The writing styles in the Bible include historical narrative, law or instructions, letters, genealogies, parables, prophecy, and poetry.  The Bible Project estimates that one third of the Bible is poetry; Vern Poythress estimates it’s about half.  They don’t just mean rhyming verse, but using symbolic language and word pictures to probe deeper meanings than prose alone can do.  In addition, the Bible records situations when real people lived out important concepts to form story pictures, or “living parables”.  These are some of the most powerful stories in the Old Testament, since they can redirect us to the concepts and principles God intended for us to think about.

While Jesus was here on Earth, he usually taught by using stories and parables.  Jesus never wrote anything down, so he didn’t leave us a written book of systematic theology.  The doctrines and theology that we develop are our interpretations of the reality of the pictures we find in the Bible.  I think the pictures will always be more in-depth and complete than our interpretations of them.

Throughout this study, we’ll be looking for pictures, symbols, and metaphors, searching for the meaning that God intended for us.