Your Access to the Bible

Second Session: Many Things Come in Threes

 

Review from last week:

 

1. The Bible is divided into the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and the New Testament, with the optional Apocrypha. Any copy of the Bible will have a Table of Contents at the front to assist you in finding where each begins and ends.

2.  Each of the Testaments is divided into books, and then into chapters and verses, with a shorthand way of expressing these:  (book name) (chapter): (verse/s), Genesis 1: 1-

3.  Each Testament has its own unique purpose. The first is to tell about the Jewish people and their God. The second is to tell about Jesus and his church.

 

 

Part 2 of 9: Many things come in threes: Focus on the Hebrew Scriptures.

 The Hebrew Scriptures, otherwise known as the Old Testament.

 

  1. The Hebrew scriptures include many types of writings: history, legends, poetry, prophecy, songs, visions, laws, parables.
  2. Each type of writing can be understood on it’s own terms and merits. E.g., when the Psalmist writes that the ‘mountains clap their hands’ we understand that there is some means of mountains as part of creation praising God, not that mountains have hands and clap them. One possible interpretation of the statement is that when a loud noise of praise is raised, such as the blowing of a horn or a crowd raises a shout, then the echo of the sound through the mountains is as if creation joins in the praise.

 

Exercise: here are two different passages.

 

Exodus 20: 13

 

Isaiah 6: 1 f

 

How do these differ in approach, in what is being said, in intention and so forth?

  

The Hebrew Scriptures are divided into three sections:

 Histories

Wisdom Literature

Prophets

 Histories:

 Starting with Genesis, through the entry into the promised land, the establishment of judges and then kings; concluding with a later set of chapters in Israel’s history—the return from exile to rebuild the Temple reported in I and II Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah.

 Wisdom Literature:

 Starting with Esther through Job, and includes books such as Proverbs, Psalms and Song of Songs. These writings do not report a history, nor are they prophetic books. Instead they impart varying experiences of God.

 Prophets:

 Reports of experiences of those called by God to predict the future for the people of God. Starts with Isaiah, ends with Malachi, and includes three major prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—and the rest are termed ‘minor’ because of length.

 

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 Genesis:

 Now turning to the first book of the Bible, Genesis itself is divided in three main cycles:

 Creation and first experiences

 Abraham and patriarchs

 Joseph and the arrival in Egypt

  

Three things to remember from today:

 

  1. The Hebrew Scriptures are divided into three sections: histories, wisdom, and prophetic.
  2. Scripture, of both Testaments but especially the first, contain widely varying types of literature which should be approached in understanding according to its genre or type (you don’t understand laws the same way you do poetry, for example).
  3. Genesis is divided into three cycles: creation and first people, the stories of Abraham, his son Isaac, and grandson Jacob; and Joseph—Jacob’s son, but with his own cycle which explains how the chosen people become enslaved in Egypt.

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