Narrative Genre Paper

Prophecy, poetry, songs, and genealogy lists are just a few of the many genres found in the Pentateuch. However, the two dominant genres include biblical law and biblical narrative. In fact, 40 percent of the Old Testament is narrative (“Lecture 1,” 2015). Key to interpreting different texts within the Bible, it is critical to understand the genres themselves. Each genre possesses unique features that, when understood, assist in the interpretation of the text. Understanding the key features of biblical law and biblical narrative genres will affect how an individual interprets Scripture in the Old Testament.

            Christianity also holds a set of specific genres, another of Swales’ classification of a discourse community. One of Christianity’s most important genre is the Bible, the Christian scriptures, consisting of the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. Although sermons are also considered a distinct genre of Christianity, they are drawn from the Bible to be preach by the pastor every Sunday. Songs and parables, a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson, are also considered as genres within the Christian discourse

In the sixth chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster examines the Bible and its importance throughout stories, poetry and film. The Bible is one of the most commonly known pieces of literature and is even “nonsectarian” in Foster’s eyes (44). Because stories from the Bible are so well known, the Bible is a tremendously easy for authors to reference when constructing a new composition. Especially “prior to sometime in the middle of the twentieth century” writers were “solidly instructed in religion” and could count on the public being very well acquainted with Biblical stories (47). This widespread knowledge of the Bible lead to greater understandings throughout literature, and the recognized allusions helped

The Bible is a literary genre (Brown, 2015). Ordinarily, the Bible passages get identified by analysis of their writing style, form, literary technique, tone, content, and design as well as linguistic factors such as texts that show common literary features. The Bible comprises of books that are composed of different forms, styles, structure and even content (Brown, 2015). Therefore the genre of the Bible is associated with the entire books; hence have more than one genre in one book. For example in the book of Revelation, Chapter one is prophetic/visionary genre while chapters two and three are same as epistle genre.The major literary genre in the New Testament isThe Gospel: These are the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and ActsThe Epistle or the letters: Romans, Corinthians 1 and 2, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians 1 and 2, Timothy 1 and 2, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, Peter 1 and 2, John 1, 2 and 3,  and Jude.

As I placed the car into park, turned the key off and stepped into the crisp cold winter air, I begin to feel my pulse raise. With each step we took drawing us closer to the door, I felt my heart beating faster. With a quick turn of the ice cold door knob, I found myself standing in a whole new world. The food, the music, the faces, the language, everything was different than what I knew. For the first time in my life I was the minority in my small home town of Winamac, Indiana.

On his way home from Baseball, Julian was thinking to himself about what he could do outdoors. Then he gets a perfect idea, "Lets go on a hiking trip and I'll invite some guys too!" Julian then calls some guys from his baseball team, Justin who is very layback and funny. He calls Ricky who is the captain of the baseball team and Jesus (who is called chuy)and he is more of the gentlemen type but if you get him mad, he could probably take out a trailer full of bad guys. Julian decides he'll call them tomorrow, the next day Julian calls Ricky first.

“Man, I’m telling you I can’t wait to get out of college.” stated the Jock. “HA! You probably won’t even graduate after all the detentions and write ups you got!”a random person answer back. Slam! I grab my books out my locker and I began to walk to my next class. Truth is, I was very exciting that I made it this far, into this master class-like school.

After reading The Art of the Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter, I feel I have a better understanding of the literary techniques used in the biblical text. These are definitely techniques as readers we all need to familiarize ourselves with. He has opened my eyes to a deeper understanding of the Bible, but also specific stories within the Hebrew Bible, which I have always found fascinating. Through Alter’s analyzation, I can see how the use of the rubrics has enabled me to connect with the biblical characters. The techniques have helped bring the characters to life. Alter has convinced me that there is a need for intelligent reading of the biblical narrative. He has given me a literary perspective of the Bible in which I did not have before. The four general rubrics, words, actions, dialogue, and narration, have acted as helpful tools for me to use when reading the scripture. In the following paragraphs I will discuss how I was before reading Alter’s Art of the Biblical Narrative, and how I have changed my view of the biblical narrative because of his book.

Sandy, D. Brent, and Ronald L. Giese Jr. Cracking Old Testament Codes: A Guided to Interpreting the Literary Genres of the Old Testament is structure to make the authors debates available for those who are inspire teachers and preachers. This paper will summarize the literary fundamentals of the Bible that have parts of scripture that are in literary form. Sandy and Giese traces the scriptures of the context to be the creativity of the bible for the reader’s enjoyment. Sandy who taught at Grace Theological Seminary describes the implications of the basic biblical genres in a whole different light of the Old Testament. Ronald L. Giese Jr reveals that authors have a way of expressing scriptures to help readers not to misinterpret.

"Imara!" I moaned in pain and felt my head. "Imara!" I dug into my pockets and pulled out my flashlight. I turned it on and shone it around. "Where am I?" Alister sighed in relief. "Why didn't you answer me? I thought you died." I was currently sitting in a half circle room that led only one way. "I don't know. There's only one path." I stood up expecting pain but my leg felt normal. I patted my arm and again everything was fine. "How long was I out?" I pointed my light into the tunnel. "A while."

I stirred as I heard my name being called out distantly in the back of my mind.

"Take her away she's worthless if you want her have her." my "father" says drunkenly. They take me away as I am kicking and screaming and crying. My heart jumps as I wake up realizing it was a memory. I look around noticing the the hard concrete walls and floors, the smell of mildew and the medal bars, made me realize I am in a cell now. At least I am away from the monster who took me. I heard people coming down so I layed down and closed my eyes listening to there conversation. " Alpha says she's special and she'll help us with the humans and vampires." Man 1 said. " How can she be that special she looks like all of his other fuck toys." Man 2 said.

“Katherine will come around, she’s just embarrassed.” Irwin was leading Angela down into the downward sloping tunnels. She had to lean backwards as she walked to keep herself from falling forward.

Shelby gripped the balloon handles even tighter. “Actually, I think we were supposed to think too.”

In biblical study, Narrative Criticism has been developed against the evolutionary models of historical criticism, which has been mainly focused to reenact the position and thought of the original writer and audience through certain ‘scientific and analysis of biblical material’. This discipline is the study of a narrative text most likely similar to any narrative literature. It is sub discipline of interpretation method under literary criticism, which emphases on ‘the literary form or shape of the text in its final form’ as pointer of what the texts meant. There is general agreement among the various disciplines of literary approach, that they all consider Scripture as a ‘literary document’, rather than a ‘historical’. These various disciplines,