I wish to make a simple point, seemingly obvious but perhaps only because I’ve spent the past 20 years of my life teaching myself how to read and write books of substance, books which are worth reading by objective standards.
When a friend recently read two of my theological books (one unpublished) and three of my novels (all three unpublished), she was surprised at the way my style changed to deal with the subject. She read first “To See a World in a Grain of Sand” which is a hard to read book at best and very difficult for the modern reader because we live in societies that fragment our attention and make it difficult for us to concentrate on long trains of arguments. More to the point so far as “World” goes, we have trouble stepping back to see the structure of an argument that is not even fully describable in our modern language.
In any case, the general point is that I’ve always known that style and content are not separate. If you have more than one type of story or more than one type of message to communicate, you have to develop the skills of writing in more than one style.
People seem to think of an author as a writing machine of some sort. Some Christians and Jews think of the authors of the Bible as having been writing machines under the direct control of God or an angel of God just as they think of a popular author, with great justification, as being little more than an empty-souled writing machine which operates in a highly specified way. That highly specified way would presumeably be the result of programming during a period of training in some school or another.
Real writers are not programmable or trainable. Real writers are driven to say something, though that something may not be well-defined when the writing urge first arises. Moreover, real writers with any significant talent will have lots of things to say and will have appropriate ways of saying those lots of things.
The writers of the various books of the Bible were real writers. Under the inspiration of God? Yes. Machines writing only what God dictated? No. Writing machines that had only one way of operating? Clearly no.
The same writer who could write in a straightfoward way of the events of the mission years of Christ — the years known to the Apostles and other followers of Christ — could very well write a birth narrative in a mythical style while retaining his respect for the historical truth of Christ’s life and death and resurrection. Some of the resurrection stories are in a mythical form though not the basic stories of the Lord’s first appearances, to the women in the garden and then to Peter and John and then to the gathering of the Apostles and some other disciples.
The birth narratives also show a respect for some historical core without showing the stylistic humility of a simple historical narrative. The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke show a mythical style appropriate for writings which are the result of reflection of early Christian communities upon the reality Who was their Lord. There are other passages in the Gospels which show the same stylistic signs which set them apart from the straightforward narratives of the mission years, including the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The story of the three temptations of Christ by Satan in the fourth chapter of Luke seems also to be likely the result of years of contemplation upon one aspect of the character of Jesus of Nazareth: His sheer incorruptibility.
The Hebraic books, which Christians call the Old Testament, also contain passages which are clearly intended to be straightforward history and other passages which are the result of contemplation upon some historical core of truths. Some, such as the events of the Exodus and of the conquest of Israel by Joshua show a strange intermingling. In fact, historical analysis of archaelogical findings indicate that their was an exodus and there were events corresponding to the conquest of Israel by Joshua but the exodus was not one event.
There was a small exodus which would correspond to the one which everyone reads out of the Bible though there is another exodus referred to in the Bible, apparently larger and peaceful and heading directly to the Holy Land. One of the complications of the Joshua narratives is that there would have been Hebrews in and around the Holy Land when the descendents of the followers of Moses arrived. The conquest was also an extended series of events which took place over several generations and maybe many generations.
Historical truths and efforts to speak of contemplations upon those truths as well as others long forgotten were intermingled in a way that is very difficult to undo. As a consequence, some try and lose sight of the core of historical truths, truths which are the foundation of the intermingled lines of mythical narratives. Others struggle hard to retain a sense of those truths, out of respect for Holy Scripture, and lose the ability to see those mythical lines of narrative.
I don’t know how much further I’ll work on this line of thought, as important as it is. I do know it’ll be in the back of my mind as I respond to the advice of a friend to deal more directly with the Bible in my theological writings.