On Sunday nights at church #PHBCTN (when we don’t have something else like a business meeting, or when we don’t meet due to a holiday or something like that) we have been going through the whole Bible, book-by-book. We take one book of the Bible and cover it in about 40 minutes.
Here, I’m going to try to summarize that process as best (and quickly) as I can.
We started by doing an overview of the whole Bible, all 66 books, and it took me just under 53 minutes:
We don’t always record on Sunday nights (we’re running low on crew) but we did that night. This was back in March 2019.
Here’s the gist:
The whole Bible is divided into 2 parts, Old and New Testament… you probably know that.
Then it’s subdivided into Law, History, Poetry, Prophecy (in the OT), and the Gospels and the Letters.
The Law, or the “Books of Moses” the Pentateuch (first 5 books) promises a special relationship between Israel and the One God.
The History section has the “Pre-Kingdom” section of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. Then there’s the “Kingdom” section of 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, and 1-2 Chronicles. Finally, there’s the “Post-Exile” section of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. This tells us how this special relationship plays-out. Not well.
The Poetry section has Jobe, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. This is all about worship and ancient wisdom, songs and theology.
The final OT section of Prophecy has the “Major” prophets (simply meaning they are longer) of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Then there’s the “Minor” prophets or “The Twelve” of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
That wraps up the Old Testament, which is a relatively new name for it. Maybe if it were called the First Testament or something else we might read it more. It is, after all, 3/4 of the Bible, we avoid it at our own risk. It’s impossible to understand Jesus and the world within which Jesus came without a good understanding of the Bible of the Hebrews.
The NT is where we move into what is usually more familiar territory for us Christians.
The Gospels tell the “Good News” of salvation, it’s the (true) story of Jesus, and Acts is really “The Gospel of Luke Part 2” as it is written by the same author and picks up where Luke leaves off in the Gospel. The rest of the NT is basically letters.
Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon make up the “Pauline Epistles.” “Epistle” means letter, and they’re “Pauline” because they were written by Paul. These are from him to specific churches/people in their real world context. We read over their shoulders to hear the words of an Apostle to the churches.
Then there’s the book of Hebrews. Some think it was written by Paul, the KJV even says so in the title, and others think it was written by someone closely associated with Paul, maybe Luke or another co-worker. The vocabulary is very different from all the other letters Paul wrote, of which we have quite a few for comparison, but the themes and concepts are very similar to Paul.
Then there are the “Catholic Epistles” of James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude.
Finally, there’s the strangest book in the NT, the “Apocalypse” or “Revealing” usually known as “Revelation.” It’s a book that contains very short letters to 7 churches then a section about judgment, the end of the world, Jesus’ triumph, heaven and hell, and how everything wraps-up.
There is no book like it, the Bible is amazing. I love it. It is life and truth.
Come and a Sunday night and hear as we walk book-by-book and check back here from time-to-time and I’ll try to catch-up.
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