Understand the Bible Better: Genres

We walk through a simple “Bible as a library” framework that explains why some passages feel straightforward while others need context, imagery, or patience. We map the major Bible genres across the Old Testament and New Testament so you can read with confidence and apply Scripture without twisting it. 
• why the Bible is organized by genre rather than strict chronology 
• how genre sets expectations for interpretation and application 
• the Old Testament genres: law, history, poetry, major prophets, minor prophets 
• why Old Testament history is descriptive rather than prescriptive 
• how to read poetry as imagery that communicates truth 
• a practical way to think about prophecy using the “mountain peaks” picture 
• the New Testament genres: Gospels, Acts, Paul’s church letters, Paul’s personal letters, general letters, Revelation 
• why Revelation connects to real life and calls for discernment 

Click here to download your Understanding the Bible Genres guide, or go to outloudbible.com, in the Bible Study Guides section of the Resources page.

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Transcript

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Why The Bible Feels Different

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hey, welcome back to the Out Loud Bible Podcast. This is Mike. Today I want to do something a little bit different. We'd normally have our Living Out Loud segment today as we talk about what happened earlier in the week in the podcast and what to do about it. But earlier in this week in the podcast, we celebrated 500 episodes of the podcast by looking at the Bible's greatest hits, some of the most famous and popular verses throughout the Bible. And one thing we notice when we take different passages from the Bible, they kind of all have a different feel to them, right? And they all have to be kind of understood differently. Some are just at face value what they say, some aren't. Some require a little bit of context. Some are more descriptive, some are more prescriptive. And uh I wanted to take some time today just to equip you. I hope this is an equipping sort of episode. I hope to equip you to be able to study the Bible and understand it better on your own. And because one of the most important things to know about the Bible is how it's organized. It's not organized like another book. Like most books are kind of organized chronologically, like this event happens, then this event happens, and this event happens. But that's not how the Bible is organized, because the Bible also is not just one book, it's also 66 books written by upwards of 40 different authors, and they were writing over the course of thousands of years, about 1,400 years. And these books all come together to tell one story about Jesus and his role in redeeming mankind back to God, which is awesome. We can talk more about that as we go. But it's not organized from cover to cover, like you can just read it and keep seeing how the events unfold. You can start off pretty well, Genesis, Exodus, you get into some laws, okay, and then it starts to derail from there. Like, wait, where are we? Wait, I thought I already read this story again. What where are we going?

The Bible As A Genre Library

SPEAKER_00 2:06

What's what's going on here? And uh that's because it's not organized chronologically. The Bible's organized by genre. To explain this, I'm going to be walking through uh the basics of a new downloadable resource I'd like to make available to you. It's on our website, outloudbible.com. If you go to the resources and go to the Bible study resources, you'll find this guide, Understanding the Bible Genres. They're available as well as some other things. If those interest you, go ahead and download it as well. They're free. I'll hit the highlights now and you can go and dig in deeper later on your own time. So the Bible is arranged by genre, which is kind of like a library is arranged. You walk into a library or a bookstore and you find different books in different sections. You've got histories, you've got biographies, you've got self-help, you've got poetry, and you wouldn't go pick up a book of poetry, you wouldn't go get some Walt Whitman book of poetry from the poetry section and read it and expect to get the same thing out of it as you would a history book or a biography on John Adams. You wouldn't even read them the same way. And that, you know, that's obvious. That makes sense to us when we think about going to get a book from a bookstore or a library. But when we get to the Bible, we have this sense of like, oh, well, this is the Bible. Whatever the Bible says we have to do, you know, we we and this is all very important. This is the Word of God, right? And well, yes, that's that's true, but you can't just take a book off the shelf. You can't just take a book from the Bible, read it, and literally just do what it says. Now, sometimes, yes, that that's what it's there for. Other times, it's like, no, no, that you're not you're not reading this right. If we understand the genre that the book comes from, then we can have a better idea of what to do about it, what to expect, and what to look for. So, first of all, it's good to understand if we're gonna kind of continue this library metaphor, the Bible is divided up into two rooms, major rooms of this library. Let's say you've got one room, it's bigger, it's the Old Testament, and the other room is smaller, it's the New Testament. Now you can go into either one. You don't have to necessarily go through one

The Law And Foreshadowing Jesus

SPEAKER_00 4:21

to get to the other, although it's helpful to know your Old Testament, uh, you know, in in order to prepare to learn from the New Testament. But, you know, you can pick any book off the shelf here, but you gotta understand what the different genres are. In the Old Testament, we have five different genres. You've got the law, first of all, that's what you find when you open up the book first. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. It's the book of the law that Moses wrote, and this is what God gave his people to understand how things started and his expectations of them now as a nation. Now, in the downloadable guide for each of these sections, each of these genres, I have a quick tour of what all the books are so we can kind of get a good one-sentence reference for all of these books and what they're there for, as well as a few bullet points of what to look for when you're in the genre here, because we're gonna read each one a little bit differently. I'm not gonna go through all of this. Uh, if you want to read it, you can read it yourself. Go check it out and download it. But uh I'll just I'll give you the highlights here. So when we read the book of the law, we find a lot of precedent, a lot of early things being set up that are gonna paint a picture for the need of Jesus or what Jesus is gonna come and do. We see a lot of hints of Jesus and the need for some sacrifice. Sacrifice is a major theme in this section, and it's not the end of the story like the people of Israel thought. This was all to foreshadow Jesus. With that understanding, we can start to appreciate and know what to do with what we find in the law. Now, next, the next genre in this library of the Old Testament, we see Old Testament history. This is a large section from Joshua all

History Tells What Happened

SPEAKER_00 5:56

the way to Esther. This gives the history of the nation of Israel. Joshua helps them get into the promised land, and the rest of the books go from there, where they have some judges, they have some kings. Kings rise, kings fall, they get exiled. There are new leaders that come and help bring them back to the promised land after their exile. This is the history of Israel before Christ. And in this, we gotta recognize that this is descriptive storytelling. It's not prescriptive. A lot of times people will look to this section of scripture and say, Well, look, this king had multiple wives, and the Bible didn't say that he shouldn't have multiple wives, so apparently polyamory is okay, or something stupid like that. Look, we don't read any history book and be like, oh, that's what we should do. But because it's the Bible, just because it says something, people lose their minds and be like, oh, well, look what the Bible says that we should do. No, this is not here to tell us what we should do. That's not the purpose of this genre. The Old Testament history is not here to tell us what we should do. It's here to tell us a little bit about God's heart and his patience and what he expects of his people. And it's mostly here to tell us just what happened. Maybe we can learn from some of the mistakes. Mostly it's here to tell us what not to do. The next

Poetry Uses Images Not Blueprints

SPEAKER_00 7:21

section is poetry. Now we have five books of poetry, sometimes called the wisdom literature, and it's not, though, the only places we find poetry. Sometimes we find poetry in Exodus, where Miriam or Moses may sing a song. We see poetry in the books of the prophets. We see poetry in the New Testament. And so this is not the only case that we see poetry. Uh often you'll actually see it. Your Bible will kind of indent the lines to look kind of like, you know, a different verse, and uh and that's an indicator that, oh, this is this is poetry. But we do see the highest concentration of poetry here in this section. It's also important to remember that this, again, is not chronological. These books of poetry were written previously, like throughout the history section. Even the book of Job, which is a book of poetry, uh, likely took place in somewhere in Genesis early on. Now, Psalms were written mostly by David and some of his companions, some were even written by Moses. Proverbs were written by Solomon, David's son, again in the book of like 1 Kings, is where we see his story. Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, these were all written earlier. They don't happen after Esther, just because their books are placed in the Bible after Esther. That's not the case. And when we read poetry, we gotta remember this is poetry. It's artistic images, and they're here to to make a point or to stir an emotion, or like most art, to just get you to consider something a different way. It's not always to be taken literally. Psalm 914, for example, mentions God's feathers and God's wings. It's not here to teach us a doctrine. Oh, God is a bird. No. It's artistic, it's trying to illustrate a picture in a different way instead of being so literal all the time. Now, I mean that said, I think there are some things that we can take literally. Like Job, his story, I think is a literal story, something that happened in history. It's kind of a blend of history and poetry. But his responses are written rather poetically. They are there's a lot of imagery. But just because it's poetic does not mean it's not real. Does not mean that there's not

Prophecy And The Mountain Peaks

SPEAKER_00 9:41

truth. It's just truth packaged in a little different way. The next genre in the Old Testament is the major prophets. These are major prophets, not because they were more important than the other prophets, but because they just had the most to say. Isaiah, Jeremiah, who not only wrote Jeremiah, but also Lamentations, and Ezekiel and Daniel, four major prophets who had a lot to say. And here in the books of prophecy it starts to get a little confusing because, well, it's prophecy. It's a little confusing. Now, what I'm about to say actually isn't in the guide that you'll download. I maybe it should be, but since we're chatting, let's just go with it. What we should keep in mind when we read these books of prophecy is that the prophet receives some vision or dream. Imagine looking out over a mountain range, right? And you see a peak here and a peak here and this mountain here. And this is kind of like what a prophet would see when God reveals something to them, sees this mountain peak. Oh, write that down. Let me describe that. Okay, and then he sees this mountain peak. Oh, let me describe that. I see that too. What the prophet does not see is that in between these two mountain peaks he just wrote down is miles and miles of valleys and canyons and rivers. You don't know how far apart these peaks actually are when you look at them. You just see, oh, I see that there and I see that there. I'll describe that. And you can't see anything in between. We don't know how far it takes to get to between the mountains. We don't know how far it takes between two different prophecies. You may even have a prophecy that's talking about one thing, and then the next thing is not going to be fulfilled until the end of time. It could be thousands of years in between these prophecies. And another thing that makes this a little bit confusing, but does make it very cool when we look at the prophecies, is that God can use one person or event or example to refer to something both now and in the distant future. There could be some prophecies that are referring to some king who is attacking presently at the time of the prophet writing, and it could refer to Satan and some final battle. This is also, frankly, where we get a lot of the prophecies about Jesus, describing something that's happening now or may happen in the near future when they're brought home and find rest after exile, but it's also referring to Jesus coming and bringing all of his people back to rest in heaven in the final days. It takes some discernment to go through the books of prophets, but it's not something that you can't do. Just get into it, enjoy it, and if you're like, you know, I have no idea what it's talking about. Well, that may just be the case for a while, and that's okay. Don't let that stop you from reading, praying, digging, asking for wisdom, and uh and just see what God has for you in these books. So those are major prophets. The next section is like it, it's the minor prophets, and a lot of the same rules apply with the with the books of the minor prophets. Again, they're minor, not because they're less important, just because they had less to say. A lot of these books are very short, some of them only one chapter. It's more like a pamphlet. But it's important to remember that all of these prophets were active during the time of Israel and Judah as they had their kings that were leading the people either closer or further away from God. And these prophets were warning them to stay faithful to the Lord and not get sucked into the idolatry of the pagan nations around them. If you're interested in this section of the Bible, I highly, highly recommend you download another resource from OutloudBible.com called Kings and Prophets. It's a fantastic visual guide to help you see when these prophets line up with the kings that we read about in 1st and 2nd Kings, and as it fits into the history of Old Testament Israel. Otherwise, it's easy to get real lost in like the names and the places, and it's hard to connect them to the actual timeline. So I recommend getting that resource if you want to dig in more into these prophets, and I recommend that you do. And that's how the Old Testament is organized. You had basically five sections. You had the law, Old Testament history, poetry, and the major prophets and the minor prophets. And the New Testament is arranged somewhat similarly in this

New Testament Genres That Guide Us

SPEAKER_00 14:01

idea of having genres. At first, we have the Gospels. Now, the Gospels are just biographies. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Each of them share a biography of Jesus' life and ministry. Now, all of them have a slightly different emphasis. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they were written all around the same time. And so they often share a lot of the stories. They corroborate each other's stories. Some of them will have different details, some will include things that the others don't. Uh, but they're all fairly similar and they all kind of blend together well. John wrote his later and just offered some different perspectives, a lot of stories that weren't included by Matthew, Mark, or Luke. And uh all together, though, they focus on different aspects of Jesus. What he said, what he did, what he felt, who he was. Uh you gotta read the gospels. If you want to be a follower of Jesus, you gotta get into the gospels. I read, I would read them all. Now, after the Gospels, we have a little tiny genre of the New Testament called the New Testament History, which is the book of Acts. Acts is just basically here as a history book, and it's a continuation of Luke's Gospel, and this is the history of the growth of the church. The Holy Spirit finally arrives like Jesus promised, and Acts tells us what happened in the early church. It's where we meet a lot of key figures that we see elsewhere in the New Testament as far as the letters that they write, or maybe are mentioned by other people writing letters. Peter, John, Paul, Timothy, Titus. And we see the birth of multiple churches in different cities around the Mediterranean. Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, the region of Galatia. We see these show up in missionary trips and the churches being planted, and then we get to read the letters to them in the rest of the New Testament, which is really the next section. The next genre is Paul's church letters. Paul wrote letters to churches that he planted to check in on them and help guide them to keep a living and growing healthfully. He wrote letters to churches that he didn't plant, just to introduce himself and to give them some correct doctrine to make sure that they were having a solid foundation. These letters are why we like the New Testament more. Often we we find ourselves reading and gravitating more toward the New Testament because these churches were written for people in the post-Jesus on earth, post-receiving the Holy Spirit era, which is where we find ourselves in too. So a lot of the things that Paul says in these letters we can also apply to ourselves a little more easily than we can with some of the Old Testament things that we read. If this was a genre of a library or a bookstore, I would call it like self-help, except when we read them, we find that we can't actually help ourselves. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can be helped at all. So uh that's what this genre is. And then Paul writes some other letters, and I kind of give it another genre. Not everybody who talks about Bible genres does this. Uh, they'll just kind of divide them up. If if Paul wrote it, they'll put it in a genre. But I I think it's important to recognize there's a difference between Paul's church letters, which is what we just talked about, and Paul's personal letters, where we see two letters to Timothy, a letter to Titus and a letter to Philemon. These were from Paul, so they're not written by Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. They're written by Paul to these men. And these being personal letters are a bit more personal in nature. They're not necessarily applying to all Christians at all times. Now we can certainly find principles here that apply to us personally, as Paul writes, but he's not necessarily saying, hey, all Christians for all time, you should do this. It's like, hey, Timothy, in your situation, here's what I recommend. After that, we see general letters. These are written just by other church leaders. Hebrews, we don't actually know who wrote Hebrews. There's different theories. James, Peter, John, we know who wrote those. Peter has two letters. John has three, in fact. And uh what we see in these letters is just good practical wisdom. There's a lot of good wisdom here that's pretty general and generally applied. Good wisdom and encouragement through various trials. At the end, then we see the New Testament book of prophecy. It's a bit different than the Old Testament prophecy, although there is some overlap as Old Testament prophecy looks forward to the things that New Testament prophecy talks about. And there is one book in New Testament prophecy,

Revelation And Living With Urgency

SPEAKER_00 18:26

it's Revelation. John wrote this as it was revealed to him as he was in exile at the end of his life. And Revelation requires a whole study in and of itself. But what we find is very vivid imagery representing not hypothetical things, not, you know, some dreamy thing. It's all very real as it applies to our geopolitical space. Like our earth today is going to experience the things that are described in Revelation. Yes, with cars and cell phones and nuclear bombs and things that aren't necessarily represented in the book as it was written in the first century, but we have to not separate what we read in Revelation from what we see in the world today. It's not just like, oh, that's old Bible stuff. No, no, this is happening in our world today. Jesus is still on the throne, and what he told John, he knew what he was talking about, because he could see today. But we're encouraged to get into it and read it and listen to it, hear it, think about it, try to figure it out. We're not going to figure out everything completely, but we're encouraged to get in and try to figure out what we what it means. In doing that, we wrestle with the very reality of what the book is talking about so that we can live in light of the fact that this is still happening. We're still waiting for this one. So hopefully you can see that all of these books, all of these genres require a different way to read and understand them. But you can read and understand the Bible on your own. If this guide would help you, again, I'd recommend going to outloudbible.com, go to the resource page, go to the Bible study section, and download Understanding the Bible Genres. It goes into more depth than what we talked about here, but I hope it's a great

Download The Guide And Keep Reading

SPEAKER_00 20:11

augment, uh great uh equipping for your own Bible study as you go forward from here. Thanks so much for being here and and walking through the Bible genres, walking through this library of the Bible with me. Hopefully it gives you a better understanding and you feel empowered to understand it more as we move on. We'll see you next time on the Out Loud Bible Podcast.