Steps

[Time: 6 minutes. Read below or listen here.]

Below is a panorama of the books of the Bible in approximate chronological order. Many of the books of the prophets overlap parts of the Kingdom books, and some of the Psalms were written after the departure into exile. In the New Testament, Many of the Church letters all the writings of John are placed at the end because John wrote them all at the close of the first century. This is the order we will follow in reading and learning about the sixty-six books of the Bible.

The Bible is the story of God’s dealings with a particular part of humanity, the descendants of Jacob, their interactions with their neighbors, and the culmination of God’s plan in sending the Son to bring a much more expansive salvation and the completion of God’s plan.

The Panorama of the Bible begins with the creation, the beginning of the spread of humanity, the great flood, and then the focus on a particular individual, Abraham. His grandson, Jacob, and all Jacob’s family move to Egypt and are enslaved for four hundred years. Under the leadership of Moses, they escape Egypt, meet God at Mount Sinai, and eventually enter the land of Canaan. For many years the descendants of Jacob are ruled by occasional Judges as needed. The kingdom begins with Saul who is replaced by David and then David’s son Solomon, the two of them responsible for much of the poetical books. Then the kingdom splits north and south into Israel and Judah, and God sends a long series of prophets to confront the people. Israel is first to go into exile under the onslaught of the Assyrians; Judah follows a little later during the attacks of Babylon. The Persian king Cyrus let those who wanted to return go home and rebuild Jerusalem. After several hundred years the star appeared over Bethlehem. Jesus Christ grew up and began his ministry of calling, healing, and teaching, culminating in his sacrificial and atoning death on the cross, resurrection, and ascension. When the Holy Spirit replaced Him among His followers, the church was born and expanded outward from Jerusalem and Judea, to Samaria, and to the surrounding nations. Paul, with Luke and others, was instrumental in spreading the Good News and establishing churches, to some of which he wrote letters. Others of the original followers of Jesus also wrote letters, more general and more widely spread. The apostle John wrote his own gospel account, three letters to churches around the area of Ephesus in Asia Minor, and completed the Bible with his unveiling of what lies ahead.

Read on to discover how the Bible is linked to human history.

[Time: 4 hours]

In preparation for Step 7, read or listen to the book of Genesis in a format that does not include chapter and verse numbers. Go right through the whole book. It’s a long one, so, if you just can’t do it all in one sitting, make a break after chapter 27. It is much better if you can go from chapter one to chapter fifty all in one sitting, but reality can intervene.

[Time: 3 minutes. Read below or listen here.]

In the mid-1700s, Hermann Reimarus did something quite detrimental to the understanding of the Bible. He believed that there was, somewhere, a deity, but did not feel the need to be any more specific. He rejected Christianity outright. These beliefs, or lack thereof, might certainly have been detrimental to him, but he did something that affected the study of the Bible to this day.

Reimarus (1694-1768) decided to write the real life of Jesus by following the rationalist assumption that God could not and would not intervene in any non-natural way. Removing all the miracles and any reference to the supernatural, he focused on the history of the early first century to portray Jesus as a Jewish revolutionary who suffered an ignoble death at the hands of the occupying Romans. This “Quest for the Historical Jesus” continues in the twenty-first century in book after book that tries to remove the supernatural features of the Gospels from the historical features.

This does violence to the Bible, because the books of the Bible firmly root God’s supernatural interventions in the history of specific people at identifiably specific times and places in history. It is easy to over-react to the kind of ruthless application of history that Reimarus introduced. In reaction, some Christians have leaned toward focusing on the supernatural aspects of God’s Word while eschewing all historical references. If you ignore the historical setting of a Bible passage and look only for verses that could apply to you today, you will tend to misunderstand the meaning of those verses. It makes the Bible fundamentally unreal.

The Bible is solidly supernatural and firmly rooted in human history. Both.

If you have not yet read or listened to all of Genesis, go ahead to Steps 7 and 8 to discover something of the Bible’s overall Story to watch for as you read. You will need to complete the reading/listening before going to Step 9.