Bully's Blog

The next few chapters are like flying lessons. You are going to learn to think in new ways, to see the Bible—and the world—with an extra dimension usually reserved for poets, madmen and the authors of the Scriptures.

If you find you are not getting it, don’t worry. You may be someone visual, like me, who learns better by seeing things in action, and there will be plenty of action shortly. If you are non-visual, I advise you to repress the urge to demand a full engineering report on this bumblebee before you see it do the physically impossible and fly. And I can tell you from experience, this thing flies with the mighty wings of a four-faced cherubim.

Learning Bible Patterns

There are three fundamental seven-step patterns in Scripture, which are often three strands of the same cord.

The first is the seven day Creation pattern, which appears sometimes as con-struction and sometimes as de-struction.

The second, and most important, is the Dominion pattern, which is repeated many times in the Old Testament and is also the deep structure of the New. It marks out and claims the territory promised to us by God as a new creation.

The third is the pattern of the seven Festivals given to the nation of Israel. These feasts show us that the process of gathering God’s people is written into Creation as the harvest year.

You Christians who know the Bible will begin to recognize these patterns in passages that are very familiar. They have already become part of your subconscious, and this is the purpose for which they were designed. The Bible recasts the shape of the way we think in order to forge the shape of the way we live. Meditating on these patterns and their implications has given me a bigger handle on the Scriptures. It has also given the Scriptures a bigger handle on me.

Understanding the Bible requires a biblical theology that is not only literary and historical but also typological. This extra dimension is not optional but crucial. This is how Christ has revealed Himself.

There’s no need for any obscure Scriptures to remain as isolated parts of a mystery antique. In fact, when understood in both their historical context and literary structure, these can be the most rewarding. Not a word is idle. The Bible is absolute perfection, an unfathomably integrated living organism, and the literary architecture of a growing house, head and body—the Whole Christ.

Perfect Symmetry

Have you ever wondered why there is repetition in many passages of Scripture? The Bible often uses a literary structure much like a flock of geese flying in formation. The geese on each end are corresponding events, and each goose corresponds to its counterpart until we reach the central point, which is often the main message of the passage—the thesis. A seven-fold (heptamerous) formation would look like this:

A and A1 are related ideas, if not identical. A1 is often an expansion of A, and B1 of B, etc. The pattern is known as a chiasm (ky-azm). Chiasms are common throughout Scripture.

The Bible is neither an archaic shambles nor a linear torrent of data to be absorbed and merely “systematized.” As we shall see, it is literary architecture. To be interpreted it must be read in three dimensions.

A Chiasm: The Bathsheba Narrative

Method in the Madness

Chiastic structures were a means of ordering information so it could be remembered easily. Since literacy was limited, literature was designed to be read aloud and heard. In the preface to his book, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament, David Dorsey writes:

“My fascination with [Hebrew literary structure] was kindled when I began teaching Old Testament courses in seminary. At that time I was struck by the apparent lack of order within many of the biblical books. Jeremiah seemed hopelessly confused in its organization; so did Isaiah and Hosea and most of the prophets. Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes appeared to be in almost complete disarray, and even the more orderly historical books, such as Joshua and Kings, showed signs of strangely careless organization.

Why did the biblical authors write like this? I would never write a book, an article, or even a private letter with such carelessness of arrangement. I was intrigued by the possibility that the Hebrew authors might have organized their compositions according to literary conventions that were different from ours.

I began to discover, over a period of years, that several structuring patterns rarely used by us were remarkably common in the books of the Hebrew Bible, particularly chiasmus (symmetry), parallelism, and sevenfold patterns. I was increasingly struck by how often these patterns had been utilized to arrange biblical books…

It was my mother who gave me a love for literature. She read to my brother Stephen and me regularly, from as early as I can remember. I still have many fond memories of those wondrous bedtime stories, whose structures—like the Bible—were designed for the ear, not the eye.”

Besides symmetries and parallelisms, there are those three basic patterns in the Bible: Creation, Festivals  and Dominion. These may take a little time to get a grip on, but like learning to ride a bicycle, this is the hardest part of the process. Once you get a handle on it, you can go anywhere.

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[1]  From Peter J. Leithart, A House For My Name, p. 150.