From this class discussion, I learned that there are many different genres in the Bible which will impact the way the text is read. For example, some of the text in the Bible is historical, whereas books like Psalms and Proverbs are not historical but more closely resemble poetry. If someone tries to read these books as historical they will be largely confused and miss the point of the story. Another thing to consider about the Bible is that the text we are reading is not the original text the way it was written. The Bible has been translated from the original Hebrew and there is a potential that some of the original writings have been lost in translation.
In The Backdoor Introduction to the Bible, Kaltner and Mckenzie support both of these points we talked about in class. They have a section in the article where they focus on determining the genre of the Bible. Overall they decide that the Bible is entirely varied in genre and cannot be put into one box. One thing that is important to remember is that “the Bible is really a collection of different works of literature rather than a single book” (9). This accentuates the point that in order to read the Bible you must determine the genre of the book you are reading. Also, the authors focus on the fact that the Bible was written for ancient audiences using their languages. So, biblical scholars have produced resources such as user guides and reader’s notes for reading the Bible to ensure that you can comprehend as close to the original text as possible.