Letters of Grace and Beauty E-Book

Leland Ryken

• Herausgeber: Lexham Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Reading the Bible as Literature
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 134

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

This is the third of a six-volume series called Reading the Bible as Literature. As with the first two volumes (How Bible Stories Work and Sweeter Than Honey, Richer Than Gold), the author explores the intersection of the Bible and literature. In this third volume, Dr. Ryken shows pastors, students, and teachers of the Bible how the literary craftsmanship of the epistles leads to a richer understanding of its contents. After explaining the literary makeup of the epistles, he provides exercises to help his readers master this rich literary treasure. Speaking of the entire series, Ryken says, "The niche that these volumes are designed to fill is the literary approach to the Bible. This has been my scholarly passion for nearly half a century. It is my belief that a literary approach to the Bible is the common reader's friend, in contrast to the more specialized types of scholarship on the Bible."

Leseprobe

READING THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE

Letters of Grace & Beauty

A GUIDED LITERARY STUDY OF NEW TESTAMENT EPISTLES

LELAND RYKEN

Letters of Grace & Beauty: A Guided Literary Study of New Testament Epistles

© 2016 by Leland Ryken

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

First edition by Weaver Book Company.

All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [email protected].

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Verse numbers appear in Scripture quotations because the author sometimes refers to or comments on specific verses.

Print ISBN 9781683591566

Digital ISBN 9781683591573

Cover design: Frank Gutbrod

Contents

Series Preface

Introduction:

The New Testament Epistles as a Genre

What Is an Epistle?

Who Wrote the Epistles, and Why?

How Literary Are the Epistles?

How Have the Epistles Been Misrepresented to Us?

Summary

1.Types of New Testament Letters

Letter Writing in General

The Basic Paradigm of New Testament Epistles

Circular Letters

Personal Letters

Family Letters and Letters of Friendship

Letter-Essays

Missionary Letters

Administrative or Official Letters

LEARNING BY DOING

2.Literary Genres from the Broader World of Literature

Occasional Literature

Diatribe

Autobiography

Farewell Discourse

LEARNING BY DOING

3.Opening and Closing in New Testament Epistles

Openings

The Elements of the Opening

Purpose of the Opening

Effect of the Opening

Adaptation of Classical Openings

Implications for Reading and Interpretation

A Model for Our Own Letters

LEARNING BY DOING

Closings

Final Greeting and Benediction

Added Material

Implications for Reading and Interpretation

LEARNING BY DOING

4.The Thanksgiving in the Letters of the New Testament

Structure

Content

Function or Effect

Implications for Interpretation and Teaching

LEARNING BY DOING

5.Paraenesis: Walking Worthy of the Lord

General Considerations

Defining Paraenesis

Interpreting Paraenesis

Household Codes

Why Paraenesis?

LEARNING BY DOING

6.Body: Giving Shape to New Testament Epistles

Instruction or Exposition

Command

Exhortation

Persuasion

Autobiography

Praise and Rebuke

Prayer and Request

Summary

LEARNING BY DOING

7.Organization and Structure of New Testament Letters

Fallacies

Review of Principles Previously Covered

The Structure of Thought and Feeling

LEARNING BY DOING

8.Embedded Genres within New Testament Epistles

Lists of Virtues and Vices

Doxology and Benediction

Christ Hymn

Encomium

Church Manual and Pastoral Handbook

Travelogue

LEARNING BY DOING

9.Style of the Letters of the New Testament

Poetry and Figurative Language

High Style in the Epistles

Plain Style in the Epistles

Aphoristic Style

LEARNING BY DOING

Afterword

Series Preface

This series is part of the mission of the publisher to equip Christians to understand and teach the Bible effectively by giving them reliable tools for handling the biblical text. Within that landscape, the niche that my volumes are designed to fill is the literary approach to the Bible. This has been my scholarly passion for nearly half a century. It is my belief that a literary approach to the Bible is the common reader’s friend, in contrast to more specialized types of scholarship on the Bible.

Nonetheless, the literary approach to the Bible needs to be defended against legitimate fears by evangelical Christians, and through the years I have not scorned to clear the territory of misconceptions as part of my defense of a literary analysis of the Bible. In kernel form, my message has been this:

1.To view the Bible as literature is not a suspect modern idea, nor does it need to imply theological liberalism. The idea of the Bible as literature began with the writers of the Bible, who display literary qualities in their writings and who refer with technical precision to a wide range of literary genres such as psalm, proverb, parable, apocalypse, and many more.

2.Although fiction is a common trait of literature, it is not an essential feature of it. A work of literature can be replete with literary technique and artifice while remaining historically factual.

3.To approach the Bible as literature need not be characterized by viewing the Bible only as literature, any more than reading it as history requires us to see only the history of the Bible.

4.When we see literary qualities in the Bible we are not attempting to bring the Bible down to the level of ordinary literature; it is simply an objective statement about the inherent nature of the Bible. The Bible can be trusted to reveal its extraordinary qualities if we approach it with ordinary methods of literary analysis.

To sum up, it would be tragic if we allowed ourselves to be deprived of literary methods of analyzing the Bible by claims that are fallacies.

What, then, does it mean to approach the Bible as literature? A literary study of the Bible should begin where any other approach begins—by accepting as true all that the biblical writers claim about their book. These claims include its inspiration and superintendence by God, its infallibility, its historical truthfulness, its unique power to infiltrate people’s lives, and its supreme authority.

With that as a foundation, a literary approach to the Bible is characterized by the following traits:

1.An acknowledgement that the Bible comes to us in a predominantly literary format. In the words of C. S. Lewis, “There is a … sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”1 The overall format of the Bible is that of an anthology of literature.

2.In keeping with that, a literary approach identifies the genres and other literary forms of the Bible and analyzes individual texts in keeping with those forms. An awareness of literary genres and forms programs how we analyze a biblical text and opens doors into a text that would otherwise remain closed.

3.A literary approach begins with the premise that a work of literature embodies universal human experience. Such truthfulness to human experience is complementary to the tendency of traditional approaches to the Bible to mainly see ideas in it. A literary approach corrects a commonly held fallacy that the Bible is a theology book with proof texts attached.

4.A literary approach to the Bible is ready to grant value to the biblical authors’ skill with language and literary technique, seeing these as an added avenue to our enjoyment of the Bible.

5.A literary approach to the Bible takes its humble place alongside the two other main approaches—the theological and the historical. These three domains are established by the biblical writers themselves, who usually combine all three elements in their writings. However, in terms of space, the Bible is a predominantly literary book. Usually the historical and theological material is packaged in literary form.

These traits and methods of literary analysis govern the content of my series of guided studies to the genres of the Bible.

Although individual books in my series are organized by the leading literary genres that appear in the Bible, I need to highlight that all of these genres have certain traits in common. Literature itself, en masse, makes up a homogenous whole. In fact, we can speak of literature as a genre (the title of the opening chapter of a book titled Kinds of Literature). The traits that make up literature as a genre will simply be assumed in the volumes in this series. They include the following: universal, recognizable human experience concretely embodied as the subject matter; the packaging of this subject matter in distinctly literary genres; the authors’ use of special resources of language that set their writing apart from everyday expository discourse; stylistic excellence and other forms of artistry that are part of the beauty of a work of literature.

What are the advantages that come from applying the methods of literary analysis? In brief, they are as follows: an improved method of interacting with biblical texts in terms of the type of writing that they are; doing justice to the specificity of texts (again because the approach is tailored to the genres of a text); ability to see unifying patterns in a text; relating texts to everyday human experience; enjoyment of the artistic skill of biblical authors.

Summary

A book needs to be read in keeping with its author’s intention. We can see from the Bible itself that it is a thoroughly literary book. God superintended its authors to write a very (though not wholly) literary book. To pay adequate attention to the literary qualities of the Bible not only helps to unlock the meanings of the Bible; it is also a way of honoring the literary intentions of its authors. Surely biblical authors regarded everything that they put into their writing as important. We also need to regard those things as important.

Introduction

The New Testament Epistles as a Genre

Over the course of my half-century career as a specialist in the Bible as literature, the genre on which my understanding has changed most is the epistle. The more I have learned about the genre (most recently in a book of literary introductions to the individual books of the Bible), the more excited I have become about the epistles as literature. I need to flag the phrase “as literature.” Most seminary-trained ministers would be content to preach solely from the epistles, but their interest is all theological and not at all literary. The seed for this non-literary approach is planted by biblical scholars.

This guided study to the epistles is part of a series that explores the literary genres of the Bible. This means that my approach to the epistles will focus on the literary forms that we find in them rather than their theological content. I also need to explain that I will survey the epistles as a group; this book does not attempt to do what can only be accomplished with literary introductions to the individual New Testament epistles. Along those lines, I encourage my readers to take a look at three of my previously published books: Ryken’s Bible Handbook (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2005); Literary Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007); and Literary Introductions to the Books of the Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015).

To give shape to this introduction to the New Testament epistles, I have packaged my material as answers to a series of questions.

What Is an Epistle?

An epistle is a letter. I will use the terms “epistle” and “letter” interchangeably in this guide. Nonetheless, I will do so in awareness that the two terms have different connotations. Both sets of associations are helpful, and by themselves the two terms are incomplete as labels for the New Testament genre known as an epistle.

The word “epistle” implies a letter that is different from the letters and emails that we ordinarily write. An epistle is more formal in vocabulary and style than an ordinary letter. The term also implies a letter that is public rather than purely personal. Additionally, an epistle is assumed to be more literary (however defined) than the letters we ourselves write, and the content resembles that of a teaching (“didactic”) document more than a letter that conveys only personal news and feelings.

All of these traits are characteristic of the epistles, as we will see. The epistles were largely intended for public audiences (even when the original recipient was a single person like Timothy). The authors show an awareness that they were writing for posterity, and not only for the immediate recipients of their letters. The New Testament epistles are rhetorically embellished and sophisticated in technique. The style is often elevated far above the idiom of the dormitory and bus stop.

But there are other aspects of the New Testament epistles that make them better labeled as letters than epistles. The style is not uniformly embellished and formal; many passages read exactly like what we might write in a letter or say in a telephone conversation. Similarly with the content of the epistles: many passages in these letters resemble what we ourselves would say in a letter, such as the parting travel information or requests to pass on greetings to mutual acquaintances that we find at the close of the New Testament epistles.

This informal side often gets ignored and misrepresented (with results that will be noted below), and perhaps the term “epistle” aids and abets this misrepresentation. I will use the terms “epistle” and “letter” interchangeably as a way of keeping both the formal and informal aspects of the letters in view.

Who Wrote the Epistles, and Why?

The epistles were written in the second half of the first century. Some scholars place the epistles under the heading of “early Christian literature,” or “the literature of the early Christian movement.” These are appropriate and helpful labels. The epistles, along with the rest of the New Testament, were the first writings of the early Christian church. We can accurately think of these writings as “founding documents” of the Christian movement.

The authors of the epistles were the apostles designated by Christ to be his spokesmen and the official guardians of what he taught. They were ordinary people divinely set apart for the task of recording the facts about Christ’s earthly life (chiefly in the Gospels) and the theological meaning of that life. The latter is the domain of the epistles. An apostle speaks with a unique authority, and we are continuously aware of this as we read the epistles. In particular, Paul, who was not a disciple of Jesus but was called to be an apostle nonetheless, regularly appeals to his apostolic authority in his letters.

Why did the apostles write the epistles? The answers are multiple. Certainly they wrote to impart theological information about the Christian faith. But they had other goals in additional to informing the minds of readers. Many of the passages are slanted toward exhorting readers to live in accordance with what they know. In fact, many of the epistles have a doctrinal first half, followed by a practical second half that tells readers how to live based on the doctrine that has been presented. In addition to the exhortations (a hortatory purpose), we find passages that are persuasive and emotional in nature, urging and moving readers to live in a certain way (a persuasive purpose and not only hortatory). Finally, there is a prevailing doxological (“having the intention to praise”) purpose in the epistles.

How Literary Are the Epistles?

We do not need the foregoing information about the authors of the epistles and their intentions to know that the epistles are uniquely powerful. I will speak personally in this regard. I have been pained to see the propensity of preachers to gravitate so automatically to the epistles to the neglect of the rest of the Bible. Furthermore, in theory the epistles are less literary (and more expository) than the rest of the literary parts of the Bible. To my surprise, therefore, I find that I know the epistles better than other parts of the Bible, and the aphorisms (memorable sayings) that stick in my memory come to a disproportionate degree from the epistles. This is a tribute to the hidden literary brilliance of the epistles, and this guided study is an attempt to explain that literary quality.

In my early writings on the Bible as literature (e.g., my 1974 book How to Read the Bible as Literature), I included chapters or units on the New Testament epistles only for the sake of being complete and not omitting a genre that my readers were expecting me to include. I viewed the epistles as more expository than literary in form. They did not strongly awaken my literary interest. But the closer I look at the epistles and take stock of their impact on me, the more literary they seem. What features make up this literary dimension?