SURVEY OF THE BIBLE

by Edith Shelton

If we were planning a trip from here to Vermont, one of the first things we would do is get a map of the whole U.S. with highways marked so we would plot just the route we would be taking. After that we would probably look at the various state maps to get a more detailed view of the areas we would be going through. And we would certainly have to look at the local map to find out how we would get from here to the highway that leads from this area to our great adventure. If we have time and really want to enjoy our trip, we may get more information about the various sights we will see so we'll know what to look for along the way. We could spend a delightful winter planning a summer's trip. When summer comes, why take the trip? You already know about the places, have seen pictures of the outstanding sights. You might as well stay at home! Oh no, you don't really know the places until you see them in person and smell the flowers. But you will know them better if you are prepared beforehand.

So in surveying the Bible in all its parts and fitting those parts together to make a whole, it's a good idea to look at the large map first. There is a continuing story that goes through the whole Bible from beginning to end. It isn't just a bunch of unrelated stories. The story in broad general outlines is the story of God's dealing with man from the time of the first man until a projected time in the future when we will be with Him in eternity. But it is even more particular than that. It is God's plan for the salvation of man through Jesus Christ that is the real theme that goes through the whole book, the whole 66 books. It is not as explicit in the Old Testament. The O.T. lays the groundwork and sets the scene. But the main act is in the N.T.

Today we are going to look at the large map as it were. We'll get the overall picture from Genesis to Revelation. Then in succeeding weeks we will look at the books in more detail. But we are still surveying, not doing any in-depth study of any book or idea. The important part of this whole study is your own reading of the Bible itself. It's like your trip to Vermont, reading the guidebooks is not the same as making the trip. And knowing all the stories of the Bible is not the same as reading it yourself. That just prepares you to have a better understanding of what you are reading because you know the overall context.

So let's begin to set the scene. The first five books of the Bible are called the five books of Moses. But Moses doesn't appear in the first book -- the book of Genesis. The name "Genesis" comes from the first phrase "in the beginning." And this is the book of beginnings. There is an easy outline for this book that really covers all the main points:
Creation - Fall - Flood - Babel
Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Joseph
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Isaiah 45:18 says,

For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!)

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve blew it. They didn't follow the manufacturer's instructions, and they let Satan persuade them that he knew better than God. As a result death entered the picture. There came a separation between God and man, spiritual death. And man began to die physically when he was sent out of the garden and separated from the tree of life. But God made a promise in Gen 3:15 concerning the seed of woman bruising the serpent's head. This is understood to be the first messianic prophecy -- the first promise that there would be a savior.

As people multiplied on the face of the earth, they had the opportunity to know about God. After all, Adam lived 930 years -- we don't know how long Eve lived. And his son, Seth, who was born when Adam was 130, lived 912 years. Between them they covered a period of over a thousand years, and surely told their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren about God. But spiritual death had passed onto all men, as Romans 5:12 tells us, and they didn't all want to listen. More and more turned away from God and to violence and sin. It's hard to believe, but by the time we get to Noah, he was the only righteous man God could find on the earth. So God decided to erase the blackboard and start over -- with Noah. So we have the flood. And Noah's three sons with their wives were the beginning of a new era. They all knew about God, but as time went on, men again turned away from God until it was necessary for him to change their language into a number of languages so they couldn't all understand each other and had to move to different parts of the earth. That was at the tower of Babel.

One of Noah's sons, Shem, became the ancestor of Abraham. And with Abraham we continue the story of God's preparation for the coming of the Messiah, or anointed one, the savior. Abraham had a son, Isaac, and Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. The promises God made to Abraham passed to his son Isaac and then to Jacob. Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, had twelve sons - Reuben, Simeon, Levi, etc. These became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. The last name on our outline of Genesis -- Joseph -- is important because it is through him that Jacob and all his family went down to Egypt in a time of famine. Joseph had become important in Egypt and could give them food and a place to live.

So now we are at a new beginning again. From now on the story will deal with the family of Israel, and eventually the kingdom of Israel, and eventually -- the Messiah of Israel and the savior of the world.

Abraham lived about 2000 B.C. The time of creation has been variously dated from several billion years to 4004 B.C. The 4004 date was figured from the various genealogies given in Genesis, where it says Adam lived so many years and begat Seth, Seth lived so many years and begat Enosh, etc. We won't go into that at this point. Just fix 2000 B.C. as the time of Abraham in your mind to give you a peg to hang things on.

Abraham had been told (Genesis 15:13)

"Know of a surety that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be slaves there, and they will be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation which they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions."

So we come to the book of Exodus with the Israelites in slavery in Egypt and being much oppressed. And here the story of Moses starts. We won't go into detail now, but he was born and by a strange twist of fate (or the hand of God?) he was brought up in pharaoh's palace. Then he spent 40 years in exile in the desert until he was 80 years of age. Then God called him to deliver the people of Israel from Egypt. And God brought judgment as he promised -- the ten plagues. And the people came out with great possessions, which the Egyptians gave them before they left. There was the crossing of the Red Sea and other miracles that happened before they came to Mt. Sinai where they camped and where the Law was given to and through Moses. The plans for the tabernacle and the building of it also occurred at this place and that is also recorded in Exodus.

Leviticus is concerned with how and why to make the sacrifices and with other laws. The Levites became the priests, so this book might be considered a handbook for the priests. A highlight of this book is chapter 16 which tells about the Day of Atonement.

The book of Numbers continues the story of their travels from Mt. Sinai on. It is so called because it started with a census or numbering of the people. They did not number all the people, but the males from age 20 and up who could go to war. And they didn't count the Levites. The total was 603,550. So we must assume that if you would add in the women, children and older men you would have well over 2 million people.

When they got to the place where they were supposed to enter the land, they didn't have faith to go ahead, so they were condemned to wander in the wilderness for 40 years until that generation of adults died. Then they finally made their way to the banks of the Jordan River, just across from the promised land. At this time we have the book of Deut, which means "second law." Moses rehearsed for them all that had happened and the law that had been given. The 10 commandments are found in Deut 5 as well as Exodus 20, by the way. And at the end of Deut, we have the death of Moses. He was not allowed to lead them across the river, but that commission was given to Joshua. The date is now approx. 1400 B.C.

In the book of Joshua we have the battles against the nations of people in Canaan, as the land was called. And the dividing of the land among the twelve tribes. Actually 2 1/2 tribes received their inheritance on the other side of the Jordan where they had conquered territory. But the men of war of those tribes went with them to conquer Canaan. And at the end of the book, before Joshua dies, we have his challenge to the people in Joshua 24:14-15:

"Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if you be unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

"And Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work which the LORD did for Israel."

But what happened after that? In Judges we have the sad history of continual backsliding and judgment and repentance and deliverance. For one thing, they did not completely conquer and destroy all the nations in the land, and just as the Lord had said, they became "thorns in the flesh" to them and led them astray after idols.

Judges were leaders and deliverers, not just those who sat and decided cases, although they did that also. But their main function was to lead the people against their enemies. When the people went into idolatry and turned against God, he would let an enemy conquer them. When they finally got the message and turned back to the Lord, He would then raise up a judge, or deliverer, to lead them against the enemy and God would give them victory and peace for a period -- until they did the same thing again. We have the stories of Samson, Gideon, and others who were some of these leaders. At the end of the Judges we have a couple of chapters that tell unpleasant stories that seem to serve two purposes. They give us some idea of what life was like in that time when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." And they give information concerning the tribes of Dan and Benjamin that are part of their history.

After the book of Judges we have another story from the time of Judges, the book of Ruth, which gives an entirely different kind of story and shows that even in this time there were godly men and women who worshipped God and tried to follow His ways.

During this period of the Judges when Eli was the high priest and his sons were serving as priests in the tabernacle which was at Shiloh, Samuel was born in answer to his mother's prayers. She promised that if God gave her a son, she would lend him to the Lord and he would be a Nazarite. So she brought him to Eli to serve the Lord when he must have been about three years old, and he lived with Eli and served there. He was not of the tribe of Levi, so he was not of the priestly line. But God began to speak to him, and it became known throughout all the land that Samuel was a prophet of the Lord. Samuel is generally called the last of the judges and the first of the prophets. He was also known as a seer, which means one to whom God makes known the future, or at least things he could not know if God didn't tell him.

Eli's sons were not good priests; the Bible says they were worthless fellows. And they were killed in a battle with the Philistines. At this time the Philistines were Israel's chief enemy, and during the time of Samuel, while he didn't lead them in battle as a general, he was effective against the Philistines so the land had more peace. But Samuel's sons, also, did not follow in his ways. And the people wanted a king. Samuel resisted this, but God told him to give in to their desires, that it was Him, God, they were rejecting as ruler over them, but they should have their king. And he told Samuel to anoint Saul, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin as king.

So we have the beginning of the kingdom, although it was not a well-organized, well-established thing to begin with. Saul was mostly a war leader and held the tribes together against their enemies. However, he didn't follow directions from the Lord and was rejected as king; Samuel was directed to anoint David. That does not mean that Saul quit being king then; he was king until many years later when he was killed in battle.

David was still a young man when he was anointed by Samuel. His father sent him to see how his brothers were doing in the army with Saul and he saw the giant Goliath challenging the army of Israel. We know how that story went -- David killed Goliath, and he went on to become a leader in Saul's army. But Saul became jealous of David's popularity and tried to kill him.

There is then a period in David's life known as his outlaw period. It is a time when he found it necessary to hide from Saul and live away from Saul's court and Saul's presence. Several hundred young men attached themselves to him at that time, and this was defintely a period of leadership as well as trying to keep from being killed by Saul. During that time David had two opportunites to kill Saul, but he would not touch him.

When Saul was killed in a battle against the Philistines, David went up to Hebron and the tribe of Judah proclaimed him king. The northern tribes retained their allegiance to the family of Saul, and Saul's main general set up one of Saul's sons as a sort of puppet king while the general himself was the main power. So David was king at Hebron for 7 1/2 years. Then Saul's son was killed, and the rest of Israel decided to make David king over all the kingdom of Israel. He was king altogether for 40 years. The book of I Samuel covers the time of Samuel as judge and prophet and Saul as king. II Samuel covers the kingship of David.

After David, his son Solomon was king. We all know that Solomon had great wisdom from God. Under him the kingdom was at its greatest and wealthiest. Solomon built the temple at Jerusalem. Unfortunately Solomon married foreign wives who brought their idols with them, and the latter part of his life was diminished through this as his heart did not follow completely after God at this time. Because of this, God said He would take the kingdom away from Solomon's line, but not all of it. Because of His promise to David, he would leave a couple of tribes always to be ruled over by David's descendants.

God's promise to David is finally fulfilled in Jesus as we shall see in the N.T.

When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam reigned in his stead. But in his arrogance he turned the people against him, and the northern tribes broke away from his kingdom -- as God had said, leaving only Judah and tiny Benjamin. From then on the southern kingdom is known as Judah, and the northern kingdom is known as Israel.

Jeroboam, son of Nebat, became ruler of the northern kingdom. Jeroboam made Samaria his capital and he set up golden calves and called them gods so the people would not go down to Jerusalem, where the temple was, and remember they were all one people. The history of the northern kingdom from this time on was a history of idolatry. All the kings of Israel were considered wicked kings, that is, they worshipped idols and led the people into idolatry. Again and again it is said that they continued in the sin of Jeroboam, son of Nebat. In the ten commandments God says that he will visit the sins of the fathers on the sons to the third and fourth generation of them that hate him. It is interesting to note that the dynasties of the northern kingdom never go past the fourth generation except for Jehu who did at first do what God commanded him. In 722 the northern kingdom came to an end as Assyria defeated them and took many of the people away captive. This is known as the Assyrian captivity. And the date 722 B.C. will be one you will want to remember; another of those pegs to hang things on. (You don't have to remember it this time through.)

Meanwhile, what is happening back in Jerusalem. The kings of Judah were a mixed bag. There were good kings and wicked kings, that is, there were kings that worshipped God and led the people in the ways of God and kings that went into idolatry and led the people into idolatry. But God did not take the kingdom away from the descendants of David. One of the good kings was Hezekiah, who was reigning at the time the Assyrians captured the northern kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians tried to capture the southern kingdom also, but God was their protection. He sent the angel of death through their camp. A poem by Byron celebrates this act of God which is found in II Kings 19.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB

1
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 2
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. 3
For the angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still! 4
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. 5
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent--the banners alone--
The lances unlifted--the trumpet unblown. 6
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

The Assyrians had a habit of deporting large numbers of conquered people and replacing them with captives from other lands. This assured that there would not be native leaders who would foment a rebellion. This is what happened in Israel; large numbers of leaders and other people were deported (the ten lost tribes as they have been called), and foreigners were brought in to replace them. The inter-marriage of the remaining Israelites with the foreigners eventually became the Samaritans that we find in the N.T. that the Jews wouldn't deal with.

Meanwhile life continued in the southern kingdom for a period of time as good and bad kings continued to be interspersed. But finally the judgment on idolatry came to them also. Babylon had now conquered Assyria, and they cast their eyes on Judah. Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, and they promised allegiance to him. Certain of the leaders were carried off, but the kingdom continued to exist as a tributary to Babylon until they decided to rebel. Finally the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, carried off the leaders and most of the people to Babylon. This is known as the Babylonian captivity. The first conquest was in 606 B.C., but the final destruction was in 586 B.C. This is a very important date, and we will have occasion to remember this one.

This brings us to the end of II Kings and the end of both northern and southern kingdoms. Let's take a moment to consider I & II Chronicles. This is to some extent a repeat of II Samuel and I & II Kings in that it considers the kingdom of Judah from the time of David. The first ten chapters are mostly genealogy from the time of Adam. There is a brief space spent on Saul, and then David's reign takes up the rest of I Chron. II Chron is concerned with the reign of Solomon and the rest of the kings of Judah. Israel is hardly mentioned -- this is a history of Judah.

Before we go on to the captivity period and what happened after that, let's go back and put some of the writings and prophets in place. Job is generally considered to fit into the time of the patriarchs. For one thing, it is the same kind of lifestyle -- a man rich in herds, not a city kind of culture. And for the other thing, there is no mention of the Law although Job is a righteous man who loves God. Then we have Psalms. Many of the psalms are written by David, but others are written at a later date, even after the captivity. Proverbs is a book that is considered to be mostly by Solomon, putting much of his wisdom in the form of instruction. The last couple chapters are not by Solomon. Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon are also by Solomon. Ecclesiastes seems to be written by a weary man looking back on a long life -- there is nothing new under the sun, much study is the weariness of the flesh, etc. Song of Solomon is a love story. Many people justify its place in the Bible by making it refer to Christ and the church. I probably will not take a position on this.

The major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In our Bibles we find Daniel among the prophets, although he was a statesman rather than a prophet.

Isaiah prophesied during the reign of several kings. He was the prophet at the time the Assyrians came to threaten Hezekiah, and he brought God's word to Hezekiah to encourage him to trust God.

Jeremiah was prophet during the end of the southern kingdom, and he announced God's judgment on the kingdom. He was not very popular! (He also prophesied the return in 70 years.) He told the king he should surrender to the Babylonians, and consequently he was considered a traitor. He was still there at the last destruction of Jerusalem and was allowed to stay in the land.

Ezekiel, on the other hand, had been taken to Babylon with an early group of captives and prophesied to the people during the captivity, or exile, in Babylon.

Daniel was a young man when he was transported to Babylon in the 606 deportation. He was among those the king chose to be trained to be useful to Babylon. He was a young man of intelligence, and he was loyal to God. God gave him understanding of dreams and brought him into a place of prominence. When Babylon was overthrown by the Medo-Persians, he had a place in their government also, although he must have been quite an old man by then.

There are twelve prophets called minor prophets, so called because their books are smaller than those of the major prophets. Nine of them prophesied before the Babylonian exile and three after.

Three prophesied in Israel, the northern kingdom. But one of those, Jonah, was prophesying against Nineveh, not Israel or Judah. And Nineveh (Assyria) repented at the preaching of Jonah. Six were in Judah, but Obadiah prophesied against Edom and Nahum against Nineveh (Assyria). This time it was too late for repentance, and Nineveh fell in 612 B.C.

To get back to the history, while Judah was in captivity in Babylon, Daniel was filling a high place in the government there. When Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, Belshazzer became king, the handwriting on the wall told him his time had come. And that very night the Medes and Persians captured Babylon. But Daniel was held in high regard under their regime also. It was under Darius the Mede that he held one of the 3 highest offices in the land, and also under Darius that he was put in the lion's den.

When Cyrus came to the throne, he made a decree that allowed the Jews to return to their own country and also to rebuild their temple. In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah we have events of this return, of the rebuilding of the temple and of the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem under Nehemiah.

The prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi prophesied during that post-exilic time, as it was called. Malachi is not only the last book of the O.T.; it is also last in time as well as in position.

After Malachi, we have 400 years between the O.T. and the N.T. A number of interesting things happened during that time.

1. Greece rose to power and became the dominant power in the known world, including the land of Israel.
2. When Alexander the Great died, his empire was divided among his generals, one taking the area that is Syria and another Egypt. The land of the Jews in between those two became part of the tug of war policy between them.
3. And for a period of time under the Maccabees it became independent.
4. Then Rome rose as a power, and by the time we come to the N.T. Rome is the ruler in Israel.
5. It was during this period between the testaments that Sadducceeism and Phariseeism rose to become the important factors we see in the N.T. Also during this time the O.T. was translated into Greek -- the Septuagint.

So we come to the most important event in human history -- the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The first four books of the N.T. are called the gospels -- Mt, Mk, Lk, John. These are the books that tell the story of Jesus from his birth to his return to the right hand of the Father. Mt, Mk & Lk are called synoptic gospels. That means they have the same view. They are very much alike and tell pretty much the same story. Mt has the story of the wise men, Luke has the story of the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary and also the story of the birth, the angels and the shepherds, etc. Mark doesn't tell any of these things. But from that point on, they all tell the story of His ministry, and of the final week and crucifixion, then of the resurrection. John tells the story from a different point of view. He tells very few "stories" and gives more discourses in detail. We will find that there are certain themes and keywords that appear more often in John than in the other three gospels.

The book of Acts is the acts of the Holy Spirit as the church begins its mission on earth after Jesus returns to heaven. We find that Peter is the main character in the first part, and the scene is basically set in Jerusalem. In the last half of the book Paul is the main character as we follow him on three missionary journeys to start and to encourage new churches in Asia Minor and Greece, and then he goes to Rome as a prisoner to appear before Caesar.

During his various journeys and while in prison, Paul writes letters to the churches he has founded and to his helpers Timothy and Titus. These epistles or letters are an important part of the record of the early church and the early teaching of the church. The Epistle to the Hebrews has sometimes been attributed to Paul, and also a number of other early leaders have been suggested as the writer of it. What it comes down to is that we don't know who wrote Hebrews.

The epistles of James, Peters, Jude, and John were written by those whose names they bear and are generally called the general epistles. When John was an old man and was exiled to the island of Patmos for his faith, the Lord showed him the things that are written in the book of Revelation at the end of the N.T.

This gives us an overall view of where we are going -- from Genesis to Revelation. It will take quite a while to cover it in more detail -- but still a survey. When I had it in college, it took nine months at 2 hrs a week. If you think I go too slow or too fast, you can let me know. But you will only really benefit from this if you are reading the text of the Bible as we go along. It is when you read it for yourself that the Holy Spirit will make it real to you and will show you things He wants YOU to see. Then you will probably want to set up a schedule for reading through the whole Bible every year, while at the same time studying some parts in detail.