What kind of book is the Bible?

A question on the desert road

An official of the queen of Ethiopia was riding home from worship in Jerusalem, reading the prophet Isaiah in his chariot. The Spirit sent Philip, who ran up and heard him reading.

“Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone guides me?”

Acts 8:30-31

In the Latin Bible, Philip's question gave this course its motto, ‘Intellegis quae legis?’ Reading and understanding are not the same thing. The official had the prophet in his hands, yet he had to ask, "who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" (Acts 8:34). Philip climbed up beside him, "began with this very Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus" (Acts 8:35). At some water further on, the official was baptised and "went on his way rejoicing" (Acts 8:39).

This course sits down in that chariot. It asks first what kind of book the Bible is, and how and with whom we read it. Then it teaches three steps for any passage: observation, interpretation and application. Then it reads each kind of book as the kind it is, from narrative to apocalyptic, and last the whole Bible as one story that leads to Christ, with the app's helps (the guide to commentaries). Every lesson ends with ‘Try it’: a passage to read the lesson's way, writing down what you see in the map under the Jesus tab.

A library that is one book

The Bible is one volume, but a library: thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and twenty-seven of the New, written over more than a thousand years by shepherds and kings, priests, fishermen and a doctor, in Hebrew, a little Aramaic, and Greek. The Bible Overview course introduces the books, and How did we get the Bible? tells how they were gathered; here we ask what this means for reading.

Because it is a library, each book is read as the kind of book it is, its genre. A psalm is a song and a prayer; a letter was sent to a particular church or person; a proverb packs a truth about life into a line. Read a poem's pictures as statutes, or a proverb as a promise, and you will hear the text say what it does not say.

Because it is one book, its parts belong together, and they meet in Christ. To people who pored over the Scriptures, Jesus said: "These are the very words that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life" (John 5:39-40). We read not to know a great deal but to come to him, and no method of reading saves anyone. So do not measure yourself by how much or how well you read: God gives his word by grace.

And because it is one book, the church has let Scripture explain Scripture. The Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches calls ‘the Scripture itself’ the infallible rule of interpretation: when the sense of a passage is in question, ‘it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly’ ch. 1.9.

God's word in human words

The Bible is God's word. "All Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16), and the prophets "spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). So the Westminster Confession says that Scripture's authority rests not on any person or church but ‘wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof’ ch. 1.4. The doctrine course teaches this inspiration in The inspiration and authority of Scripture.

John Calvin, the Reformer of Geneva, compared Scripture to a pair of glasses:

For as the aged, … when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.

Calvin, Institutes 1.6.1

We do not only look at the Bible; we look through it and see God. And it looks at us: "For the word of God is living and active … It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). While we examine the text, it examines us, and reading becomes standing before God.

Yet God gave this word through human hands and in human words. Luke, drawing on what "the initial eyewitnesses and servants of the word" handed down (Luke 1:2), tells us how he wrote:

Therefore, having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

Luke 1:3-4

Moses wrote for a people in the wilderness, Jeremiah for a Jerusalem near its fall, Paul for a quarrelling church in Corinth. Each wrote in his own language, in his own time.

Both are true at once, so we read in two ways. Because it is God's word, we read with faith: ready to hear, trust and obey, asking the Spirit who gave it to open it to us (the next lesson). Because real people wrote it, we read with care: who is speaking to whom, in what words and what kind of writing, and what did it mean to them first? The Catholic Church, at the Second Vatican Council, teaches the same care: since God speaks in Scripture through human beings in a human way, the reader looks for what the sacred writers meant and what God wished to show by their words, attending to their literary forms and to the unity of all Scripture Dei Verbum 12.

Because God spoke in human languages, his word can be carried into others, and most of us read it in translation. The Westminster Confession holds the Hebrew and Greek to be the text the church finally appeals to; yet, since not all God's people know those languages, Scripture is ‘to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come’ ch. 1.8. ‘Vulgar’ there means the language people speak every day.

This app keeps two translations in English and two in Korean. Each makes its own choices, and what one leaves hidden another may show; set them side by side in Compare and you will notice more. Rather than ranking them, Which Bible translation should I read? suggests reading one and keeping another beside it, and Can the Bible be trusted? asks how faithfully the text has come down to us.

Try it

Open Acts 8 on the map. In the map under the Jesus tab, open Acts and tap chapter 8: it has a ‘One-line summary’ and ‘Notes’. ‘Read Acts 8’ in the same panel opens the text. What you write stays on this device and goes into Settings › Backup.

Read verses 26 to 40 twice. First follow the story; then notice who is reading what, and who asks what. Jot down in Notes what you see, briefly: ‘the official's question: who is the prophet talking about?’, ‘Philip starts from the passage itself’. Tap verse 32 in the reader, then Study and Cross-refs, and you can find the place in Isaiah he was reading.

Write a one-line summary. Put the whole chapter into one sentence. It need not be good the first time: come back when you have finished the course, and you will see more in the same chapter.

Practice