The Bible is a daunting book. It is generally printed as a single volume containing at least one and often several thousand pages. It comprises within the text a staggering array of genres and cultural references. Add to that it has several dozen authors writing in differing languages over a period of almost two thousand years, and it becomes difficult to see how the Bible can have a single story, or even if it does, how that story could ever be understood.

So how am I going to try and help you (and myself) understand that the story of the Bible is better than we think it is?

First, let me tell you what I’m not going to do. I am not going to try and convince you that the Biblical story is historically accurate, though I believe it is. I am not going to try and prove the infallibility of the Bible in matters it claims authority, though I believe it is. I am not going to dance around issues of translation and verifiablity of the original autographs, though such efforts are important and worthwhile. I am not doing academic work. If you are interested in a relatively short and easy to read book on where we got the Bible we have, From Text to Translation by Paul Wegner is a fine place to start.

I am going to start with the book that we actually have. Rather than attack or defend it, I propose to just look at it. The book that we have is the foundational document for the Christian faith. The story it tells has been the constitutive story for Christians for almost two thousand years, and that is the story I am interested in.

The Bible is, of course, huge. While the individual books are not ridiculously long, the massive whole can be quite intimidating, and for almost the entire history of the Christian faith, people have been dividing the Bible into daily and weekly segments, allowing it to be read at a reasonable pace over the course of a year. Given this, I am going to spend the next year walking through the Bible and talking about the story it is telling. For the daily reading, I’m using and recommending ReadScripture.org or their app for Android or iPhone. My blog posts will be following their reading plan starting on January 1st, 2019.