The Bible: A Collection of Collections

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more intimidating book for the average person than the Bible. 

I have two sitting next to me right now. The first is an English Standard Version (ESV), single column edition containing 1,488 pages, in something like 7 or 8-point font. The second is a New International (NIV), double column edition containing 1,302 pages, in something like 8 or 9-point font. What’s more, they both have textual footnotes on every page with even smaller font pointing to different places between their covers. If that wasn’t enough, the table of contents for these two Bibles each show an astonishing list of 66-books with odd names like Deuteronomy, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Colossians, Nahum, Philemon, and Habakkuk. 

It’s a lot to take in.

The problem is, it’s so much to take in that a lot of regular folks—people like you and me—find that the Bible is not worth the trouble—so we just don’t read it. It’s difficult enough to find a regular book that’s understandable and entertaining to read, let alone one that’s almost 1,500 pages long.

I remember being a little kid and getting the motivation a few times to read the Bible for myself. I would grab the one given as a gift, flip open the cover, pass through the several introductory pages about translation philosophy and notes about that particular edition (those pages didn’t make sense to me at that age anyways), find my way to some book called Genesis and start reading, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gn 1:1)

I don’t think I ever made it past the fifth page.

I would be reading along, wonder where this story was going, flip through some pages and be totally lost, because the Bible didn’t read like any other book I had read before. Some of that was due to me being a little kid. It wasn’t the Bible’s fault that the me at age 9 couldn’t make heads or tails of a book that wasn’t written like the “Goosebumps” books I would fly through. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, over at least a thousand-year period of time. There’s no way it could compare with the hot-off-the-presses R. L. Stine books I couldn’t wait to make my way through.

So what do we do with this intimidating book? Is just a lost book to most us? A book that if it was only written differently we could find time to read, understand, and respond to what it was saying?

It doesn’t have to be a lost book. In fact, I think with a little re-presentation of what the Bible is, and what’s in it, it can become not only a book that’s possible for us to read, understand, and respond to, but a book that we would find indispensable in our effort to live the kind of lives God has called us to live.

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Most of the time when the Bible is talked about, it’s described as a self-contained, one-volume book. Some will point out that there’s a division within the book itself, which break it up into two main collections called the Old Testament and the New Testament. That’s helpful, but there’s more help to be found as there are further collections within those collections that aren’t identified as clearly.

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The Old Testament

The Pentateuch

Within the collection called the Old Testament, which is about the first two-thirds of any Bible you’d pick up, there are natural (albeit somewhat hidden) smaller collections making up those first 39-books. The first smaller collection has come to be called the Pentateuch, which (I know) is another weird word associated with the Bible. What the word Pentateuchmeans, though, is pretty straightforward. It means basically, the five scrolls. This Pentateuch collection contains the first five books called Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

And, with that, we’ve gone from a daunting 39-books to five—a much more manageable collection of books within the larger book of the Bible.

For someone who has never read anything out of the Old Testament, and making their way through the entirety of the 39-book collection is too much to get into, it might make sense to work through just the Pentateuch. After someone has read starting in Genesis through Deuteronomy, they will have both gotten their feet wet in the biblical text, and made their way through a considerable collection of the overall collected biblical texts.

The Historical Books 

After that smaller five-book collection is a little larger collection commonly referred to as the historical books. In this collection you’ll find the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

Here’s something really interesting about this collection: the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, and Ezra and Nehemiah, are really smaller collections all on their own. Originally the two books we’re used to, such as 1 & 2 Kings, were just one story. We find them divided in our Bibles, but they don’t have to be read like that. Also, the individual books of Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one. So you could set yourself the task of reading Ezra and Nehemiah and you will have read one of those ancient collections within a collection—you would be reading the Bible. 

The Wisdom Books

The next collection within the larger collection of the Bible is what’s commonly referred to as the wisdom books(sometimes called the poetic books). These books include a couple books that even those who’ve never read anything from the Bible would be familiar. Those books are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon).

Within this collection we can further group a few of the books into a three-part relationship. Those are Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. For someone who has never read anything out the Old Testament, reading this smaller collection within the wisdom books might prove helpful, encouraging, and exciting as you see how different books within the Bible could be in conversation with one another.

The Prophetic Books

The last main collection of Old Testament books contains the prophets. In this collection you’ll find the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—a lot of these books being the main ones Jesus refers to in his teachings. And, just as with the historical books, we can further break up this collection into two smaller collections of the major and minor prophets.

The major prophets are not those prophetic books that are more important than the others, but those books that are longer. In that collection you’ll find the books of Isaiah, through Daniel, which leaves the books of Hosea through Malachi as the minor prophets. Choosing to read through either the major or minor prophets would definitely make you a Bible reader.

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After those four smaller collections within the larger Old Testament collection, we come to the New Testament collection, which is where you might be more familiar—it might even be where you started reading the Bible, if you’ve read some of it before. Similar to the Old Testament collection, we have smaller collections of books within this larger collection.

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The New Testament

The Gospels and Acts

The first smaller collection within the New Testament is called the Gospels and Acts. In this collection of books we have (you guessed it) the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—followed up by the book of Acts. As we were able to do before, we can find an even smaller collection within this one.

Within the Gospels and Acts we have three gospels that are pretty similar to one another and an outlier one that, although still tells the same overall story about Jesus, goes about it in a unique way. This first smaller collection is commonly called the Synoptic Gospels, which includes of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. One of the cool things in this Gospels and Acts collection is that it’s pretty clear that the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts was the same person. You can see this for yourself by how Acts references the beginning of Gospel of Luke. So, if you wanted to, you could begin reading the Bible not by trying to take it all in at once, but by starting with the much smaller collection of the Gospel of Luke and Acts.

The Letters

The second main collection of books within the New Testament is the letters (or, epistles, if you’re more familiar with that word). Within this collection of letters you’ll find (you guessed it, again) a collection of letters written by several different people (Paul, Peter—whoever wrote Hebrews—John, and Jude). These letters are Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Hebrews, James, 1 Peter,  2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude.

This smaller collection within the New Testament is where the Christian church has spent a lot of its time—and for good reason. It’s been found to be particularly helpful to us in our day-to-day lives. In this collection you’ll find people like Paul and Peter writing to churches and individual folks they know to address issues ranging from personal relationships, theological realities, and church-life, among many, many others. It might be the place you’d like to begin reading the Bible.

The Revelation

The last collection of collections within the Bible is just one book—the Revelation. It’s with this smallest collection where many movies have been made and many books have been written. This might be the most intimidating book within the entire biblical collection, but it doesn’t have to be. At its core, it’s a book about worship. In particular, it’s a book about those who choose to worship the beast and the implications and consequences that come from that decision, and those who choose to worship God and the implications and consequences that come from that decision. If you were to pick one book out of the entire Bible to read in one sitting, Revelation might be the book for you.

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One of the things any runner learns early on in distance running is that when they get ready to hit the pavement for their first 15-mile run, they shouldn’t be thinking about the entire run when they start. It’s too much. They can’t get to the end of the entire 15-miles without running the first 14. So, when they start, their only focus is on the mile in front of them, because they know they can’t get to mile 2 without running the first one. 

This is the same practice I would suggest for reading the Bible, especially if it’s felt for too long like an impossible task. You might start by picking just one of the books out of the prophetic collection. You might even pick the shortest of the collection. Or maybe you’d rather jump all the way to the New Testament and start with a book like 1 John.

Perhaps, though, you’d like to read one of the smaller collections in its entirety before moving onto another one. The Gospels and Acts might be the right place for you. Once you get them read—no matter how long it takes—you can celebrate in the satisfaction of completing that section, just like a runner does when they pass the four-mile mark on their way to completing the next 11 of them.

The point is, there’s no reason you have to feel intimidated by the fact that you picked up a 1,500-page book to read. It’s 1,500 pages but, as we’ve seen, it’s really just a large collection of much smaller collections, of which are 50 to 100-pages. And those are much more manageable.

Our Way In and Through the Bible

The regular habit of reading the Bible doesn’t sound strange to us, because it’s a part of who we are. But if we zoom out a little, and take stock of the fact that we regularly read a book made up of a coherent collection of writings, of which the newest is nearly 2,000-years old, we can start to see how this would seem strange to a lot of people.

How many of us have a close friend who regularly reads the writings of Homer? What about a friend who regularly reads the writings of Aristotle? How many of us know anyone who regularly reads the writings of Plato, Sophocles, Virgil, Plutarch, Euclid, or Xenophon? Unless some of us out there are friends with a history professor, I would say none of us know anyone who regularly read the writings of those folks. And yet, Christians all over the world—young and old—spend a lot of their lives reading a collection of writings that was written around the same time as some of those folks listed above put pen to paper.

Why do Christians spend so much time reading the Bible?

It's often said that the main reason someone accepts an invitation to church is because they know the person extending the invitation. It’s rare for someone to step into a church building on a Sunday morning out of the blue. It’s much more common for someone to get up early for church because they’re going to be sitting next to someone they know during the service. I would guess you and I came to our habit of reading the Bible in a similar way.

Not many of us started reading and enjoying the Bible because we saw it on a bookshelf in a store and thought it looked interesting, or because we were simply handed one and told we should read it. Most of us found our way to the Bible because of a person. Different from an invite to a church service, though, this person who has drawn us into reading the Bible is not our friend who likes reading the Bible; this person is someone from within the Bible itself. Most of us started reading and enjoying the Bible because of Jesus.

Imagine you wanted to get your friend, who isn’t a reader at all, to start reading the Bible. How would you do it?

You could start by telling him how interesting it is that we even have a Bible. You could explain the translation process by which we’ve come to be able to read these ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts in understandable English. Or you could tell him about how you believe that somehow God, although using actual people, really wrote these words, so much so that you believe that when you’re reading the Bible you’re actually hearing from God himself. Or you could tell him about all the prophecies in the Bible that have come true, which help point to the overall trustworthiness of what the Bible has to say.

My guess, though, is that none of those options would work on any consistent basis. Those of us who have already bought-in to the Bible find those things interesting. We’re all in on the translation process, the miracle of inspiration, and on how prophecy after prophecy has been proven true. But those things don’t mean anything to someone who hasn’t already bought-in like us. No, if you wanted to get your friend, who isn’t a reader, to read the Bible you ought to tell him about the one person who makes reading the Bible worth it.

In a sort of backwards way from how the Bible is often presented, Jesus is the one by whom we come to the Bible. This could be confusing because the gospels don’t show up in the Bible until the last two-thirds of it. To put it another way, there are 39-books in the Bible before Matthew—the first gospel about Jesus—and I’m saying that it’s through this Jesus, in the 40th book of the Bible, that we have our reason for reading any of it.

With almost every other book ever written, we should start from page one and work forward. Not so with the Bible. Not so, at least from the Christian perspective. There is nothing wrong with beginning to read the Bible from Genesis, working through to the wisdom literature of Job, Psalms, and Proverbs, and then closing out with the prophets. I’m actually making my way through it in a similar way right now, and I assume some of you reading this have done something like that.

That’s just not how we usually come to the Bible.

We come to the Bible through hearing about the life of Jesus—the things he said, the things he did, the trouble he got into, the grace he extended to those around him, the genius he displayed while others were trying to trap him in what he taught, and the way he willingly gave up his own life for the world. Jesus is the one who captivates people like you and me. And he is the one who motivates us to open up this book from thousands of years ago. Remove Jesus—the one who drew us to the Bible—from our relationship to the Bible, and most of us wouldn’t care what it has to say anymore.  

There are a few people who read Plato and Sophocles because they think they folks like them helped change the world in some small but important ways. Christians read the Bible because we believe Jesus changed the world in ways we can’t even imagine right now. And, through his changing the world, we can have changed lives, as well. When it comes down to it, that’s why most Christians read the Bible.

The stories of creation, the exodus, the great back and forth between the kings and judges, the incredible wisdom of folks like Solomon, and the surprising pronouncements of the prophets, are worth reading for their own sake. They tell an exciting story, but Christians believe that story they’re telling only finds its real meaning in as much as it finds its home in Jesus.

As the writer of Hebrews says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things” (Heb 1:1-2, ESV). The final biblical revelation of who God is and who we are in relation to him and the world is Jesus.

He is our way in, and our way through the Bible.

Exploring the Bible 2023!

We don't talk about covenants much in our day-to-day lives, but they are integral for understanding the biblical storyline and what part of that story you and I find ourselves.

In this year's Exploring the Bible seminar, we'll be working our way through the Bible to get a good handle on the covenants contained therein, and to settle for ourselves what it means for us to be firmly planted within the New Covenant. Because, if we think we belong to a covenant that doesn't belong to us, then life gets more complicated than it needs to be.

If you have the time, I’d love for you to join me by signing up here.

ETB 2023 Seminar Agenda

• October 6 (6:60p - 7:15p): The Covenants: God’s Agreements with Human Beings

• October 6 (7:15p - 8:30p): If You Will, Then I Will: The Mosaic Covenant

• October 7 (9:00a - 9:45a): I Will Make A New Covenant: The Beginning of the End

• October 7 (9:45a - 10:30a): I Have Come to Fulfill: Jesus and the New Covenant

• October 7 (10:30a - 11:15a): He Has Made the First One Obsolete: The Supremacy of the New Covenant

• October 7 (11:15a - 12:00p): How Should We Then Live?

Certainty With Uncertainty in the Biblical Text: Introduction

Christians like to think of the Bible as perfect.

The issue is, when we think of “the Bible” we are often primarily thinking about the particular translation we read; not the thousands of manuscripts from which that translation was made. The motivation, however, to think of it as perfect isn’t altogether misplaced, though, because the Scriptures effectively testify to just that truth in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is θεόπνευστος” (theopneustos—God-breathed or inspired by God).

We take that testimony to heart (as we should) and so don’t wonder—somewhere in the back of our heads—if Jesus really said this, if Paul really wrote that, or if Moses really spoke to God through a burning bush. We trust that the words we’re reading are the words Jesus spoke, or Paul wrote. That is, until someone (like me) comes along and points out places within the Scriptures where there is uncertainty with the text itself.

We may actually run into someone who asks something like: What about that ending to the Lord’s prayer—“for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever”? Why is there a difference between the King James Version and the New International Version or New American Standard Bible? Have the modern translations done something to the word of God?

What do we do with questions like those? And, what do we do when those questions are asked not by those who are outside and hostile, but who are inside and friendly to the church; by those who trust the Scriptures, believe them to be θεόπνευστος (wholly and completely trustworthy) and want to hold even more firmly to their truthfulness?

The options are plentiful but, as far as I can see, two main ones make their way to the top. 

1. A person could ignore the question, seeing it as little more than an attempt to sow doubt into God’s word, either intentionally or unintentionally. In other words, little good if any can come from recognizing uncertainty within the biblical text.

2. A person could press into the history of the composition of the biblical text, believing that historical study is not antithetical to the Christian faith. In other words, we are better off knowing even the uncomfortable uncertainty within the biblical text.

For a consistently growing portion of my life, I’ve found myself—although, most certainly starting with a tight grasp on option 1—laying it aside, and now holding tightly to option 2. I want to do whatever I can to help those around me to have increased trust in what God has said through his written word and, because of my conviction about the uncertainties in the biblical text, I believe one of the ways to do that is to look at these issues head-on, not seeing this sort of investigation as doubting God or what he’s said, but seeing it as an actual bit of devotion directed to him for his glory and our good.

Even with that, because this is such a tricky and loaded issue, I’ve also found it’s helpful not to tackle it (the textual uncertainty in the text of Scripture) all at once, but to break it off into smaller and, thus, much more manageable bite-size portions. Portions that are easy to see all at once and much easier to digest. As tempting as it is to try to lay a massive textual history feast on the table and simply dig in, the risk of getting sick and choosing not to eat is much greater. An entire cake looks great until you’re three pieces in with more than half a cake to go.

Here's my plan: I’d like to look (with you) at a handful of verses—one at a time on a monthly basis, over the next several months—that have a questionable textual history, with the hope that looking at those histories will help us trust what God has said better than ever. Knowing this information doesn’t automatically make super-Christians, nor does it automatically make militant-atheists. What it does do is give us information we can use to make choices; choices that can affect our lives in a very meaningful way.

So, please join me as we start next week by taking a look at Luke 23:34!

Registration is Open for "Exploring the Bible"

What is the Bible? Is it a rulebook? A theological textbook on God? A manual for how to live your life in order to get the best things out of it?

For thousands of years, people from all over the world have had to reckon with the ancient writings we find today bound together as the Bible. As part of that reckoning process, many have had to make decisions regarding what the ancient writings seem to be saying and how they relate to their lives. We—in 2021—are thankfully no different.

During this weekend seminar we'll look together at these ancient writings sometimes called the Scriptures, the Holy Writings, or the Bible. We'll work together through topics like: 

Who wrote the Bible? | When was it written? | The storyline of the Old and New Testaments | The Greek Translations of the Old Testament | Authority and Trust | English Translations

Seminar Outline

1. Session 1: What Is It, What's in It, and Where Did It Come From? (Nov. 5th from 6:30p-8:00p)

2. Session 2: Storylines, Testaments, Greek, and Quotations (Nov. 6th from 9:00a-10:30a)

3. Session 3: Criticism, Variants, Authority, and Translations (Nov. 6th from 11:00a-12:30p)

Click here to register.

"The God Who Speaks"

If you’re looking for something good to watch, I would like to suggest a solid documentary on the Bible on Amazon Prime: “The God Who Speaks”. If you have a Prime account, it’s one of those movies that’s already included with your account.

The Ethiopian Eunuch, Philip, and English Bibles

What in the world could the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip have to do with English Bibles?

I hear you, I hear you. Let me explain.

In Acts 8 Philip is told by an angel of the Lord to go south to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza (v. 26). On his way to the road he met an Ethiopian eunuch who was in his chariot. The Holy Spirit told Philip to go to the chariot and stand near it (v. 29). As Philip ran to the chariot, he heard the eunuch reading from Isaiah (v. 28), so Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading (v. 30). The eunuch said he couldn’t unless someone explained it to him (v. 31). So, Philip took the passage the eunuch was reading (Isaiah 53:7-8) and explained to him the good news about Jesus (vv. 32-35).

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
    and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
    Who can speak of his descendants?
    For his life was taken from the earth.” (Acts 8:32-33, NIV)

The eunuch believed and was baptized and then Philip was “taken away” from the eunuch and the eunuch went on his way rejoicing (vv. 36-39).

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip is a wonderful story of God’s mercy and grace in working through individual people to give the gift of salvation to someone who previously knew nothing about Jesus. God did this and still does this all the time. He loves to save people who know nothing of him.

Another wonderful aspect of this story has less to do with the actual story and more to do with how one particular detail of the story sheds light into our relationship and trust with English translations of the Bible. Perhaps you have noticed, in reading this passage before, a footnote at the end of the Isaiah 53:7-8 citation (provided the Bible you use has footnotes). This footnote (at least in the NIV2011) says: “Isaiah 53:7, 8 (see Septuagint).” The footnote is there to indicate that these two verses in Acts 8:32-33 are actually a quotation of Isaiah 53:7-8. The New Testament does this all the time and it’s nice to be able to see the quotations for what they are and where they come from. The other section of the footnote has to do with the translation of Isaiah 53 that is referenced—the Septuagint.

What’s up with that? Why the pointer to the Septuagint?

The Ethiopian eunuch was reading from Isaiah 53, but the words he was reading were a translation of the original Hebrew into Greek. This can be easily seen by comparing verse 33 in the citation in Acts 8 with Isaiah 53:8. You’ll quickly notice that a good number of the words are different. The difference is because the reading you have in Isaiah 53:8 is from the Hebrew, but the reading you have in Acts 8:33 is from the Greek Septuagint. Now, the Septuagint being reference to is a formal Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was probably completed in the 3rd or 4th Century AD (although it began in the 3rd or 2nd Century BC), so it’s not the actual text used by the eunuch; however, the eunuch is still using a Greek translation of the Hebrew, which is what the Septuagint is.

What does this mean to me?

It means that just like the eunuch was able to read and understand the message of Isaiah 53:7-8 (albeit with help from Philip) even though he was reading a Greek translation of the Hebrew, we’re able to read and understand the message of Isaiah 53:7-8 (albeit with help sometimes from others) even though we’re regularly reading an English translation of the Hebrew. This means, in part, that you can trust your English Bible.

Some have made a good business out of tearing down solid, trustworthy, English translations of the Bible either to encourage (often through fear) others to learn the original biblical languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek), or to encourage others to read from a specific English translation. They tear down the NIV because they don’t think it’s as accurate as the KJV. They tear down the NASB because they think it’s more difficult to understand than the NLT. They tear down the CSB because it’s a denomination specific translation. They tear down the ESV because it’s considered a translation for the conservative Christian. The reasons are numerous, but they’re often misguided.

Are all English translations good?

I’m all for making sure we reading from solid and trustworthy translation of the Scriptures and (by God’s grace) nearly any popular English translation you pick up will fall into that category. There are those translations out there that specifically add to, take away, and edit the Scriptures to fit they’re specific theological stances (something like the New World Translation would fall into this category). The wonderful thing is that the KJV, NIV, NRSV, NLT, ESV, NKJV, NASB, CSB, LEB, NET, and RSV don’t fall into this category.

It’s important to be on the same page here. I’m not saying that every good English translation is equal. I’m also not saying that every English translation their own specific blunders. However, I am saying that most of the popular English translations available to the English speaking world are trustworthy.

Therefore, with all that said, let’s follow the example we find in Acts 8 with the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip, and trust the English translation of the Bible we have without thinking that we’re missing something because we’re reading a translation.

Translation is a good gift from God. Without translation most of us wouldn’t know Jesus. Let’s receive that good gift and give thanks to God that he’s had mercy on us to give us the Scriptures in a language we can read.