The Bible includes history, poetry, prophecy, letters, wisdom literature, parables, and apocalyptic visions.
Why do you think God chose to communicate through such a variety of literary styles instead of using just one?
I believe everything God creates is complex and varied in form and type. Perhaps you learn better from poetry, and I from prophecy, letters. Others from wisdom literature, parables, and apocalyptic visions. Perhaps, Peter’s theory, not Biblical, God just enjoys and wants us to enjoy diversity.
Peter
He recognizes that everyone is different and learns/retains information different. Just like at school. When I was in school, I always did better when a teacher shared information visually. When it was nothing but words and note-taking, didn’t do as well.
Because God is infinitely variable, he is not understood by one form of writting, he expresses himself in many forms of writting.
I think the simplest answer is this: God chose to reveal Himself in history, to people; the Bible is the record of that historical revelation of God. And so God worked through many different people, who wrote diverse kinds of texts, to be that divinely inspired witness of who He is and what He has done. Of course, in the most important sense, God’s chief revelation of Himself isn’t through the patriarchs and the prophets, or the biblical texts, but in the singular and unique Person of Jesus Christ. And thus the Bible, even more importantly, points us to Jesus. The entirety of God’s revelatory work through the patriarchs and prophets, and thus in the many texts which make up what we call the Old Testament, including the poetical works the wisdom literature, etc is looking forward to Jesus–and the New Testament is the record of this very Jesus.
That is, fundamentally, what the author of Hebrews is getting at when he writes that in diverse ways God spoke to “our fathers” (since the work is addressed to a Jewish Christian audience, this is clearly about the Israelite patriarchs, and prophets, etc) but has “in these last days” spoken through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the whole point.
Since God was working with and through people in history, He worked with and through their own literary works. There is a living, breathing, communion between God and His people. If God wanted everything to be tablets of stone, He absolutely could have. But He was always working in, with, and through ordinary people. I think this actually tells us something about God–God doesn’t choose to stand at the top and deliver everything from top-to-bottom, but God chooses to stand at the bottom, with the ordinary, the common. Unlike the pagan gods who were always associated with pagan kings doing things from the top and forcing things from top to bottom, the real God works through the weak, the powerless, the foolish, the common, and the ordinary. God chose an old pastoralist named Abram and his barren wife, God chose the younger not the older brother in Jacob, God chose Joseph, who was sold into slavery, God chose David, a shepherd boy, God’s prophets were men like Elijah who were often mistreated by those in power. When God sent His Son, He didn’t choose a powerful strong great woman, He chose a simple virgin from a backwater Galilean city to bear the Christ-Child; God when He became flesh was born not in a palace, but a place where animals were kept, the angels didn’t meet princes and philosophers and priests but poor shepherds tending their flocks to announce the birth of the King of kings. Christ did not choose the powerful, the elite, and the most educated–He chose the riff raff to be His apostles, fishermen, tax collectors, unremarkable men. And when He did choose a person of importance (Saul of Tarsus), He took everything away from him, in order that he should suffer and become least of the apostles as Paul “small”.
God is always at the bottom. Because that is where He chooses to be. He doesn’t want to be identified with human glory, but human weakness. Because His way is not like our ways, and His thoughts are not like our thoughts. He will not be treated or regarded like some pagan god of human imagination and glory; but will be True and Faithful and Real.
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What all of you say is true, but ultimately God doesn’t have to answer all our questions when they don’t have relevance to the purposes of his inspiration of the history and teachings of his inspired Word. I think that this question is unanswerable as a result.
It’s actually just about the use of language. All languages contain expressions and idioms common to its language. Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek are no different. Non-believers have tried to use the idea of various writing styles as an excuse to discredit God’s Word, like how some claim The Bible is just poetry, or religious philosophy and doesn’t contain any real literal value like scientific fact. Those dreamers of course are wrong.