Not only that but sentences only have meanings within wider literary contexts — «a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho» would mean one thing in a historical account, and another in a parable. (premierchristianity.com)
This has been encouraged by our knowledge of the different sources of the Bible, by the development of form criticism and its insights and speculations into the early stages of the formation of the Gospels, by questions about the «original» intent of passages before they were set in their present literary context, by questions of «what really happened», and by the attempt to unravel diverse strands of tradition in both Old and New Testaments. (religion-online.org)
We'd been blithely unaware that there is more than one genre in the Bible, or that literary context profoundly matters to meaning. (rachelheldevans.com)