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Bible
Content
The logic of viewing the books of the Bible in this way
aids in understanding biblical content. These divisions are drawn from
ancient rabbinical commentaries, the affirmation of those divisions by Jesus
and New Testament authors, and the consensus of most ancient and contemporary
Bible scholars. Therefore, the Greek and Hebrew (including Aramaic
portions of the OT) Morphological (i.e. “word”) databases were analyzed for
these charts. Stored in the 1998 version of BibleWorks, with each
morphological form occupying one record in the database, searches were
performed on these forms. Each form is stored as a single string consisting
of the root form (lemma) in ASCII. The above results reflect these
percentages and are far more accurate than counting English words, verses, or
chapters. Key
Observations – Theme: Redemption ·
Authority: Creation reveals God but the
majority of what we can know about God comes from the Bible. “No authority,
whether of antiquity, or custom, or numbers, or human wisdom, or judgments,
or proclamations or edicts or decrees, or councils, or visions, or miracles,
should be opposed to the Bible, but on the contrary, all things should be
examined, regulated, and reformed according to them.” Repeatedly the Bible
stresses its authority over what men believe. ·
Christ: No personage occupies as
central a position in the entire Bible as Jesus Christ. Nearly 50% of the NT
is devoted solely to accounts of his life, death, and resurrection (Gospels)
while the OT is inscrutable without Christ. Jewish people are largely
atheistic today for this reason. ·
The Covenant: A “Testament” is a
covenant of agreement. Both New and Old Testaments reflect various covenants
the most important being God’s self-commitment to His promise to redeem
fallen mankind to Himself. ·
Historical Material: Taken
together the Historical books and Acts comprise nearly 30% of the biblical
content. In contrast note how small a percentage (of the major divisions) is
devoted to future events: Revelation. The weight of this historical material
appears to stress the relevance of God’s message in time; that God is not
ambivalent to our political, economic, social, intellectual, religious, and
aesthetic circumstances. ·
Old Testament Events:
Nearly 70% of the Bible is occupied with men, events, and movements prior to
the advent of Jesus Christ. To put it another way: if you divide your reading
of the entire Bible into a year, beginning January 1st, you will
not start the New Testament until October 15th. Therefore, it is
unreasonable to conclude that the OT is largely immaterial to our view of
revelation. The OT largely commands our Bible. ·
Preaching: The OT books of the Law,
Prophets, Poetry, as well as the sermonic material in the Historical books
are composed of large amounts of preaching. The NT Gospels, Acts, Epistles
and Revelation are heavily sermonic in nature. ·
Precision of New Testament: The
OT covers nearly 100 generations while the NT covers only one. The Greek
language lends itself to more precision via abstraction of thought than the
concrete Hebrew of the OT. For example, “anger” in Hebrew is a “flaring
nostril.” God chose these languages to express Himself concretely to sibling
believers of the OT while providing His rationale in the language of the NT.
In the Old Testament laws were legislated. In the New Testament the process
of thinking that leads to that legislation is explained. |
