What is a Bible Survey

Bible Survey 1. What is a Bible Survey? a. Have you ever started a Bible reading plan and thought things were going really well? Only to be fouled up when you got to a complicated book, or maybe a "boring" book like Numbers? b. Then you skip a few days out of frustration or boredom. c. Before you know it, you aren't even reading the Bible anymore. d. The Bible is a pretty hard book, just to sit down and read cover to cover. e. There is the fact that there is approximately 773,692 words - depending on the translation. A good sized novel might be 150,000-200,000 words. And one of the behemoths 'War and Peace' topping out at 587,000 words. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is 480,000. I haven't read War and Peace, but I have read Lord of the Rings, and that was a task. Not a weekend read. At 773,692 its about 1.5 times as big as a trilogy! f. War and Peace and Lord of the Rings, were written by one person, in one style. The Bible around 40 different authors, and the Bible has about six different genres of writing. Law, History, Poetry and Wisdom, Prophecy, Gospels, and Letters. Jumping from each genre and back, can be confusing at the very least. g. A Bible survey is meant to give an overview of all those 773,692 words, broken down into 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and 31,173 verses. h. I want to be able to provide a few pieces of information on each book, that will hopefully help you in your reading. And something to fall back on if you get stuck with a difficult or boring chapter to read. i. I feel that it is very important that we spend time daily in the word. Reading at the very least, but also studying. We need to become familiar and fluent in the Bible. And creating a roadmap of what is contained in it will help. j. Do you know how the mouse ate the elephant? One bite at a time. k. Knowing how to take those one bites at a time, in the Bible can make every day a rewarding and fun experience. l. Some of the information that I will provide will be things like who wrote it, when was it written, why was it written, some key verses and a summary of what happens. m. Yes Basically the 5 Ws. Who, What, When Where, and Why. 2. Before we get into Genesis, lets take a look at the structure. a. Each of the testaments - the old and new can be broken down into 3 sections. Foundational, Historical, and Instructional. b. The sections are broad categories. It doesn't mean that there isn't history in all of the books - The Bible is a few thousand years old. It doesn't meant there isn't instructional pieces in the sections not labeled Instructional. Again we are trying to take a broad look at the Bible to help us place things properly. So when we are studying the Bible, we have a better idea of where it all fits in. c. Foundational - This section sets the direction of each testament. They are . . . foundational. i. Old Testament - Genesis - Deuteronomy. Pentateuch. The Law ii. New Testament - 4 Gospels d. Historical - Exactly what it sounds like. This provides some history of each of the different eras in the Bible (Old and New). Its not a minute by minute recording of history. The Old Testament spans several thousands of years. The books is already big enough. I've always wanted to see the Record of the Kings that is mentioned in 1 and 2 Kings and Chronicles where it says the history of the Kings is recorded. Those would be big books to read in a weekend. i. The history that it covers is in line with what is laid out in the Foundational books. ii. Old Testament - 12 Books - Joshua-Esther. I generally use the NIV for most of my messages. We will get into a detailed list of all the books at some point. But, some translations order the books differently. So if you are wondering at any point if your order of books is different than mine, its ok. iii. New Testament - this is easy, regardless of which translation you use. Its just on book - Acts. e. Instructional - again exactly what it sounds like. This section feeds back into the historical section and helps guide the people in carrying out what was laid out primarily in the foundational section. Both the OT and NT have 22 books in this section. i. OT - is broken up into 2 subcategories. Poetical and Prophetical. Why is that important? It helps with translating the books. Its called Hermeneutics. So if you are reading poetry you interpret what the author is saying differently than if you are reading letters, or prophecy, or plain non-fiction writings. There are 5 books that fall into Poetry and 17 that are prophetical. ii. NT - 22 books that are considered instructional. These are mostly letters that are written from apostles to churches. f. Now that we have covered the different sections Of the Bible let's talk about when the books of the Bible Took place. This timeline again is high level it's not exact and some of the that some of the books like proverbs and Psalms Span a very long time. We will get more precise as we address each book as we walk through this survey if I want to give you an idea that I think this will help as you read books as you're doing reading plans that you can understand that when things happen so when you're reading Obadiah that's sometime you know around 850 bc that takes place you know at the same time Samuel is happening. g. You can see that Ruth happened before first Samuel but after judges or during the judges. So again this is just high level there's a whole purpose of doing a Bible survey is to give you big picture views and not micro views of everything. And like I said we will as we go into each book we will dive into and be more precise on these