Guest Scholar:

A Conversation with Andrew Judd

To Laugh or to Cry? Why Genre Matters When Reading the Bible

If you’re watching a movie and see a crowd of people running around chaotically, how do you respond? Do you laugh? Panic? Sit at the edge of your seat? We all intuitively understand that the answer to that question depends almost entirely on the genre of the movie.

Similarly, we will respond differently to Scripture based on our understanding of the genre of a particular text. For example, we’ll read Genesis 1 differently depending on whether we treat it as history, a science report, a poem, or something else altogether. Or whether we think of the gospels as biographies or theological texts, or see the book of Revelation as more like a political cartoon than a detailed timeline of the end of all things.

Without a clear understanding of genre, we may hold naive or outdated views about how biblical texts were written and meant to be read. With a PhD in modern genre theory, Dr. Andrew Judd of Ridley College in Melbourne Australia is just the expert we need to help us read the Bible the way it deserves.

If we are misunderstanding the genre of a particular text, it’s like laughing during a thriller or panicking during a comedy: our responses are not in alignment with what the text is trying to communicate. Dr. Judd will help us navigate these misconceptions so we can engage Scripture more faithfully and grasp more fully what God is communicating through His Word.

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Andrew Judd; Deputy Principal: Community Lecturer in Old Testament; Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia.

Andrew is an ordained Anglican minister, and serves as Deputy Principal and Lecturer in Old Testament at Ridley College. His PhD from Sydney University explored how Gadamer and modern literary genre theory helps us better understand our disagreements about what the Bible means. He is the author of Modern Genre Theory: An Introduction for Biblical Studies (Zondervan Academic, 2024) and Playing with Scripture: Reading Contested Biblical Texts with Gadamer and Genre Theory (Routledge, 2024).

THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

This society seeks to gather Cornell faculty and graduate students to discuss major themes in biblical and theological studies. Discussion aims to satisfy what Simone Weil once described as the basic need of the soul to consider “every sort of opinion, without the least restriction or reserve.” To this end, we invite dialogue that explores and even challenges historic orthodox beliefs as well as those ideas that reign in the contemporary church, academy, and culture.

Our dialogue is collegial and cordial without shying away from the hard questions scholars face in their life and work. Members of the group seek to nurture discussion by listening attentively to one another, guarding the length of our responses, and avoiding diversions to pet issues unrelated to the subject at hand. In short, we seek to embody a uniquely Christian form of intellectual hospitality that we can pass on to future generations.