One of the top New Year’s resolutions, for Christians at least, is to read through the Bible. There’s no greater source or practice for spiritual growth. That would be great if you do that! But in addition, our church this year is going through the Bible book by book—from Gen. to Rev. each Sunday over the next 11 months. That’s 66 books in 43 weeks which means some of the short books will be grouped together. I’m not sure if any church has done this before, but I think it’s going to be a powerful learning experience together.
We need to be a people of the Book because Scripture is foundational to our faith & everything we believe & do! It’s God speaking to us, so we need to love it, learn it & live it! We miss out on much of what God wants us to know if we’re biblically illiterate. So a few weeks ago, we prepared for this with a series called “5 Weeks in the Word.” You can hear those 6 messages on our website or podcast (Oct. 27-Dec. 1). In that series we covered the importance, reliability, & authority of the Bible, as well as how to interpret & understand it. Some resources are also available on our website.
I’d also encourage you to get a good Study Bible that has background & commentary notes so you can better understand the purpose & context of each book. It helps greatly to know the 5 W’s – Who wrote it & to whom? When & Where is it taking place? What kind of book is it? Why is it being written? The Bible is not laid out chronologically but grouped in sections. The two main divisions are the Old Testament & New Testament. While Christians recognize both, Jewish people only recognize the Old—but they don’t call it “Old” since they don’t have a “New.” So it can be good to refer to them instead as the “Hebrew Scriptures” & “Christian Scriptures.”
The Hebrew Scriptures are made up of 3 main sections often called by the Hebrew acronym: “TaNaKh” — Torah (Law), Neviim (Prophets), & Ketuvim (Writings). The New Testament references them as “the Law & Prophets.” Jesus said, “…Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44). Notice that He uses a category called “Psalms” which is interchangeable with “Writings”—a category also known as the “Wisdom Books.”
But more commonly they’re grouped into 5 sections:
1. Law (English); or Torah (Hebrew); or Pentateuch (Greek, which means 5 volumes) = Genesis to Deuteronomy, covering the time from Creation to the death of Moses, & laying down the foundational commands, teachings & narratives for God’s chosen people—the Hebrews.
2. History = Joshua to Esther, covering the time from Israel entering the Promised Land to their Exile from the Promised Land to their return to the Promised Land.
3. Poetry = 5 books of “wisdom” literature from Job to Song of Solomon.
4. Major Prophets = the longer ones from Isaiah to Daniel.
5. Minor Prophets = the shorter ones from Hosea to Malachi.
Poetry & Prophets are not chronological but fall within the timeline of the History books. A Chronological Bible version will intersperse them in order like that.
To better understand the flow of biblical history, you can watch my message “What’s the Point of the Bible’s Plot?” which features a special memory device (from Gary Olsby) to help you get a handle on the big picture overview & timeline of the Bible: “Beep Slowly Jake Carries Cocoa.”
Our new series begins with the Torah which Jesus referred to as “the book of Moses” (Mark 12:26) because all 5 books were considered one “book.” He even used simply “Moses” as shorthand for the Torah: “Has not Moses given you the law” (John 7:19). Jews, Christians, & Muslims all affirmed Mosaic authorship with no real argument against it until the 18th century when liberalism spread through modernist scholarship in universities pushing the idea that various anonymous authors living centuries apart with different agendas wrote various portions pieced together long after the time of Moses.
Though that thinking still dominates scholarly discussions, it’s just based on naturalistic Darwinian thinking which was gaining ground at the time. Since they would often reject supernatural revelation from God, they supposed these books must have evolved over time. But no good reason supports such speculation other than some variations in writing styles, repetition of a few stories, & the use of different names for God. But since then, the same kinds of things have been noted in other ancient literature. It may seem a bit odd to us today, but it was apparently common then despite what your typical liberal university professor or mainline denominational pastor says. So if Jesus says Moses is the author, that’s good enough for me!
Let’s not be like the liberals of today or of Jesus’ day known as the Sadducees. We don’t have to reject Scripture like they did to be wrong—we just have to ignore it & remain willfully unfamiliar with it (Matt. 22:23, 29, Acts 23:7-8).