Read The Bible Literarily
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
This is the opening sentence of Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird. But the details of how Jem broke his arm are not revealed until the end of the novel. It may have been thirty years ago that I read that book, and there’s not much else that I could tell you about it. But, for some reason, I remember learning in my whatever-grade-I-was-in English class that this opening sentence is a literary device called “foreshadowing.” Lee mentions this important event without saying much more to create intrigue as the reader reads, waiting to learn how it happened. Take heart, English teachers, some of your students are learning something!
We’ve probably all been exposed to just enough English Class to know that skilled writers don’t only tell their stories in what they write but also in how they write it. Foreshadowing is but one of many tools authors employ to engage their readers’ attention and imagination. The best authors craft their content, inviting us into their stories to explore meaning and significance beneath the surface.
Maybe you know this to be true of Dickens and Dostoyevsky. But did you know it is also true of Moses and Mark? I get the impression that biblical narrative is often approached more like a newspaper than a novel. We interact with the text primarily as a presentation of facts, as if the foremost answer to the question, “Why did Mark write this?” would be, “Because that’s what happened.” But what if Mark not only writes what happened but also skillfully structures how he writes it to show us why it matters? Perhaps the finest example of this is the cursing of the fig tree in Mark 11.
On its own, Mark 11:12-14 may be the most bizarre and confusing story in the gospel. Jesus was hungry and came to a fig tree looking for something to eat and pronounced a curse on the tree when he found no fruit. At first blush, this seems like an uncharacteristic overreaction on Jesus’ part. And Mark makes it worse by pointing out that it wasn’t even the season for figs! We’re left wondering, “Why would Jesus curse a tree for not producing fruit when it’s not even supposed to be producing fruit?” The narrative then transitions to Jesus and the disciples entering Jerusalem and the temple. Mark wants us to be confused about what just happened, and then he intentionally leaves us hanging. But not for long.
After Jesus cleanses the temple in verses 15-19, Mark returns to the subject of the fig tree in verse 20. This shows that the transition to the temple cleansing was not a change of subject. Rather, Mark sandwiched the story of the cleansing in between the complete account of the fig tree. Bracketing the cursing around the cleansing is a literary device known as inclusio. Bookending the cleansing with the cursing clues us in that Mark wants us to view them as a whole. The key to understanding each is found in exploring how they relate to one another.
The temple was full of activity, like the leaves on the fig tree. But upon closer inspection, there was no fruit. The temple was meant to be a house of prayer but had become a den of robbers. Jesus cursed the tree for its fruitlessness as a picture of the coming cleansing of the temple for its fruitlessness. Jesus’ bizarre actions were not primarily about the fig tree. Mark structures the story in this way to show us that Jesus’ cursing of the tree is to be understood as symbolic of the cleansing of the temple, which serves as a precursor of its ultimate destruction (see Mark 13:1-2).
You know you ought to read your Bible regularly. And perhaps you’re learning to read your Bible meditatively. From this example in Mark I hope you are convinced that you must also read your Bible literarily. The God-breathed truth of the Bible does not only come through in what was written but also in the literary brilliance of how its authors wrote it.
~ Andy Barker grew up in Boston, Ma. and relocated to Charlotte in 2008. He currently serves as a Shepherding Elder at LIFE Fellowship. He and his wife Melanie have five children and have attended LIFE Fellowship for over ten years.