by Tad Lindley
The Bible is a collection of writings that spanned 3,200 years. It claims to be the words of God given to a series of at least 36 men (including the heathen king, Nebuchadnezzar!) who recorded it for all to read. It was written in three original languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. And has since been translated into about 700 modern languages.
How can God have written it?
Imagine that you and I were traveling back upriver from fishing and I was driving. I hand you my phone and say, “Text my wife that we are just passing Napakiak and going to drop the fish at fish camp. Meet us at the harbor in an hour.” So you type the text and send it. The message was mine. I was the author. You were simply the one who typed it and hit send. This is analogous to how the Bible was written: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. (II Peter 1:21) In II Timothy 3:16 we learn that All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. And so God spoke, and men recorded it.
The Tanakh
This week I will cover the Tanakh or Old Testament. It is the first 39 books of the Bible. If you forget that number, there are 3 letters in “New” and 9 letters in “Testament”, so 39. I will bring it to you using the Jewish organization of the books, since they were the ones that were there and thus, the experts.
The Law: in the beginning
You may remember that Jesus used the phrase, the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17). By this he is referring to two of the three sections of the Jewish Bible. The Law is the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books were written by the hand of Moses. They are also commonly referred to by the Jewish believers as the Torah.
• Genesis covers the time from the creation of the known universe all the way to the moving of a tiny group of people, Israel and his children and grandchildren out of the land of Israel into the land of Egypt.
• Exodus records the enslavement of the Jewish people and the rise of a man named Moses who in his 80’s would lead the people out of Egypt and into the wilderness. In Exodus, Moses receives the 613 commandments from God and reveals them to the Israelites who now number over a million people. It reveals the tabernacle plan, which is unfamiliar to many Christians, but is a foreshadowing of the plan of salvation in the New Testament.
• Numbers covers genealogies of the Jewish people that came out of Egypt and some important details about their 40 years in the wilderness.
• Leviticus contains much of the 613 commandments.
• Deuteronomy is the second telling of the Law by Moses prior to his death in the wilderness. It also contains what Jesus named as the most important commandment in Mark 12:29, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one… which comes straight from Deuteronomy 6:4.
The Prophets
You have to keep in mind that the Jewish Bible is ordered differently than the order in which many Christians are familiar. The second section after the Law, is the Prophets. The Prophets are broken into two sections:
• The former prophets: these books discuss the history of the Jewish people as they return to the land of Israel and inhabit it. They are Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings. You will notice that Ruth is missing. More on that later.
• The latter prophets: these books foretell the future. They for instance foretold that the Messiah would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14). They give us a great deal of information about the return of the Lord and the 1,000 year reign of Jesus on earth. In order the books are: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Notice that Daniel is missing. More on that later.
The Writings
This is a collection of the remaining books: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and I and II Chronicles. These books contain wisdom, poetry, history, and future. Much of what we know about the antichrist and the end time comes in Daniel. While almost all of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, there are 268 verses that are written in Aramaic, all but one of those are found in the Writings. For those of you who like to take column notes in your Bible, the Aramaic verses are: Ezra 4:8-6:18 and 7:12-26, and Daniel 2:4-7:28. The remaining Aramiac verse is found in the prophet Jeremiah (10:11).
To be continued next week.
Reverend Tad Lindley is a minister at the United Pentecostal Church in Bethel, Alaska.
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