Anytime you go someplace you’ve never been, it’s always nice to have a seasoned traveler come along side of you and help you get the most out of your visit. For most people, the Bible is an unfamiliar place. That was why we wrote this book for you. This book is a reader’s guide to the Bible. Think of us as a friend who is riding along with you as you journey through the Bible. We’re here to point out things you might otherwise overlook as well as answer some of your questions and keep you on track when you start feeling lost and overwhelmed. This book is by no means an exhaustive resource for all of your questions about the Bible. Instead, we are here to help you do something too few people ever do: Read the Bible for yourself, and think through what you’ve read. We’ve even provided a chapter by chapter breakdown of the books of the Bible, which, if you follow it, will take you through the Bible in about a year.

What is it?

Before diving into the Bible we need to cover some of the basics, and nothing is more basic than the question, what is the Bible? The word ‘bible’ is simply a transliteration (that is, a word which was not translated into another language but transferred into it) of the Greek word which means book. We use it to refer to any book which contains indispensable information. The “bird watcher’s bible” refers to a book no self respecting bird watcher should be without while the “shooter’s bible” tells gun enthusiasts everything they must know about firearms.

The Bible is the original indispensable book. It was written by over forty men over a period of nearly a thousand years beginning three thousand years ago. But what sets the Bible apart isn’t its age, but its divine quality. When the men who wrote the Bible grabbed a pen and started writing, they didn’t just pull words out of the air. 2 Peter 1:20-21 says, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophets themselves or because they wanted to prophesy. It was the Holy Spirit who moved the prophets to speak from God.” This means God worked in the minds and the spirits of the authors of the Bible so that they wrote precisely what he wanted written. Each book still reflects the personality of the human author. That doesn’t take away from its inspiration. God chose particular people to be the authors of his word. He made them, designing their personalities and putting them through unique life circumstances, all of which worked together to produce the volumes he wanted in print. When we pick up this book we hold the literal Word of God. The actor Stephen Baldwin has perhaps the best answer for those who think this is impossible, “I think if God can create the universe he can write a book.” (Note 1)

Because God is ultimately the author of the Bible, it is completely trustworthy and true. You won’t find any errors between its covers. After all, God wrote it. Do you think he would lie to you? His book is as reliable as he is. This means that when the Bible says Jesus raised the dead back to life, he actually did it. If you could build a time machine and go back to the moment they rolled the stone away from Lazarus’s tomb, you would hear Jesus tell him to get up with your own ears. And if you pressed your way through the crowd, you would see Lazarus, still wrapped up in burial cloths like a mummy come walking out just as surely as you could watch John Hancock scribble his name on the Declaration of Independence if you could travel back to July 4, 1776.

Although the Bible is completely true, that doesn’t mean some parts won’t leave you scratching your head going “huh?” You won’t have to wait long for some of these ‘huh” moments. God arranged the Bible in such a way that you get hit with the biggest ones in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Check it out for yourself. Genesis 1 says God created light on Day 1, sky and seas on Day 2, and dry land and plants on Day 3. But, and this will really blow your mind, he didn’t create the sun, moon, and stars until Day 4. If you don’t ask yourself, How on earth is that possible?! then you aren’t paying attention. Genesis also says people lived seven, eight, even nine hundred years in the early days of human history. How is that possible? No one knows. However, our inability to understand how God did something does not mean the Bible is in error. This is where faith comes in. Believing in the absolute truthfulness of the Bible means believing that when and if all the facts come in, the Bible will be shown to be correct. When it comes to things like the life span of people prior to Noah’s flood or miracles like Moses turning the Nile River into blood, we may never know how God did it. The important thing is we know he did, without waiting for an explanation before we will believe.

The Bible will introduce you to a new life system that will change everything about you. If you let it, it will reshape your values, your priorities, and the entire direction of your life. You will find commands in it, verses that tell you to do this or to not do that, but it has much more. Reading through the Bible will give you a whole new perspective on the world around you. This is called a biblical worldview, which simply means the Bible becomes the lens through which you interpret reality as God’s perspective becomes your own.

Yeah, but what is it?

The Bible is the indispensable book sent to us from God himself. But when we start to read this divine, authoritative, completely true book, we still don’t know exactly what we are getting ourselves into. Is it the text book for God 101, all the information about God you ever need to know? Is it the place to run for an answer to all your questions about eternity? Some people call it the owner’s manual for the human soul. Others see it as a treasure chest where we go to uncover pearls of truth to carry with us throughout the day. A recent television commercial referred to it as the instruction book for life. More than one pastor has held up a Bible and called it the rule book for life. Do any of these really describe the Bible? Even if they don’t, they describe the way most of us approach it. Maybe that’s why reading it is such a chore.

Think about it. When was the last time you curled up with a good text book? As soon as a semester ends most of us sell them back to the college bookstore. If we do keep some, we never go back and read them for fun. Not if we’re normal. Nor do we sit down and read our usual sources for answers to questions and problems. Most computer programs come equipped with a “help” section we access by pressing F1. Do you ever press F1 for recreational reading? I didn’t think so. And when was the last time you read the owners manual for your car? Do you even know where it is? How often do you consult the for instructions to putting anything together or the rules to Monopoly? Thinking of the Bible as a treasure chest filled with pearls of truth doesn’t work either. Open the first page. Is it put together like any other collection of pithy sayings? No, not even close.

So what is this book we call the Bible?

The first line in the first book gives us a clue. The Bible starts off, “In the beginning God…” Whatever else this book may be, we know its central character is God. As you continue reading you find God isn’t described as some scientist would describe him, nor are all his character qualities cataloged like a theologian might do. Instead, as you read you encounter God. He speaks and creates the world. Then he makes people and places them in the world. Yet God isn’t far off from these people. He carries on conversations with them and spends time with them. Apparently that wasn’t enough for the people. They turn their backs on God and ignore what he says. And that’s just the beginning.

This book starts off reading less like an encyclopedia or a text book or an owners manual than it does a story. And the story keeps going as you continue turning the pages. Through the first five books, on through Joshua and Judges and Samuel and Kings, and into the prophets, the storyline continues to unfold. Even the parts where the plot line seems to stop you can still hear it. The book of Psalms is more than a collection of poems and songs. Each one expresses the heart cry of people in the middle of the unfolding drama of the story of God. I keep looking for something that approaches a God encyclopedia or a section filled with answers to all the critics’ questions, but they’re no where to be found. Instead I find a true story which unfolds over the course of thousands of years. A story about God. 

But what else would we expect to find? When you stand back and look at the Bible as a whole you find one uniform story unfolding across its 66 books. Every part, every book, every psalm, every proverb, every letter, every prophecy, every law, all of it fits together to tell one story, the story of God. The Old Testament tells the first part of the story, and the New gives us part two. This story contains all the key elements you would expect to find in a great novel. One plot line goes from beginning to end, a plot line God has written not only in the Bible but across the pages of history. Within this plot line you find multifaceted characters and plot complications. Themes unfold across the storylines which help us understand the characters and plot. The various books within the Bible contain different writing styles and types of literature. Of course you find narratives, but you also find poetry and songs and proverbs and prophecies and letters. Some of the books talk about what happened, a few point to events which haven’t yet taken place. All work together to tell God’s story. But this true story isn’t like any other ever written. This is a story we not only read, we become a part of the drama. 

So what is the Bible? It is the ultimate story, God’s story. And what should you do with a good story? Read it, of course.

Discovering the story

Stephen King once said that every good story begins with a question. The Bible, however, doesn’t begin with a question. It begins with a statement, “In the beginning God…” Yet this statement prompts a question in everyone who reads it, a question that is the single most important issue for every human being who has ever lived: Who is God?

The answer to this question unfolds through God’s story, beginning with the Old Testament. The word testament means covenant. Therefore, the Old Testament refers to the covenants God made before the coming of Jesus, while the New Testament refers to the covenant he made through his Son, a covenant that replaced all those that came before. In the Old Testament God creates the world and hands it to the crowning point of his creation, human beings. The first two people, however, wanted something bigger and better. They wanted to take God’s place. Their disobedience separated the human race from God, plunging all of their descendants into spiritual darkness. Before sin entered the world there was no question as to who God might be. Afterwards the human heart became so dark and cold no one knew. But God loved people too much to leave them in the dark forever. He reached out to them to reestablish a relationship with them. However, this raised another question: How can sinful people live in the presence of a holy God?

These two questions drive the plot of the Old Testament. By the time you reach the end you wonder if anyone can ever find the answers. In spite of all of God’s efforts to reveal himself to the human race, people continue to run after sin instead of God. Even the people God selects as his own chosen people worship gods made of wood and stone as often as they worship the God in heaven. Can anything be done to once and for all set things right between God and people? The answer to this question leads us to the New Testament. God reveals himself in a way he never has before, answering once and for all the question of who he might be. He does this through his Son, Jesus, God made flesh.

Discovering the story

The best way to see all this unfold is to begin with the Old Testament, reading in the order in which the books appear in the Hebrew Bible.(Note 2) I know, here comes the first “Uhhh, what are you talking about?” The order of the books in our Old Testament do not appear in the same order they were read in the days of Jesus. Jews in the time of Christ divided the Old Testament into three sections: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.

The Law consists of five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Like the name suggests, they contain God’s law for his people. The first book tells about how God created the entire universe and the human race. It goes on to tell the story of his selection of a man and his wife, Abraham and Sarah, who would grow into a nation through whom God would make himself known to the entire world. The rest of the books of the law pick up the story after the descendants of these two people spend four hundred years living in Egypt where they were made slaves. God sets them free and takes them to a land he promised to give them forever. Some of their descendants still live in that land today. Before God planted this nation in the land, he gave them a detailed list of the rules and laws they would need to live in a close relationship with him. 

The Prophets are made up of 21 books: Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The last twelve were grouped together and called “The book of the Twelve.” We know them today as the minor prophets, because the books are shorter than the other prophetic books. Joshua through 2 Kings are called the former prophets, for they tell the story of God’s people after they moved into the land God promised to give them. The books tell us what happened to God’s nation of Israel. Isaiah through Malachi are known as the latter prophets. They cover the same historical period, but they tell the story from a different perspective: God’s perspective. The books tell us why Israel’s history played out as it did. 

The third group of books, The Writings, consists of Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. Some of these books are poetry, others contain songs. Ruth, Esther, and Daniel through 2 Chronicles tell stories. All thirteen books once again cover the same historical period as the Prophets and all share a common characteristic. They show how people of faith responded both to the events around them and to God.(Note 3)

Reading the Old Testament in this order not only allows you to see God’s story unfold in a way you have never seen before, it also sets the stage for the New Testament. First and Second Chronicles, the last two books in the Hebrew Bible, look forward to God doing something new in the lives of his people who have suffered so long. Yet you come to the end unsure what that new work might be. That is, until you turn the page and read the first page of the New Testament. Matthew begins by recounting the descendants of Abraham, connecting it with the genealogies of First Chronicles. He then shows God’s ultimate purpose in calling Abraham as he tells the story of the birth of Jesus, the long awaited Messiah. Finally, all of the questions of the Old Testament are about to be answered.

Conversations with God

Reading God’s story should be an interactive experience. Start your reading with prayer, and continue to talk to God as you read his Word. Listen for what each passage says about God, what it says about people, and how the two go together. Ask questions and dig deeper. Keep a notebook handy to record your thoughts. It can help you listen as God speaks. Again, we’re reading a true story about real people in real situations. Put yourself in their position. What do you think they felt and thought and feared? Could you have responded to God in the way they did? Keeping these kinds of questions at the forefront helps us to truly immerse ourselves in this story. However, be careful not to over-analyze as you read. After all, reading this story should be an enjoyable experience, not a English assignment.

A final word of warning before you dive into the Bible: Some of what you will read will surprise you or trouble you or make you drop the Book and say, “What’s that doing in the Bible.” God’s story is much messier than the Veggie Tales re-enactments would lead you to believe. As you read you will come across truths that will bring you comfort and others that will call into question the way you live your life. Expect to get excited over good news and to be made uncomfortable, and at times angry, by what sounds like bad news. You may even find yourself talking back to a page of the Bible saying, “I don’t like this one bit!” Remember, the Bible is the story of a holy God reaching down to people who told him to get lost. It reveals the true nature of the universe along with the real condition of the human heart. Since every word of it is true, how could we expect it to be all sunshine and puppies and daisies and warm fuzzies since the world in which we live is anything but? 

Note 1) Stephen Baldwin in a personal interview with the author, October 13, 2005.
Note 2) TH1NK’s one year Bible, Pause, uses this order.
Note 3) Paul House Old Testament Survey (Broadman and Holman: Nashville, 1992), pgs. 20-21

©2006 Mark A. Tabb

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