he's gotta be more vague with it, so it can be repeatable.

David: Well sometimes we talk about symbolic patterns and sometimes it's what we say oh, that's the edge of the camp right there. Well, if you've been listening to us for a while and understand that, you'd go, yeah, I know what he's talking about. If you don't, you'd be like, why do you start talking about a camp all of a sudden, right? 

JR: Yeah. Or what's the deal with the mountain or what's the deal with the yeah, the fringes. And so, yeah, you're right it is a way of thinking that once you understand that way of thinking, it applies to all kinds of different stuff, contemporary things that we read as well as certainly as ancient things that we read.

Yeah, and when you understand the symbols, you also recognize that, it's not just beasts and horns, it's numbers. And so these repetitive numbers, and we've talked about this in several episodes, these repetitive numbers that we keep coming across 12 and seven and [00:52:00] 40.

When you understand that, that is a loaded number, there's a lot of baggage that come with these numbers. And when you try to look at it and just say, well, he was there for seven years that just means that he was there for, well, seven years, right? And it's like, no, no, no, that number seven means something.

He was there until his time was completed. It's a completeness way of viewing it. If you want to listen to other episodes, get into the specifics of the numbers, but the numbers matter because they carry a lot of weight to it in the ancient way of thinking as well.

David: Well, we talked about it in the Judges series, where if you try to draw up a chronology of the judges based on the 40 years of peace or the 20 years of peace, or the 80 years of peace. First you're gonna frustrate yourself 'cause it

JR: Yeah. The timeline doesn't add up.

David: You're missing the point of something lasting 40 years of peace.

That that means something. And so the same thing in Revelation, even the idea of a thousand year reign of Christ. It's not saying, okay, on January 1st, 2030, this is gonna [00:53:00] start. 

JR: Right. 

David: It's saying there's a fullness to the, it's the complete reign.

And who knows, what that means. But look, people have always tried to construct some kind of timeline out of revelation. But yeah, so recognizing the symbolism of numbers and time is important as well.

JR: Right.

David: All right. So hopefully this brief overview of the different genres of scripture, and this will lead into next episode of the layers of meaning, you can't read all of scripture just one way. You certainly can't read it through our modern, historical narrative and expect that everything's going to fall in place nice and neat.

JR: Yeah. Well, I think that the church culture that you and I grew up with, let's say the eighties and nineties, was a little bit overly fixated on insisting that everything was literal. I think it's a reaction of fear because the atheists were gaining some steam and they were starting to sway culture a little bit.

And so there was this absolute flag in the ground that [00:54:00] everything has to be taken as the most literal possible interpretation you can get. And what that did was set up an unnecessary defense of something the Bible wasn't trying to defend to begin with.

Does that make sense? It set up an unnecessary, yeah. And so it is, again, it's almost like we painted ourselves in a corner and what we're really kind of, I'm seeing culture shift, or at least church culture shift a little bit into understanding what these symbols meant and how the ancients meant it to be read.

And I think we're getting a little bit more of a nuanced understanding of what the Bible is saying, you know?

David: And because of that, I think the Bible is becoming a much more interesting book to a lot of people who ignored it for a long time. 

JR: Yeah. It's much more dynamic. Yeah.

David: Yeah. it's not uncommon now to listen to a secular podcast, and hear someone talk about a Bible story and someone will go, man, the Bible says that, right?

It's like, yeah, you should read it.

JR: Yeah. It's interesting 'cause it is, it's getting into [00:55:00] mainstream. I see podcasters or I hear commentators on TV that are not interested at all in Christianity necessarily as a way to live your life. But they mention biblical stories and they pull these ideas from the Bible and it's because it's being recognized as a broader narrative than just, this is exactly how the world came about, and this is exactly how day-to-day life, from Adam to Jesus and on, right? It's describing something a lot more broad. And that's why it's good to have this conversation about genres, because if you don't understand the genre that you're reading, then it's real easy to get off track.

It's so important to understand the context that if you read a psalm like a legal contract, you're gonna panic when it says, the Lord will crush my enemies. Right? But if you read the psalm, as poetry, then you realize that, man, this is like somebody's heart crying out for justice. And again, man, that context matters.

And if you get it right, then [00:56:00] I think you can grab the purpose of the book.

David: Yeah. And I would add. You will find yourself painting yourself into a corner trying to defend the Bible, saying something that the Bible is not even itself trying to say.

JR: Exactly. 

David: Because you don't understand the genre you're reading.

JR: Right.

David: Yeah. There was a quote I read about an author we both like, Michael Heiser. In one of his books I highlighted this and I thought, man, this is great for this episode right here, is he says, "Let the Bible be what it is. Be open to the notion that what it says about the world might just be real." And I really like that quote because he's keeping that tension.

JR: Right.

David: Let the Bible be what it is. Don't over literalize everything. Understand why the author is writing what they're writing. But also be open to the fact that some of the weird stuff just might be a description of reality.

JR: Yeah. Right. And if you're open to that, what you're gonna find out is that it's description of reality actually resonates with what I see in reality. [00:57:00] Do you know what I mean?

David: Yeah.

JR: If you're open to the idea that they're trying to describe reality, what you'll find is that resonates with the way I see the world also.

And again, when you over literalize it, you miss that echo of what it's trying to say.

David: You actually miss maybe a better description of reality, even if it's maybe the spiritual realm

JR: Yeah.

David: than what you're trying to defend. Right? Something like that.

JR: Well, it's something like allowing the Bible to speak in its own voice. And when we do that, it invites us not just to read about truth, but to enter into it, you know what I mean? And to experience it and to see reality the same way.

David: Yeah. That's right.

JR: Yeah. That's a little bit woowoo. It's a

David: a try. Maybe this is off topic, but I'm thinking of Joe Rogan's fascination with Enoch all of a sudden, and it's like, why is that fascinating to him?

JR: Yeah.

David: But, you know, 1 Enoch's not even part of what we're calling the Bible.

But again, it's because something about when you read that book, [00:58:00] something about it resonates of what if this is true? What if this is true?

JR: Right?

David: What if this is a description of how things went down in the spiritual realm, right?

JR: Sure. And Rogan's coming from the lens of aliens, it sounds like an alien encounter, right? He loves that. But it is, is there is something that resonates on a deep level if you let it. And so yeah, let the Bible speak in its own voice and man, you can enter into it as opposed to trying to read the dos and don'ts of the way we should live our lives.

David: Yeah. That's right. When it's only a rule book, the Bible becomes pretty stale. But when you read it as, a description of this crazy world that we can see in the crazier world that we can't see and what God is doing in that world, then the Bible becomes this, endless, fascinating piece of literature.

JR: Yeah, I heard something the other day that was talking about an ancient cathedral . He was saying, let the cathedral tell its story. And he was kind of looking at it like, the cathedral is there to tell a [00:59:00] story. And I thought about that, and I'm like, yeah, you know, we read the Bible like a newspaper instead of a cathedral.

You know what I'm saying? It's like a newspaper could tell you a story, but so can a cathedral. And in fact, the cathedral tells a much deeper story than simply listing off the facts and the details of a narrative, right? The cathedral immerses you in the narrative. If you let it, if you know what you're looking for and you allow it and you enter into it in that fashion.

David: Yeah. We could keep going and on. 'cause I think you also mentioned that you know, we think the Bible has to make sense to me in 2025.

JR: Oh yeah.

David: And we end up forcing the Bible into this mold that it was not meant to be forced into when we insist that the Bible makes sense of 2025.

JR: Right.

David: Instead of taking us on a journey. And it's like when we travel, we experienced this when we went to ancient Mycene and some of these other places. It forces you to enter into their world. And once you enter into their world, it starts to [01:00:00] make sense.

JR: Yeah.

David: You and I both had this moment where after we visited these sites and we're like, yeah, these myths make perfect sense now.

JR: Right.

David: Before it's like, man, this is weird. Why are they telling this story?

JR: Yeah. Where's where? Who came up with this?

David: the Bible does that as well.

JR: Yeah.

David: It forces us into a world that is foreign to us.

JR: Yeah. And the Bible has plenty to say to us in 2025, but you have to be open to the idea that of the context in which it was written, and if you insist on it making sense today. Well, you know, when the Bible talks about how to treat slaves. Well through a 2025 American slavery context, that sounds like an awful thing to say.

I mean, it's like, how is this moral and how is this just, but that's you forcing your modern context in something that you think is self-evident and assuming that it's always been self-evident through all of history and, you know, that's just not the reality.

David: Alright, we're gonna talk more about this next episode because we're gonna talk about the layers of [01:01:00] meaning, which is different approach to the Bible, but it's also, there's gonna be some overlap. I think these are fun conversations. We could have gone on for two hours talking about some of this stuff today, but we'll pick it up next episode with the layers of meaning in the Bible.

JR: Yeah. That sounds good. 

David: Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss a single episode. Check the show notes for links and ways to connect, whether that's joining our Facebook group, signing up for the newsletter, or reaching out to us directly. And for more articles and resources, visit navigatinganancientfaith.com.