Starting off where we left the last time, we were putting the bible in it’s order according to hermeneutical structure regarding it’s themes in styles of writing.

We finished with the old testament in part two and will finish today with the new testament in today’s look.  The new testament is generally broken into three areas:  the gospels, the letters of the epistles and the book of prophecy.

The gospels include Matthew, mark, Luke and John and although not part of the gospels necessarily, the books of Acts also describes the works of Jesus after the resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.  These books are more of a narrative type of writing and speak on the life and teachings of Jesus from the particular disciple and the audience intended.

The epistles to the churches included:  Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2 & 3 John,  and Jude.   These letters are instructional and educational to the early church.  They teach  and explain how the early church and the church body today is to conduct itself on a daily basis inside the four walls of the church and outside of it.  Some of these epistles warned against heretics and charlatans and also against carnal Christians who lived in sin.  Other books like Thessalonians will go in depth about the coming of the Lord back to earth.

The final book of prophecy in the bible is probably the most famous book:  the book of Revelation.  This book is actually the revelation of Jesus Christ to the apostle John and to the rest of the Christians.  It is a book that is both terrible and wonderful at the same time.  A book that reveals literal billions of humans dieing as the wrath of God is poured out on all mankind who rebel against him.

Again, these sections are just for the beginners who want to get a general understranding of how the bible works, so that with the help of the Holy Spirit, any Christian can puzzle this wonderful book together. We will go into more depth as the series continues next time as we get into more depth with scripture torture or isogesis.

So to follow up from I don’t understand the bible part 1, which are you: a fake doubter, or an honest doubter. I’m assuming either you are already a Christian like most of Today’s Truth blog followers or you are a genuine doubter trying to find the truth.

One of the keys we will discuss in this blog today and the following will be how is the bible divided and understood according to its themes. You see, if you’re trying to get from New York to California, you have to be able to know what a map is and then you have to be able to discern and read it accurately by understanding the items in the map-key and how to use them with the map. This same principle applies to the word of God.

Once we understand the map-key of the bible, or how it is written regarding certain themes, we can then begin to ask intelligent and hard questions where scripture will begin to interpret scripture for us, answering many of our own questions even before we ask them. You see, most people think the bible only says, “you should not judge”, but that is because they ripped the other fifty pages out of their bibles about when and how we should judge. So the key is we must “study to show ourselves approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth (IITimothy 2:15).

I believe my hermenuetics 101 category will help my community at Todays Truth blog start out doing this properly in the basics.  These sections will help you Stop the train and get the revelation that the Holy Spirit is trying to convey to us through the Word of God.

Themes of the bible

Once we begin to understand these basic themes of the books of the bible then we know we are headed on the right road in the right direction.

There are seven different themes of the bible. The first five books are the law given to the Hebrew people on how to live and interact and to worship–the do’s and don’ts basically of God. The books of the law are “as is” and mean  what they say. It also includes the book of origins and the the Jewish race and culture. These would include the first five books of the bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

The next set of books would fall under the theme of books of history and there are 12 books in this category: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, II Kings, I chronicles, II chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. These books give the history of the people of Israel over a period of about 500 years. When you read these books it states information more like “a-matter-fact”. This is the way it was and how it was written down like a reporter writing down the basics.  As one famous show said it best, “Just the facts, mam.”

The next theme would be the books of poetry including five books: Job, Psalms, proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. These books concentrate on questions about pain, God, life and love. As a person who truly hates poetry, it amazes me that I love to read from the Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes so much. The scriptures in these books cannot always be taken literally or as facts 100% percent of the time such as in the Proverbs, where as a general rule of thumb they are true, but there are exceptions to the rules which must be considered  within the context of the statements.  For example in Psalm 91: does God have feathers?  It says he does.  I guess that makes us humans a bunch of little kentucky fried chickens then, huh?

C’mon all yall out there who believed that, you’re better than that.

Well, of course not, and God surely doesn’t have wings, but if we don’t understand the lanuage it was written in and the context behind it we can make the bible say anything we want it to(isogesis).  We’ll get more into that in our future segments.

The last group for this blog is the books of the prophets including: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These are books that deal in prophecy and God leading his people back to him in the Old Testament.  this would also include the final book in the bible, the book of Revelation.

The next section will be on themes in the New Testament.  What are your thoughts regarding these books and how they should be interpreted and read?  Which book and scriptures in the bible do you think have more scripture torture(isogesis) and what examples have you seen out there?  Looking forward to your thoughts.