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Your Window into the Bible (Deluxe Version)
Click here to read the whole story of the Bible in "compressed" form!!! Click here to go straight to detailed outline of the Bible Introduction to the Bible Imagine compiling a book all about America. To help readers understand Americans, it would have to do at least two things. First, the book would have to tell the American story (our history, the values we hold, our system of government, and so on). Second, it would not be complete without including famous speeches and samples of the writings of Americans themselves (for example, the Declaration of Independence, or the "I have a dream" speech, or Abe Lincoln's letters, or the writings of Mark Twain, and the list could go on!) Basically, this is what the Bible gives us--history and writings. But instead of being about Americans, the "Old Testament" is the history and writings of the Jewish people in the time before Jesus was born. The New Testament is the history and writings of early Christians.
The Whole Story of the Bible--the "History" part
The Old Testament can be divided between history, prophets, and writings.
First, it helps to know a little bit about the HISTORY
behind it. By the way, all of the books in the Old Testament are
mentioned somewhere below...can you find all of them?
The first 11 chapters of Genesis contain the famous stories of creation,
Noah’s Ark, and others. They tell us that God made our world a
good place, but humans have the choice of being good or bad. Ever
since Adam & Eve got thrown out of the Garden of Eden for eating the
forbidden fruit, humans have had to wrestle with that choice and its
consequences. In a way, that’s what the whole Old Testament is
about; obey and be rewarded, or disobey and get punished. (Does it
sound a little like parents?)
In Genesis 12, God made a special promise to Abraham that 1) he would have
a lot of descendants, and 2) they would get to live in a “promised
land.” So Abraham, his son Isaac, and his son Jacob (who had
twelve sons including Joseph and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat) became
known as the fathers of the Jews. In return for this great promise,
God asked the Jewish people to keep God #1 in their life. Often they
did. Sometimes they didn’t. Well, let’s move on.
Exodus tells how the Jewish people escaped from slavery in Egypt through
the parted waters under the leadership of Moses. There’s snakes
and blood and plagues and mean ‘ole Pharoah in there somewhere, but
never mind that now. Moses is still leading the sometimes committed,
but usually grumpy people in the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. As the story continues, the Jews wander in the desert,
get the Ten Commandments on a mountain, and grow in numbers (like God
promised...remember?). They learn how to be faithful to God, and
basically get their act together. Finally, under the military
leadership of Joshua, they conquer the promised land (called “Israel,”
which is good because they are called the “Israelites”). For
awhile, things were going great; lots of Abraham’s descendants living in
God’s promised land.
Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles continue the story in the promised
land. At first they were ruled by Judges (like Samson, who really
hated to get his hair cut...Judges 16:17 tells why), because they figured
their only “king” was God, but later they wanted a king like other
countries had. So Samuel was the last judge, and Saul became their
first king. He wasn’t too faithful to God, so he was replaced by
David. David was so great that later the Jewish people figured the
messiah would have to be one of his direct descendants. (By the way,
he wrote lots of the Psalms, and was a good dancer too).
Solomon took over after David, but unfortunately his sons couldn’t hold
the kingdom together and it split north/south. Eventually the north
part was conquered by the mean old Assyrians, and later the Babylonians
just clobbered the south. That would be the end of the story, and of
God’s promise, except that later the heroes Ezra and Nehemiah helped the
people rebuild the kingdom. Therefore, God’s promise lived on, and
that’s the “happily ever after” ending of the Old Testament story!
Meanwhile, the PROPHETS
spoke, and their sermons are written in the Bible. They were a lot
like preachers. They told people what God wanted them to do.
Sometimes people listened to them, but sometimes they had to learn the
hard way. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are called “major
prophets” because their books are long. The other prophets are
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malachi.
The WRITINGS
are a variety of books which are not history or prophets either. For
example, Psalms are poetic words and songs the Jews used in church.
Proverbs are like bumper stickers, and if you read them you gain a lot of
wisdom. Lamentations (a “lament” is like crying) were written by
the prophet Jeremiah after the Jewish people were thrown out of the
promised land. The writer of Ecclesiastes wonders aloud about the
meaning of life. The book of Job explores the problem of bad things
happening to good people. Ruth, Esther, and Daniel (yes, with the
Lion’s den and the guys in the fiery furnace) are also special,
wonderful writings. And remember Jonah? That one is a “Whale
of a Tale!” (but there’s a hungry worm in Jonah too; do you know what
it ate?) Well, that’s about it. History, prophets, and writings. Then you come to the New Testament... “The
Life of Christ”
The story of Jesus’ birth is only found in Matthew and Luke.
They both include his family tree too, which they put in there to
prove that Jesus was descended from King David (because the messiah was
supposed to be). Jesus’
parents lived in the town of Nazareth, which was in “Galilee.”
However, just before Jesus was born, the government forced everyone
to travel to their hometown for a census, and that is how Jesus was born
in the town of Bethlehem (his father’s hometown).
After a brief stay in Egypt where they fled to avoid King Herod’s
plot to kill all baby boys, they moved back to Nazareth, where Jesus grew
up and lived for the next 30 years. During
that time we know he grew up in a religious Jewish family, and that he
became a carpenter. That’s
about it. Everything else in
the gospels is about the last three years of his life—his public
ministry.
Mark and John begin their gospels at
this point in the story. Anyway,
John the Baptist began to baptize people in the river and tell people to
get ready for the messiah. When
John the Baptist baptized Jesus, he started to figure out that Jesus was
the messiah everyone had been waiting for, but not everyone caught on yet. Jesus went out into the desert himself for 40 days, and was
tempted to use his power in wrong ways, but he successfully resisted the
temptations. Then he asked
several fishermen and other not-too-churchy people to follow him.
They did, and with them Jesus began a life of wandering from town
to town. After an early
rejection in his hometown of Nazareth, he spent his time first in the
region of Judea, and later back in his home turf of Galilee.
As he went from place to place, he healed people who were sick and
performed many other miraculous things.
For instance, he fed a crowd of thousands with just a little bit of
food, calmed a stormy sea, and even raised the dead a few times!
His miracles were never just for show.
They always served the purpose of encouraging people to believe in
God, and that Jesus was God’s son.
When Jesus taught, he usually spoke in
short, catchy sayings or told memorable stories called “parables.”
A parable is especially clever because it doesn’t sound like what
its really about. It may
sound like its about someone planting grain, but after you get home and
start thinking about it, you suddenly realize that Jesus was telling you
to spread the good news like a farmer spreads grain!
Using parables meant people could easily remember what he said.
Even though Jesus’ disciples were
with him all the time, they were slow to understand him. One real turning point was the day Simon Peter answered
Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” by declaring “You are
the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!”
It was the first time he “got it,” and expressed his faith.
Shortly after that, Jesus realized that God was calling him to go
to Jerusalem, the center of Judaism, and that he would die there.
Peter, sensing the danger, tried to stop Jesus, but Jesus went
anyway. He even entered the city with a parade (Palm Sunday).
Jesus’ activities caught the
attention of the religious leaders, especially in Jerusalem, who felt
threatened by his growing popularity.
They were also angry that Jesus had exposed their moneymaking
schemes by overturning the tables in the temple, and repeatedly called the
leaders hypocritical. Several
times they argued with him, tried to attack him, or discredit him with
trick questions. Nothing seemed to work, so they plotted to kill him.
They bribed Judas, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, to tell them where
Jesus would be one evening. So,
after having a last supper with his disciples (which we remember with
communion), Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gesthemane.
His religious trial was a mockery, but
they couldn’t sentence him to die.
The Roman government couldn’t find any of their laws that Jesus
had broken, but they gave in to public pressure and had Jesus crucified
anyway (nailed to a wooden cross). He
died hours later, and was buried. A
FAMOUS WRITER
An “epistle” is a letter which,
from the beginning, was probably intended to be read by a wider audience
(i.e., a whole church). While
it was written in the general format of personal correspondence of the
day, its content is closer to a sermon or philosophical treatise. If
it had been available, Paul almost certainly would have possessed a
cellular phone and run up a terrible bill!
But since no cellular service had yet come to the Holy Land, the
epistle was “the next best thing to being there.”
As Paul began churches across the face of what is today Europe, he
could not be everywhere at once. Therefore,
he wrote to maintain contact with the churches he had begun, answer their
questions, and solve problems. The
questions and problems can often be “read between the lines.” For instance, there is no need to write an epistle stressing
the unity of all believers unless the church in question is fighting
amongst itself.
Like our letters today, epistles had a
recognizable form, which is followed closely in the letters written by
Paul and the other New Testament writers.
While we close a letter by signing our name, they put the
writer’s name first, followed by the person/group to whom the letter is
addressed, followed by a greeting and then the body of the letter.
Letters were sent via a personal,
trusted messenger traveling on foot.
Paul’s letters were obviously kept, treasured, reread, copied (by
hand...photocopies were way too expensive back then!!!),
and shared with others. Eventually
many of them were given the status of scripture.
Many scholars think that the longer letters of Paul are
compilations of many short letters, later reorganized into the form of a single,
longer letter.
In any case, we are fortunate that since Paul was such a key person in
Christian history, we have both a description of his ministry (written by Luke in the book of
Acts) as well as so many samples of Paul’s writings. AND
NOW...THE REST OF THE STORY!!!
The New Testament begins with the story of Jesus (see session #2 on
the Gospels), and then continues with the story of the early church.
After the four gospels, the next book is Acts.
It is the history of the early church just after Jesus’ death and
resurrection. It was written
by Luke, the same person who wrote the gospel of Luke.
He is the only one of the gospel writers who continued telling the
story after the earthly life of Jesus, kind of like a movie sequel. The book features two important New Testament characters;
Peter and Paul. Peter was one
of Jesus’ disciples, and the one Jesus called the “rock on which he
would build his church.” Many
people, probably including Peter himself and the other disciples, took
this to mean Jesus wanted Peter to be the leader after Jesus’ death.
However, Paul’s conversion after being confronted by the risen
Christ, and his obvious zeal for leadership meant that the early church
had two strong leaders.
Strong leaders do not always agree and work in perfect harmony, and
so predictably, there was conflict in this case.
The central issue was whether new Christian converts who had not
been Jewish before their conversion had to keep all the Jewish laws or
not. In other words, are
Christian followers still Jewish, or are they a different religion
altogether? Peter originally
thought that they should keep the Jewish laws, and Paul disagreed.
They settled their differences by dividing up the world into two
mission fields. Peter tried
to spread the faith in Jewish communities, and Paul sought converts in the
gentile (non-Jewish) world. In
any case, the book of Acts records the many actions and speeches of Peter
and Paul and tells about the spread of the early church.
The New Testament continues with a
compilation of Paul’s letters, roughly arranged from the longest to the
shortest. Paul’s letters
are, in order, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galations, Ephesians,
Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy,
Titus, and Philemon. The name
of each of Paul’s letters comes from the person or church to which he
was writing (the churches at Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi,
Colossae, and Thessalonica; and to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.)
It is unknown whether Paul wrote
Hebrews (but most scholars do not think he did).
The intended audience is also quite unclear. Thus, Hebrews is placed between Paul’s letters and the
letters of other New Testament letter writers.
The next group of New Testament books
carry the name of their respective authors:
James, Peter, John (almost certainly not the author of
John’s gospel), and Jude. Revelation, also written by someone named John (but apparently not the gospel writer or epistle writer), is an example of “apocalyptic” writing. The only other example of this type of writing in the Bible is the Old Testament book of Daniel. Apocalyptic writing was originally intended for people undergoing persecution. The need for secrecy helps explains the reason for the heavy symbolism (for example, the “seven lamps” probably mean the churches, since churches are the light for the world). The purpose of this type of writing is to encourage people to remain faithful in spite of the threatening, hostile atmosphere in which they live. It conveys a terrifying picture of the battle between good and evil, painting in graphic images the destruction of evil and the glorious reward of those who persevere to the end, thus motivating people not to abandon their faith even when under the threat of death.
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