Words of Delight

I have a friend who began college as a religion major because he didn’t know what else to do, but who is now pursuing a PhD in English. He wasn’t much of a reader in high school, kind of a slacker, really—until one day in a freshman Old Testament class he sat transfixed as his professor performed a literary analysis of a biblical text. It was an epiphanic moment: “That’s what I want to do,” he told himself. He had found his true calling, and he now applies his literary skills to everything from the Bible to Kurt Vonnegut. There are massive differences between those two anthologies of literature, of course, but an important similarity: both are in fact literature. Both use literary devices; people can hardly write without them, whether they’re divinely inspired or not.

Leland Ryken’s book
Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible contains foundational words of wisdom for anyone who wants to study Scripture faithfully and carefully using the insights of literary study.

Ryken starts, however, with a complaint:

Traditional biblical scholarship has combined theological and historical approaches. It has been preoccupied with questions of authorship and origin. It has tended to break a biblical text into fragments and has been alarmingly indifferent to preserving the unity of passages. Theological approaches have been preoccupied with reducing the Bible to abstractions and propositions. Historians have been preoccupied with questions of the accuracy of the Bible’s references to events. (20)

Ryken doesn’t deny that questions of theology and history are important when it comes to Bible study, but he proposes that they have tended to obscure a “literary” approach to Bible interpretation, one which recognizes the meaning embedded in literary forms.

A literary approach to the Bible….is concerned not only with what is said but also with how something is expressed. In fact, a literary approach refuses to separate meaning from form (broadly defined). After all, everything that is communicated in a piece of writing is communicated through the form in which it is embodied. (20)

Ryken comes at the study of the Bible from his own field of literature. He is a sensitive reader who discerns literary devices such as metaphor, metonymy, understatement, and zeugma. There is no substitute for reading Ryken’s book, but this very day in your Bible reading you can use the wisdom in this paragraph:

Literature has its own forms and techniques, and its own way of expressing truth. Stories, for example, tell us about life through setting, character, and action. We cannot get the message of a story without first interacting with the settings, characters, and events that make up a story. Poems communicate their meaning through images and figures of speech. As a result, it is impossible to determine the meaning of a poem without analyzing figurative language. A literary approach is thus characterized by a focus on the form and characteristics of a passage as the key to what it says. (20–21)

Words of DelightOne of the strengths of Ryken’s book is that he performs literary analysis of Bible texts “live,” as it were, and one of the first passages Ryken tackles in Words of Delight is the story from Judges of the Israelite hero Ehud and the oppressive Moabite king Eglon. Ryken’s literarily trained eye notices details many other eyes won’t. And isn’t that what we’re interested in as Bible readers? We want every scrap of meaning God has revealed, because even in a story about a fat king being assassinated, God is telling His people something about himself.

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If literary analysis is not in your toolbelt, or if you need strategies and examples to help you teach it to others, then I encourage you to buy and read Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible.

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Written by
Mark Ward

Christian, husband, father, writer, ultimate frisbee player when possible.

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4 comments
  • Is there a sample I could read. I want to get more out of my study but not sure what literary analysis is. I don’t have a college education. Thank you.

  • All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness 2 Tim 3:16.What i believe is that translation of the bible may differ but the original message is inspiration from God.Actually Paul defended this originality by declaring,that even if they would came with another gospel, it should not be accepted.However,combining the bible with historical backgrounds can help us know the mind of God, for he used examples familiar to the background of the listeners.Without this background truths, interpretation of the bible may seem contradicting.The story of Daniel misinterpretation of the redemption timing of the Israelite is a good example.The angel of the Lord came to make him understand the calculation of time.For us, we have the holy spirit to work with us in this interpretations.This kind of background knowledge (history) is especially applicable to those called to teach the word of God and prophets.They need more understandings.For example in visions and dreams, without background understandings one may misinterpret them. With the power of the holy spirit revelation of the word of God is given.What is surprising, each word of God in the bible have different meaning to address different needs.This makes the bible peculiar to other books.It is the word of God that is live.Is God breathing the word with power.

Written by Mark Ward
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