Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. Today on the podcast we're going to continue our conversation

in the series on how to read the Bible. So if you're like me, the Bible can get really intimidating

and even confusing and one reason is because there's different styles of writing in the Bible.

So in this episode, Tim and I are going to talk about the three main types of literary styles in the

Bible, poetry, narrative and post-discourse. And of the three, perhaps the hardest one is poetry.

Yet poetry in the Bible is really important. One of three chapters in the Bible is not trying to

communicate content or information to you. It's rather trying to create an experience

that shapes how you feel and how you think. It's remarkable to me. A third of the Bible

is this kind of literature. So in this episode we break down some examples of biblical poetry, narrative

and discourse and we talk about their differences. Here we go.

So, 33% of the Bible, that's a really clean number there.

Yeah, I forget what the decibels were when I did it. I did it by chapters.

And then did I write it in these notes? I have it somewhere in my notes. Oh yeah, here it is.

502 chapters in the Bible are narrative. Oh, 387 are poetry.

Now it's not always that clean that chapter can have both. That's true. So I tried to

round up because there are many poems that are embedded in stories. In which case that's a

narrative chapter. I didn't count it. Oh, so poetry actually has a little bit more. Probably poetry,

yeah. But some poems embedded in narratives are whole, are whole chapters. So yeah, you would count

that as a poetry chapter. Yeah, there's probably another dozen to 15 chapters worth of poetry

embedded in a small poems. In either Paul's letters, he quotes a number of poems or in

other narratives. So yeah, it's probably more like 35%, maybe 36. Okay, here's the thing with

poetry. This is like the dead poet society. You can begin with a definition. Put down my list

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