Studying the Bible in Context, Part 4: Literary Genres (i.e., `Types` or `Categories` of Literature): Poetry, Wisdom, Prophets, and Prophecy

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STUDYING THE BIBLE IN CONTEXT

It is normal to read scriptures from the Bible every time in church . So many teachings , encouragements , stories , proverbs and sayings are drawn from this Holy book by Christians from all walks of life . Basically these writings are a collection of Judaism and Christianity religious writings . There are various translations of the Bible based on the traditions observed by the denomination concerned . There is use of different kinds of literature categories used in the Bible . Of these

the following will be considered poetry , wisdom and prophecy . This work will also focus on Hebrew parallelism in poetry . The various ingredients of wisdom literature and proverbs will be analyzed based on this context . There are many prophets we learn about from the Bible . Job and Ecclesiastes will be discussed and their pessimism controversy together with imprecatory Psalms or prayers and their interpretation

There are currently over 430 translations in more than 2 ,450 languages The basic information is however universal . The Christian Bible is just but the Hebrew scriptures onto which later writings have been added . The Hebrew scriptures are referred to as the Old Testament while the other portion of the Christian Bible is referred to as the New Testament . The former is a collection of books that were written before the birth of Jesus Christ but is theless accepted as scriptures by Christians . It is the same as the Hebrew Bible but differs from Judaism interpretation Other denominations have also incorporated other books into this list The New Testament is a collection of 27 books . They relate to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ , the letters of the Apostles and their deeds in the early church and the Revelations to John , the apostle . the Gospels in this part account for the acts of Jesus

The Bible in general is thus a collection of many books . All these employ different types of literature genre like poetry , wisdom and prophecy . Poetic books include Song of Songs , Ecclesiastes , Proverbs Psalms and Job . Books like Proverbs , Songs of Songs and Ecclesiastes are considered wisdom books . The prophetic books in the Bible include Isaiah , Daniel , Jonah , Micah , Haggai , Malachi and Revelation among others

Imprecatory Psalms are the Psalms that talk of God 's desire to curse His enemies and those of His people (Day , 2002 . This has caused debate amongst Christians as they argue it out that Christians are supposed to forgive even their enemies and go ahead to love them (The New King James Version , Matt . 5 .44 . According to Day (2002 , these psalms are a way of discouraging evil emotions and the expression of molarity consonant associated with the old covenant . It should be viewed as God 's way of fulfilling His promises , specifically when He talks of cursing those who curse His people

Benner (2007 ) acknowledges the existence of difference in the structure of poetry of the Hebrew and the Western genre . Most of the Old Testament is basically poetic . Torah...