An OverView of the Bible
Diagram 1 - The Right-Handed Lobster Claw and the Two Sticks
Diagram 2 - Old Testament Time-Line
Diagram 3 - New Testament Time-Line
Believers and unbelievers have heard about the Bible all their lives. But both groups are pretty ignorant of it. So I would like to give you an overview of the entire Bible so you will have some idea of its content, its flow, its major characters, and its primary theme.
First, the Bible is presented to us primarily as HISTORY. There are several ways to study the Bible. One of them is to study it topically. That is, to see what it says about any subject matter by going through the Bible and listing all the verses that comment on any topic, such as man, salvation, faith, sin, hell, angels, etc. If you ever attend any kind of Bible or theological school, they do this a lot. There is nothing wrong with this method. It is very helpful. This is what is called Systematic Theology because the Bible’s theology is taught systematically, or topically. There are Systematic Theology books by Louis Berkhof, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Herman Hoeksema, and many others.
But the Bible itself does not do that. It was not written systematically. None of the Biblical writers presented their message in a topical manner. Pick up a Bible, any Bible. It makes no difference. About one-half of what you hold in your hand is an account of select successive historical events. Those events are a portion of the pre-history and history of ancient Israel up until about 400 B.C. The events and people chosen in this particular history of Israel are the historical events in the Jewish nation directly related to the redemption that God promised in Genesis 3:15. In other words, when you read the history of the Old Testament, you are reading about the times when the Lord intervened in history and made a major move toward providing His Deliverer to redeem the offspring of Adam and Eve from the curse of sin that had fallen on the human race.
The other half of the Bible you are holding in your hand is not history as such. It is a record of the writings of the prophets to Israel in the Old Testament and the letters of the apostles in the New Testament. All those prophetic books and epistles can be inserted somewhere within those historical parts of the Bible at various points. For example, the letters of Paul can be placed within the Book of Acts in the New Testament at various chapter locations to help explain the situations that were going on at the church locations where Paul had visited and planted churches. The same thing is true of the prophetical books in the Old Testament. For example, the Book of Isaiah could be slipped somewhere within the chapters of the Kings and Chronicles, which are part of the story of Israel's history in the Old Testament.
So, to put it another way, God's revelation about Himself and His Redeemer is presented historically as time, people, and events passed across the human stage of time. It is not presented topically or systematically. Thus, if you want to really understand the Bible's message, you must read through Bible history to see how God unfolded His redemptive plan as thousands of years marched by. That is why you will sometimes hear people speak of "the history of redemption" when they summarize the Bible's content.
So what is the overall story of the Bible historically and where do those parts that are not history fit into the historical flow? First, every individual and every event in the entire Bible fits nicely somewhere on the structural timeline frame at the top of this article that I call The Right-Handed Lobster Claw and the Two Sticks. There are three diagrams at the top of this article. The first is the basic framework of the entire Bible in simple form so one can easily see it. That little diagram gives you Israel’s history as it developed from one man till it became a nation and then divided itself into two parts - Israel (or the Northern Kingdom) on the upper part of the claw, and Judah (or the Southern Kingdom) on the lower part of the claw. Israel did not last as long as Judah because of grievous sin and idolatry against the Lord. So God judged them. He ended their kingdom and carried the Israelites off to another land, Assyria. Thus the top is shorter. Judah lasted longer than Israel, but it too came to an end for the same reasons as Israel. Judah was also taken captive by her enemies and hauled away to Babylon. The break in the lobster claw as it reaches out to the first stick is called The Captivity. Judah was in captivity to Babylon for 70 years. The Lord eventually allowed Judah to return to her homeland in Palestine when she rebuilt her chief city Jerusalem. At the end of that first stick is the year 400 B.C. Redemptive history came to a halt. Then there is approximately a 400 year gap in time until God resumes His redemptive activity again with the birth of Jesus, the beginning of the second stick. Jesus’ life ends on the cross. After that, the Gospels, Acts, and all the letters of the New Testament are written, concluding redemptive history about A.D. 100. That simple chart starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation. The other two diagrams below it are the same framework as in the first diagram, but they have been filled out with more detail corresponding to the information above and below.
So let's begin with some simple facts. There are 3 MAJOR EVENTS from Genesis through the Gospels that dominate the landscape and guide everything. I have draped those on the first diagram above. They are:
a. Creation
b. Fall
c. Redemption (through the death and resurrection of Christ)
Now let's add the 6 MAJOR CHARACTERS in the Bible from Genesis through the Gospels. They are on diagrams 2 and 3. Those people are:
a. Adam
b. Noah
c. Abraham
d. Moses
e. David
f. Jesus Christ
After the Gospels in the New Testament, which go from about 16 - 4 B.C. to about A.D. 30, approximately the date of the death of Jesus, history resumes again with the Book of Acts up until about A.D. 63. The New Testament history in the Book of Acts is built around the 2 major players after the resurrection of Christ and His return to heaven, Peter and Paul. Peter was the Apostle to the Jews, and Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles. These two men also wrote the bulk of the New Testament writings after the Gospels, especially Paul who inscribed 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Peter and Paul, however, although they are the primary figures after the Gospels, do not relate to the main theme of the Bible - redemption - like the 6 men who mark the large redemptive moments in the Old Testament period. Whereas the 6 men above are directly involved in God's promise of redemption - albeit, unknown to them, of course - Peter and Paul were primarily the leaders after Jesus' death and resurrection who led the prolific spread of the Gospel throughout Judaism and the Roman world and explained to the world and the coming ages what the death and resurrection of Christ signified. In addition to their writings, the Apostles James and John penned 5 other letters that are in the New Testament, and Jude and the writer of Hebrews contributed the balance. Not only did all of these New Testament letters explain what just happened at the death and resurrection of Christ, referring continually back to the Old Testament with its 6 main characters and 3 major events as the background for that explanation, they also instructed Christians in every generation what to do as believers and why to do it. All the New Testament writings and the approximate dates they were recorded are illustrated on the third diagram.
Now there are a lot of other characters and events in the Old Testament and the Gospels besides those mentioned above. Many of their names and stories are very familiar. Look at diagrams 2 and 3, and you will find a few of the best known listed on there with their approximate dates in Bible history.
But the real question here is: What is the purpose of all these people and events in the Bible? Some people and preachers think the Bible is a book of morals to tell us how to live. So they try to glean applications for our lives out of the Bible. Apart from the Gospel that Christ is the only One who can redeem us from our sins by the grace of God through faith in Him, all that this ethical and moralistic teaching does is make people think of themselves as self-righteous and able to please God with a good, moral life and, thus, insure themselves of a place in heaven. In many churches, the stories of the Bible's characters and events are told over and over again and are left standing alone as separate, unconnected events like Aesop's Fables. There is virtually no linking them to either one another or to an overall theme or purpose. The stories told by themselves in this manner are like telephone poles on a landscape that are just stuck in the ground, but there are no wires or lines tying them together. Sometimes even gospel preachers speak from the Old Testament as if the only purpose was to make practical and spiritual applications to our lives by preaching on the life of Abraham, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, or Elijah and Elisha.
Even though I think that type of preaching is incomplete in itself, we must not forget that there is moral instruction in the Bible. There are many lessons for counseling and daily living there for Christians, as Paul says in I Corinthians 10:6-10. But that is not the main purpose of all these biographies and events. That is not what binds them together and makes sense of them. If all you do is that, you have completely missed the Bible's intent.
So what is the Bible's intent? What ties all this together in one theme and makes sense of it all? What is the Bible all about? One key passage of the Bible that pinpoints the Bible's message and unifies everything is Luke 24. The context here is immediately after the resurrection. Two of Jesus‘ followers were walking together from Jerusalem to Emmaus when a man they did not recognize joined them. It was Jesus, but His identity was masked from them. They were very depressed and confused about the past week's events, the death of Jesus, and the report of His resurrection without any evidence of His body being found.
That is when he interrupted them and revealed Himself, calling them fools for not believing the Old Testament. He then began an amazing recitation that we can only wish was recorded word for word. But here is Luke's summary of it. He says that Jesus started indexing the entire Old Testament and how it relentlessly - from cover to cover - pointed to Him. "Beginning with Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy) and ALL the prophets, He explained to them what was said in ALL the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." (verse 24) Later in vs 44, He says "...everything must be fulfilled that is written about ME in the LAW OF MOSES, the PROPHETS and the PSALMS." That is the point of the dotted line on diagram 2. Jesus runs through the entire Old Testament until He appears, dies, resurrects, and ascends into heaven in the third diagram.
So there it is. All of the Old Testament is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Every detail and nuance is an arrow pointing to Him. The covenants, the sacrifices, the 10 Commandments, the conflicts, the amazing predictions hundreds of years in advance, the kings, priests, and prophets, the intrigues and sins in the lives of the royal rulers of Israel, the insignificant lives that are given ink and seem so out of place in Bible history, the songs recorded in Scripture - everything - points to Christ. All of the telephone poles are connected by one wire that leads from Adam to Abraham to David to the son of Mary and Joseph. The Bible is the story of Jesus. It is the history of redemption through Him. Every character and event from the major ones to the minor ones is somehow about or related to Jesus in some way and fills in the picture with more information.
Let me illustrate what I mean. If someone were to write the story of your life, there would be a lot of personal information recorded. The major people who surrounded you would be there, like your father and mother, brothers and sisters, best friends, who you married, and the children you spawned. We would have information about what schools you attended, what careers and employment you pursued, what achievements you accomplished in your life, and finally when, where, how, and why you died. Many leading people would be named in your biography. Life-changing events would be weaved into the tale. But there would also be a lot of data that might not be so primary. That is always the case when relating a life, but these pieces of information explain a lot of things that could not be understood otherwise. There would be things like cultural information for that time period and current events that shaped the age. I think that might help you as you think about all those events, nations, and people in the Old Testament and how and why might relate to Jesus whose coming stretched across thousands of years.
As you go through the Old Testament, you will learn where Jesus came from, who sent Him, what His purpose was, what He was going to do, how He was going to do it, what He would look like, who His parents and great grand-parents were from Joseph and Mary all the way back to Abraham and Adam, and what the end result of His eventual coming and marvelous life will be. The Bible is a glorious picture of primarily just one person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
First, the Bible is presented to us primarily as HISTORY. There are several ways to study the Bible. One of them is to study it topically. That is, to see what it says about any subject matter by going through the Bible and listing all the verses that comment on any topic, such as man, salvation, faith, sin, hell, angels, etc. If you ever attend any kind of Bible or theological school, they do this a lot. There is nothing wrong with this method. It is very helpful. This is what is called Systematic Theology because the Bible’s theology is taught systematically, or topically. There are Systematic Theology books by Louis Berkhof, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Herman Hoeksema, and many others.
But the Bible itself does not do that. It was not written systematically. None of the Biblical writers presented their message in a topical manner. Pick up a Bible, any Bible. It makes no difference. About one-half of what you hold in your hand is an account of select successive historical events. Those events are a portion of the pre-history and history of ancient Israel up until about 400 B.C. The events and people chosen in this particular history of Israel are the historical events in the Jewish nation directly related to the redemption that God promised in Genesis 3:15. In other words, when you read the history of the Old Testament, you are reading about the times when the Lord intervened in history and made a major move toward providing His Deliverer to redeem the offspring of Adam and Eve from the curse of sin that had fallen on the human race.
The other half of the Bible you are holding in your hand is not history as such. It is a record of the writings of the prophets to Israel in the Old Testament and the letters of the apostles in the New Testament. All those prophetic books and epistles can be inserted somewhere within those historical parts of the Bible at various points. For example, the letters of Paul can be placed within the Book of Acts in the New Testament at various chapter locations to help explain the situations that were going on at the church locations where Paul had visited and planted churches. The same thing is true of the prophetical books in the Old Testament. For example, the Book of Isaiah could be slipped somewhere within the chapters of the Kings and Chronicles, which are part of the story of Israel's history in the Old Testament.
So, to put it another way, God's revelation about Himself and His Redeemer is presented historically as time, people, and events passed across the human stage of time. It is not presented topically or systematically. Thus, if you want to really understand the Bible's message, you must read through Bible history to see how God unfolded His redemptive plan as thousands of years marched by. That is why you will sometimes hear people speak of "the history of redemption" when they summarize the Bible's content.
So what is the overall story of the Bible historically and where do those parts that are not history fit into the historical flow? First, every individual and every event in the entire Bible fits nicely somewhere on the structural timeline frame at the top of this article that I call The Right-Handed Lobster Claw and the Two Sticks. There are three diagrams at the top of this article. The first is the basic framework of the entire Bible in simple form so one can easily see it. That little diagram gives you Israel’s history as it developed from one man till it became a nation and then divided itself into two parts - Israel (or the Northern Kingdom) on the upper part of the claw, and Judah (or the Southern Kingdom) on the lower part of the claw. Israel did not last as long as Judah because of grievous sin and idolatry against the Lord. So God judged them. He ended their kingdom and carried the Israelites off to another land, Assyria. Thus the top is shorter. Judah lasted longer than Israel, but it too came to an end for the same reasons as Israel. Judah was also taken captive by her enemies and hauled away to Babylon. The break in the lobster claw as it reaches out to the first stick is called The Captivity. Judah was in captivity to Babylon for 70 years. The Lord eventually allowed Judah to return to her homeland in Palestine when she rebuilt her chief city Jerusalem. At the end of that first stick is the year 400 B.C. Redemptive history came to a halt. Then there is approximately a 400 year gap in time until God resumes His redemptive activity again with the birth of Jesus, the beginning of the second stick. Jesus’ life ends on the cross. After that, the Gospels, Acts, and all the letters of the New Testament are written, concluding redemptive history about A.D. 100. That simple chart starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation. The other two diagrams below it are the same framework as in the first diagram, but they have been filled out with more detail corresponding to the information above and below.
So let's begin with some simple facts. There are 3 MAJOR EVENTS from Genesis through the Gospels that dominate the landscape and guide everything. I have draped those on the first diagram above. They are:
a. Creation
b. Fall
c. Redemption (through the death and resurrection of Christ)
Now let's add the 6 MAJOR CHARACTERS in the Bible from Genesis through the Gospels. They are on diagrams 2 and 3. Those people are:
a. Adam
b. Noah
c. Abraham
d. Moses
e. David
f. Jesus Christ
After the Gospels in the New Testament, which go from about 16 - 4 B.C. to about A.D. 30, approximately the date of the death of Jesus, history resumes again with the Book of Acts up until about A.D. 63. The New Testament history in the Book of Acts is built around the 2 major players after the resurrection of Christ and His return to heaven, Peter and Paul. Peter was the Apostle to the Jews, and Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles. These two men also wrote the bulk of the New Testament writings after the Gospels, especially Paul who inscribed 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Peter and Paul, however, although they are the primary figures after the Gospels, do not relate to the main theme of the Bible - redemption - like the 6 men who mark the large redemptive moments in the Old Testament period. Whereas the 6 men above are directly involved in God's promise of redemption - albeit, unknown to them, of course - Peter and Paul were primarily the leaders after Jesus' death and resurrection who led the prolific spread of the Gospel throughout Judaism and the Roman world and explained to the world and the coming ages what the death and resurrection of Christ signified. In addition to their writings, the Apostles James and John penned 5 other letters that are in the New Testament, and Jude and the writer of Hebrews contributed the balance. Not only did all of these New Testament letters explain what just happened at the death and resurrection of Christ, referring continually back to the Old Testament with its 6 main characters and 3 major events as the background for that explanation, they also instructed Christians in every generation what to do as believers and why to do it. All the New Testament writings and the approximate dates they were recorded are illustrated on the third diagram.
Now there are a lot of other characters and events in the Old Testament and the Gospels besides those mentioned above. Many of their names and stories are very familiar. Look at diagrams 2 and 3, and you will find a few of the best known listed on there with their approximate dates in Bible history.
But the real question here is: What is the purpose of all these people and events in the Bible? Some people and preachers think the Bible is a book of morals to tell us how to live. So they try to glean applications for our lives out of the Bible. Apart from the Gospel that Christ is the only One who can redeem us from our sins by the grace of God through faith in Him, all that this ethical and moralistic teaching does is make people think of themselves as self-righteous and able to please God with a good, moral life and, thus, insure themselves of a place in heaven. In many churches, the stories of the Bible's characters and events are told over and over again and are left standing alone as separate, unconnected events like Aesop's Fables. There is virtually no linking them to either one another or to an overall theme or purpose. The stories told by themselves in this manner are like telephone poles on a landscape that are just stuck in the ground, but there are no wires or lines tying them together. Sometimes even gospel preachers speak from the Old Testament as if the only purpose was to make practical and spiritual applications to our lives by preaching on the life of Abraham, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, or Elijah and Elisha.
Even though I think that type of preaching is incomplete in itself, we must not forget that there is moral instruction in the Bible. There are many lessons for counseling and daily living there for Christians, as Paul says in I Corinthians 10:6-10. But that is not the main purpose of all these biographies and events. That is not what binds them together and makes sense of them. If all you do is that, you have completely missed the Bible's intent.
So what is the Bible's intent? What ties all this together in one theme and makes sense of it all? What is the Bible all about? One key passage of the Bible that pinpoints the Bible's message and unifies everything is Luke 24. The context here is immediately after the resurrection. Two of Jesus‘ followers were walking together from Jerusalem to Emmaus when a man they did not recognize joined them. It was Jesus, but His identity was masked from them. They were very depressed and confused about the past week's events, the death of Jesus, and the report of His resurrection without any evidence of His body being found.
That is when he interrupted them and revealed Himself, calling them fools for not believing the Old Testament. He then began an amazing recitation that we can only wish was recorded word for word. But here is Luke's summary of it. He says that Jesus started indexing the entire Old Testament and how it relentlessly - from cover to cover - pointed to Him. "Beginning with Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy) and ALL the prophets, He explained to them what was said in ALL the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." (verse 24) Later in vs 44, He says "...everything must be fulfilled that is written about ME in the LAW OF MOSES, the PROPHETS and the PSALMS." That is the point of the dotted line on diagram 2. Jesus runs through the entire Old Testament until He appears, dies, resurrects, and ascends into heaven in the third diagram.
So there it is. All of the Old Testament is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Every detail and nuance is an arrow pointing to Him. The covenants, the sacrifices, the 10 Commandments, the conflicts, the amazing predictions hundreds of years in advance, the kings, priests, and prophets, the intrigues and sins in the lives of the royal rulers of Israel, the insignificant lives that are given ink and seem so out of place in Bible history, the songs recorded in Scripture - everything - points to Christ. All of the telephone poles are connected by one wire that leads from Adam to Abraham to David to the son of Mary and Joseph. The Bible is the story of Jesus. It is the history of redemption through Him. Every character and event from the major ones to the minor ones is somehow about or related to Jesus in some way and fills in the picture with more information.
Let me illustrate what I mean. If someone were to write the story of your life, there would be a lot of personal information recorded. The major people who surrounded you would be there, like your father and mother, brothers and sisters, best friends, who you married, and the children you spawned. We would have information about what schools you attended, what careers and employment you pursued, what achievements you accomplished in your life, and finally when, where, how, and why you died. Many leading people would be named in your biography. Life-changing events would be weaved into the tale. But there would also be a lot of data that might not be so primary. That is always the case when relating a life, but these pieces of information explain a lot of things that could not be understood otherwise. There would be things like cultural information for that time period and current events that shaped the age. I think that might help you as you think about all those events, nations, and people in the Old Testament and how and why might relate to Jesus whose coming stretched across thousands of years.
As you go through the Old Testament, you will learn where Jesus came from, who sent Him, what His purpose was, what He was going to do, how He was going to do it, what He would look like, who His parents and great grand-parents were from Joseph and Mary all the way back to Abraham and Adam, and what the end result of His eventual coming and marvelous life will be. The Bible is a glorious picture of primarily just one person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.