Should we Read the Bible as Literature?

Is the Bible a pie chart or a poem?

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The thought of reading the Bible as literature makes some Christians uncomfortable—understandably so. Many are aware of “Bible as Literature” classes offered in secular educational institutions, where the Bible is presented alongside Greek myths and novels like Tom Sawyer. The Bible might be considered a historical document or literary work but is often dismissed as a mere fairy tale.

As Christians, this should make us wary. We believe that the Bible is the authoritative, divinely inspired word of God, with every verse holding significance for our faith.

Additionally, literature itself can seem darkly mysterious, daunting, and esoteric, full of symbolism, metaphors, and complex themes that may appear to obscure absolute truths. It can feel like a murky, mystical goo, open to endless interpretations, much like a bad, wandering ladies’ book club session. Shudder.

But here’s the problem:

The Bible is literature. C. S. Lewis referred to the Garden of Eden story as a “Hebrew folk tale.” The Bible is written in various literary forms—poetry, fairy tales, metaphors, satire, hyperbole, historical narratives, and didactic teaching.

The Bible’s literary nature is integral to its message. It cannot be set alongside its rational, absolute claims as if that were a totally separate point, an uneasy appendix to the real business of faith. As soon as we’ve done that, we’ve already swallowed basic assumptions about the nature of truth - assumptions inherited straight from a materialistic worldview. More on that in a minute. 

This creates a conundrum:

Secularists respect the Bible’s literary contributions but deny its absolute authority, while conservative Christians uphold its truth claims but often overlook its literary qualities.

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Imagine a group trying to navigate a city using a paper map. Half of the group studies the map’s details but never uses it for directions. The other studies the map, memorizes it, takes it very seriously but ignores the overall structure.

Ain’t no one going to find a Starbucks in that city.

Literal Versus Literary

Conservative Christians often trade the literary nature of the Bible in favor of reading it “literally.” If someone says we don’t always need to read the Bible literally, that might make some of us nervous. But there’s literal, and then there’s literal. 

Take Jesus’s statement, “If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away” (Matthew 18:9). There are several ways to understand this:

1. Liberal approach: Dismiss the teaching on sin but analyze Christ’s use of hyperbole and metaphor.

2. Conservative approach: Ignore the metaphor, take the teaching literally, and gouge out your eye. The fact that no conservative actually does this shows a massive inconsistency.

3. Balanced approach: Take the teaching on sin seriously as inspired by God while appreciating the metaphor and hyperbole.

“Taken by a literalist,” C. S. Lewis noted, “He (Jesus), will always prove the most elusive of teachers. Systems cannot keep up with darting illumination.”

In a word, the Bible should be read as it was written and presented, acknowledging and understanding its literary genres.

Put that way, it seems achingly simple. But it’s not. As soon as they get into the apocalyptic literature of the Bible, to name just one example, many conservatives start gouging their eyes out all over the place. But that’s another story.

The Real Issue:

The heart of the issue is *why* we resist reading the Bible as literature.

I want to circle back to what I mentioned earlier: our modern tendency to view literature, stories, fairy tales, and poetry as less factual. This betrays our rigged assumptions; we are deeply influenced by an enlightenment, materialist worldview. These assumptions regard truth merely as a collection of hard facts, dismissing miracles and stories as “less real.”

Why does it matter?

A rational, scientifically oriented view of the Bible reduces its mystery. When we shove scritupre into the realm of mere facts, we are usually missing the point.

In other words, if we start by assuming that the most real thing that exists is what you find on the periodic table—when we understand truth as a glossary of hard facts and doctor paperwork—when we view miracles, literature, and stories as existing in a less real, less important realm, we have adopted a self-flattering version of what’s true.

The Bible resists our hubris. It challenges our modern tendency to section off scripture into neatly organized, highly rational categories such as teachings on “money” and “marriage,” or the children’s Bible, the women’s Bible, the men between the ages of 22-22 and 3 months Bible, the single women’s Bible, the grieving woman’s Bible, and the book club women’s Bible.

Ok, I’ll stop.

Lewis put it this way: “We might have expected… ultimate truth in systematic form. Something we could have tabulated and relied on, like the multiplication table. The teaching of our lord himself… is not given us in that cut and dried foolproof systematic fashion… He preaches, but he does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony, and even… the wisecrack. He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another… He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, pinned down. The attempt is like trying to bottle a sunbeam.” 

Comfortable with Discomfort

Takeaway: The Bible will not flatter us. It bestows no lab coats. It does not validate all our systems for “knowing.”

Lest I sound in danger of disparaging facts, this is not an anti-fact position. When Thomas put his hands in Jesus’ scars and felt his side, he encountered real, living facts in the flesh. But understanding these facts didn’t leave Thomas feeling like he’d just solved a crossword puzzle.

They left him undone. Awed. Humbled.

Truth is a riddle, a poem, a story—something you revisit again and again, and it changes you. Truth doesn’t make you an expert; instead, it makes you wise.

Learning to read the Bible as literature is learning to read the Bible period.