ABSTRACT
One of the prominent characteristics of biblical studies in this century has been the careful and explicit attention given to the classification of literary genres. Literature has been classified into genres for various purposes at least since Plato, and such classification has become a standard technique for the study of literature in some schools of literary criticism 1 and has found its way into biblical criticism especially through the work of Gunkel and Lagrange.2 For Catholic exegetes the search for literary forms began in an effort to extricate biblical inerrancy from various difficulties, but the con temporary interest in genres is motivated also by a realization that genre classification is an aid to understanding the individual author in relation both to his social context and to literary techniques which he has used, modified or opposed, and that no work of literature can be understood correctly unless it is put into its proper literary focus in this way. Encouraged by ecclesiastical documents3 and stimulated by the increasing amount of literature from the ancient Near East available for comparative purposes, this trend in biblical criticism has resulted in many valuable studies of such genres as history, prophecy, apocalyptic, wisdom literature, gospel, etc.
