SB WWG Bible genre
Consider the old riddle "Why did the chicken cross the road?". Everyone thinks they know the answer is "To get to the other side." but they are wrong. You will know the true answer, not when you hear it, but when you understand it.
Your assumption about a text affects the meaning you derive from the text. You were told the question was a riddle, but you assumed it was a simple literal question. Your assumption has set in motion the course of misunderstanding. "To get to the other side.", sounds like a reasonable answer to a literal question. You groan and think that is the dumbest riddle you have ever heard. In fact, some people are so arrogant to call it a non-riddle, being secure in their ignorance.
The true answer is "To get to the other side." I warned you ahead of time, that you would not know this was the true answer when you heard it, but when you understood it. In the genre of riddle, there is word play. The answer given in the first paragraph has no word play because you assumed it was literal. The second answer, which appears to be identical, is a different answer because there is word play.
'The other side" is a common euphemism for having passed from life to death. This is the basis for the true answer.
A feature of riddles is that one can hide things in plane sight because a riddle cannot be solved by the contents of the riddle. you must know something else. The riddle is known when the answer is given, or when the additional information is surmised. There is a clue. The question asks about a specific chicken; "The chicken."
In the country, chickens cross the road all the time. This isn't a secret, nor a mystery. But which chicken is THE chicken? It is the one that didn't make it, and it's carcass still lies in the road.
Now we can understand that when a dead chicken is seen in the road, the riddle is asked, and the answer is, "He wanted to die" worded as "To get to the other side."
The genre of the Bible is like the chicken riddle. If you read it literally, you don't really understand it.
The Bible has been read literally and produced thousands of literal answers which cannot be tested for truth. The use of Greek philosophy, rhetoric and debate does not produce truth; but merely gathers followers to the more cleaver debater. The literal answers seem plausible, as scholars attempt to tease out the author's intended meaning. By doing so they become hostile to God's word. They ignore his stated purpose that all the scriptures speak of Christ.
The apostle Paul said that the mystery had been hidden from the beginning. But the scholars become hostile in their declaration that there is no mystery and the Bible is plain. They even have a word for it: perspicuity.
Jesus said he taught in parables so that they would not believe, yet the scholar says he taught in parables to make it easy for ignorant peasants to understand.
God told Israel that they would become a parable to the nations. Their history is a parable of Christ, yet the scholar becomes hostile saying it is merely a literal history. God taught of Christ in the parable of the history of Israel so that they would not believe. He hid his teaching in riddle.
The scholar tells us Jesus was a good teacher. What kind of good teacher teaches so that his students do not understand? He was not a good teacher. He was a most superb teller of riddles in parables. [1]
His teaching in riddle could not be understood until something outside the riddle was known. One had to know that "the other side" is a euphemism for death to solve the chicken riddle. One has to know about the cross to understand the parable of Christ in the Old Testament record. The cross is the key to understanding his teaching. The genre of the Bible is a prophetic riddle hidden in the literal historic record. Now we hold the keys to unlock the mystery.
