This book was required reading for an Old Testament course I took at Liberty University. My professor (Ronald Giese) happens to be one of the authors. I appreciated reading the book, and it gave me some good insight into bible interpretation. The main premise of the book is that it is important for readers of the Bible to make 'genre distinction,' also called literary interpretation. In the first chapter Giese writes, "Ignorance of (literary) context leads to some of the worst mistakes of interpretation. On the other hand, familiarity with this context provides a window through which we can greatly increase our understanding of what the biblical authors were trying to say." I believe that this correctly shows the importance the Bible reader puts into udnerstanding the different genres of the Bible.
Chapters one through three introduce the topic and show its importance. The following ten chapters each define and describe ten different types of genres. The last chapter is a practical guide for Bible teachers. In particular, I appreciated the insights the book gave on Job. Interpreting and understanding Job is much easier if study is given literary importance- Job is not really of the narrative genre but more of the wisdom genre. Overall, I found the first three chapters the most helpful. Some of the different genres are very, very similar, thus difficult to distinguish and apply. That is my main complaint about the book. There probably only needed to be between 4 and 6 different types of genres, maybe with the others coming as sub-genres. I also don't like the title of this book, in trying to make a catchy title, I believe they created a title that scares people and misrepresents the book. There are no codes to crack- just use your brain in distinguishing the different kinds of literature that the Bible employs.