Hermeneutic 9

9-Pay attention to genre.  The Bible contains various types of written expression: law, prophecy, song, proverb, history, espistle, Gospel, parable, prayer, and more.  Some books combine more than one genre.  A sound hermeneutic recognizes the universal and binding nature of some biblical statements (such as "You shall not steal"; Deut. 5:19) and proverbial qualitiy of other statements (such as "The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short"; Prov. 10:27).  Proverbs are statements of general validity, not predictions of what will always happen in every imaginable case.  The symbols of the book of Revelation call for a different hermeneutic than the clear descriptions of ship travel in Acts 27;28.  The Gospel presents Christ in His historical ministry; the NT Epistles assume their readers have received the good news and believed in Jesus.  They do not, therefore tend to repeat or retell the narratives the Gospel relate.  This does not mean that the Epistles discount the importance of Jesus' earthly work and teaching, but that they belong to a different genre with a different aim.