With what various purposes may the Bible be studied? What is meant by the study of the Bible as literature? Give an instance showing that this study is important for the right interpretation of the Bible. How does the form in which our Bibles are printed hinder in the study of it as literature? What other difficulty is met in the literary study of the Bible? How many classes of literature are found in the Bible? What is the department of literature most prominent in the Bible? Name four kinds of history in the Bible, define each kind, and give an example of it. To what class of literature do the stories of the Bible belong? What are the subjects of some of these stories? What is an epic? Name some great epics in literature? Wherein do these differ from the epics in the Bible?
Part Two
Review I, II, and parts 1 and 2 of III.
3. Far more of the Old Testament belongs to the department of Poetry than appears in the Authorized Version, the Bible in common use. The He´brew mind was poetic rather than prosaic, and the thought of this people naturally fell into the form of poetry. But there is a great difference between our poetry or verse and that of the He´brews. With us there is apt to be rhyme, never sought by the Bible poet; or else a certain measure in length of line or emphasis on certain vowel sounds, the "feet" or "meter," in the verse, equally unknown in the Bible. He´brew verse consists in a peculiar symmetry and balance of clauses, which is called "parallelism," for instance:
"He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:
He that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Is´ra-el
Shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Psa. 121. 3, 4).
Poetry is to be found in nearly all parts of the Old Testament. There are:
1.) Odes, as the song of Mir´i-am (Exod. 15), of Deb´o-rah (Judg. 5), and the book of Lam-en-ta´tions. In the latter book there is an acrostical arrangement, each stanza beginning in the original text with a letter of the He´brew alphabet, and arranged in their order.
2.) Lyric poems, songs of emotion or feeling, as most of the Psalms.
3.) Dramatic poems, illustrative of action, as Job and the Song of Sol´o-mon.
4. Oratory figures extensively in the Old Testament, as we should expect to find in the literature of any Oriental people, among whom the public speaker exercises a mighty influence. The orations or discourses of the Bible are sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry, sometimes in both forms of expression. The speeches in the book of Job, Sol´o-mon's dedicatory prayer (2 Chron. 6), almost the entire book of Deu-ter-on´o-my, the opening chapters of Prov´erbs, and many of the discourses of the prophets belong to this department. Note how readily the passage in Deut. 8. 7-9 falls into verse: