What the eyes can't see 48

Many of you who know me, will appreciate that my literary skills leave a lot to be desired, however since I started studying the bible with greater intent, I have discovered the need to be able to differentiate between the various types and styles of literature, in order to better understand the content. Some of you might say its all to complicated and why cant we just read it as it is written, and I would agree with you in as much as the more times you read through the bible the more apparent the kind of literature becomes. This is fact, but some text requires a somewhat more in depth approach,what follows is written for those who are confronted with problems interpreting the book of genesis. The first step required when reading any portion of text is to work out what kind of literature it is, and what language it is written in. Each kind of literature has its own rules of composition, and these serve also as rules for its interpretation. To read any passage correctly, we must do four things: 1. Isolate the unit, find one style of writing for the section or book; 2. Identify the literary form (class, type, genre) of the composition; 3. Diagnose the dialect prose or poetry; 4. Use the grammatical and literary rules for that kind of composition. Unless this preliminary work is done correctly, the text can be misread. What, then is Genesis 1? Firstly, Genesis 1 is not a poem, it does not use verse forms. It is written in the standard literary dialect of narrative prose. It is completely devoid of poetic diction, imagery, figures of speech. Secondly, Genesis 1 is straight-forward narrative. It talks about the real world, completely familiar to us. It lists the cosmic elements and terrestrial phenomena such as we observe everyday ; sky, land, sea, heavenly lights, vegetation, fish, birds, and animals, including humankind. The terms "sky", "land", "grass", etc., have their simple meanings. The language is not mythological, allegorical, or parabolic. Genesis 1 states that God made all these things. The story is as simple as can be, straight-forward, matter-of-fact.Thirdly, Genesis 1 is followed by other stories which read like successive chapters in a book. The narrative is continuous, with transitions rather than breaks; and it goes right on through the accounts of the patriarchs, the careers of Moses and Joshua, followed by Judges and Kings. Genesis through Kings is a single, continuous, gigantic chronicle; and all of it is the same kind of writing. It is a unified history of God and his world. As the first part, and an integral part, of that history, Genesis 1 itself is also history. But we still have to work out how history is written in the Bible, and what kind of history-writing we have in Genesis 1. Again, it would be impudent to insist that we already know the answer to that question, even before we begin to read, and to insist on interpreting it in our way, instead of first finding out the biblical way of doing it. We notice, for instance, that Genesis 1 is very repetitious. The events take place on six days, and each day's events are reported in a similar cycle. It is highly schematic and formulaic. Is this artistic pattern a framework, carrying the list of things that God made? Or is it part of the factual information supplied? In all, eight acts of creation are reported. And, no matter how it is done, they have to be reported in some kind of sequence. One of the commonest mistakes in reading Genesis 1 is to assume that truthful history must report events in chronological sequence. Who made that rule?