Tim and I like to discuss how books of the Bible are designed, their literary structure.

We also like to talk about themes in the Bible, motifs that go through the entire narrative

arc of scripture and tie the whole thing together.

But in this episode, we're going to take a step back, and we're going to talk about what

the Bible is in the first place.

The Hebrew Bible is an extremely sophisticated piece of ancient literary art.

It has a theological message, but it's doing it through this incredibly nuanced literary

medium.

The Bible didn't drop out of heaven.

It was produced over hundreds of years by many different authors who all came from

one particular people group known as ancient Israel.

It came into existence through the history of how God was at work with a people.

It emerged out of that history.

Through this people, God's working in human history in a unique way.

If you're trying to understand the story of the biblical texts and the message that

they have, they're telling a story that has the people of Israel at its center, but

it actually has the story of the whole world and all humanity as its main focus.

In this episode, we talk about this collection of ancient texts that we call the Bible, and

why Christians have been intimately tied to this book.

Here we go.

So we are going to produce a series starting in 2017 about what is the Bible and how to

read it.

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