Inside The Bible: A Guide to Understanding Each Book of the Bible

By Kenneth Baker

This book is a popular introduction to each of the 73 books of the Bible designed to help the reader grow in the knowledge and love of God's Word. The introduction to each book includes the time frame and author, the theme, a summary of the contents and some comments about the context in which it was written, the theology of the book, an outline, and a prayer taken from the book. Fr. Baker provides quick access to essential information the daily or occasional reader of sacred scripture should find helpful.

The book may also be of help to more advanced students who wish to refresh their memory of a particular book of the Bible. By carefully reading Inside the Bible one can have a thumbnail summary of each book of the Bible at his fingertips.

"Many Catholics revere the Bible without reading it. They find themselves paralyzed, not knowing where to start reading. Fr. Kenneth Baker comes to the rescue. In brief synopses of the 73 books he guides new readers through the threshold and shows them how they can move forward on their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781681492636

Book preview

Introduction

The Bible contains the word of God. It is a collection of letters that God has written to us to tell us where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. God is the primary author of the Bible, but he used human beings as his instruments to produce it—men like Moses, David, Amos, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and the other prophets and wise men. In all they wrote they were protected from error by the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

The Catholic Bible contains forty-five books in the Old Testament, or forty-six if Lamentations is separated from Jeremiah. The New Testament has twenty-seven books, fourteen, or over half of them, by St. Paul.

A believer who wants to read and study the Bible should realize that it takes effort to come to a good understanding of the contents of the Greatest Book ever written. It takes effort because the Bible was composed by many different persons over a period of more than a thousand years. It was written in ancient languages—the Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Koine Greek. Also it was written in the Near East and reflects a culture flourishing two thousand years ago that is now foreign to Americans and Europeans. Many of its words and concepts seem strange to us, and the way of thinking is often different from Western logical categories.

The Bible is the Greatest Book in the world because it has God as its author. One might look upon the seventy-two books as so many chapters of one book because there is one author. Since God is the author, we say that Holy Scripture is inspired, that is, God caused it to be written, and so it has a divine origin. Consequently, the Bible is free from all errors because God can neither deceive nor be deceived. Apparent contradictions can be attributed to problems with the transmission of the ancient text through the centuries or to the fact that we do not adequately understand the context and cultural situation of the matter reported.

We learn from the Bible that God created everything that exists; he is the Master of the world and of history. We also learn that he is absolute goodness and that he freely created the world in order to communicate his own goodness to others. In various ways he has manifested or revealed himself to us.

God’s revelation of himself occurs in two ways: in nature and by speaking to us through the patriarchs and prophets of Israel, and especially through his Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible contains revelation in the second sense—God has spoken to us, and his word has been recorded in writing. That writing is what we have in the Bible in both Testaments—Old and New.

My main reason for producing the present book is to make available to those who want to understand the Bible simple, clear, and short introductions to each book of the Bible. It can profitably be used as a companion volume to the Ignatius Bible (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition) or to any other approved Catholic Bible. I have tried to include in a few pages enough information about each book so that the daily or occasional reader can quickly find the essential information on the book he is reading or wants to read. The goal is to have a bird’s-eye view of any book in the Bible.

All the introductions are composed the same way: (1) title of the book; (2) a quote that catches a main point in the book; (3) the location of the book in the Bible; (4) date and author, that is, who wrote it and when; (5) the theme of the book; (6) summary of the contents and a few comments about the context in which it was written; (7) the theology of the book; (8) an outline; (9) a reflection taken from the book.

The purpose of each chapter and of the whole book is to help you, the reader, to grow in the knowledge and love of God’s word as it is contained in the Bible—and through that word to grow in knowledge and love of God himself, the author. For the Bible is not a closed book; it should not be the special preserve of biblical scholars and university classrooms. This is God’s word, and it is intended for all his children—for all those who believe, no matter what their level of education might be, but also for his children who are not yet believers.

Please note that Inside the Bible is not intended to be a comprehensive treatment of the Bible. Not at all. Many important aspects of the study of Scripture have been omitted, for example, text, source, and redaction criticism; very little is noted about the influence on Israel of the surrounding cultures—Canaanite, Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman. What I have tried to do, for the sake of clarity and brevity, is to cut everything to the bone.

For the most part, I have avoided giving various opinions about the sources of each book and the different opinions about the date and author. These opinions are often contradictory and help little or not at all to an understanding of the book as it has been handed down to us. My purpose has been to explain the meaning of each book as briefly as possible for the ordinary reader who is not familiar with biblical scholarship. If some are inspired by this little work to study the Bible in more depth, then I will consider the book a success.

The study of the Bible is a major enterprise. Each year hundreds of new books on the Bible are published. Every Sunday millions of Catholics hear sermons or homilies on passages from the Bible. Most universities and colleges have courses on the Bible; all the Christian churches promote it. So every year millions of copies of the Bible are sold and innumerable books and articles about the Bible are printed—covering everything from textual criticism to suggestions on how to pray with the Bible.

With regard to the interpretation of the Bible, the Catholic Church insists that the fundamental meaning of the text is the literal meaning, that is, the meaning intended by the author. That meaning might be historical, poetic, a song, a prayer, a curse, and so forth. A second type of meaning is what is known as the spiritual meaning of the text. This applies mostly to the Old Testament, which, after the Paschal Mystery of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is seen by Christians in a different light. An example can be found in Matthew 1:23, where the author applies the word virgin from Isaiah 7:14 to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Isaiah was thinking about the wife of the king, but Matthew saw the word as a reference to Mary and the Virgin Birth.

The unity of the Bible comes from the fact that the Logos is the author of the Bible. He wrote all of it in such a way that earlier books foreshadow later events. As some of the Fathers of the Church said, everything in the Old Testament points to Jesus and the New Testament in some way. St. Augustine expressed the same idea: The New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is made manifest in the New Testament. The Second Vatican Council in the Constitution on Divine Revelation quoted this insight of Augustine (Dei Verbum, no. 16).

The nature of God is hidden from us. Because of his spirituality and infinity, he is wrapped in mystery as far as we are concerned. His intelligibility exceeds our power of understanding, just as the light of the sun is too bright for our eyes to look at it directly. Since God wrote the Bible, and much of it is about him, it is a treasure of knowledge about God. In fact, it is an inexhaustible treasure that can never be totally comprehended. That is why so many books on the Bible are now and will continue to be printed each year.

The Bible is the Church’s own book, and only she is the final and authentic interpreter of the meaning of any passage (see Dei Verbum, no. 10). The 1993 Vatican document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church in one sentence sums up what the Bible is and what its purpose is: The Bible is a text inspired by God which has been entrusted to the Church for the nourishment of faith and for the guidance of Christian life (3, D, 1).

The Bible, therefore, is directed by God to man’s mind and also to his will or heart. In addition to the instruction we find in the Bible, it also offers us an abundance of prayers. The 150 psalms are called the prayer book of the Church. Many other beautiful prayers are scattered throughout the books of the Bible besides the Psalms.

St. Teresa of Avila offers some sage advice on how to use Scripture during times of prayer. Her method of prayer has four steps: (1) choose a passage; (2) be aware of the presence of God; (3) read and reflect; (4) respond with acts of faith, hope, and love. The passage chosen should not be long—it could be one verse or a chapter of a book, but not more than that. A good example is the passage in Luke 1:26-38, which recounts the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary that she is to be the Mother of God.

The Bible achieves its purpose in each one of us when we can pray with it and so grow in the knowledge and love of God and of our neighbor. I hope and pray that this little book will help the reader to do just that.

The Old Testament

The Five Books of Moses

The first five books of the Bible are commonly called the Pentateuch, which is a Greek word meaning five books. The five books are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They function as an introduction to the whole Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, and as the historical and theological foundation of all the other books of the Bible, all the way to the end in the book of Revelation by St. John. If one does not understand the basic ideas contained in these five books, then it is impossible to understand fully the following books in the Old Testament and all the implications of the story of Jesus in the New Testament.

According to many biblical passages, Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. Modern scholars have modified that assertion considerably by showing how parts were contributed by other authors over the centuries and how the final edition or the form we now have of the Pentateuch was completed during the time of the Jewish exile in Babylon about 550 B.C. But still most of the basic ideas in the books go back to Moses. In the Bible itself the first five books are referred to simply as Moses, or as the Book of Moses, or as Torah—a Hebrew word that means instruction, teaching, or law.

The Pentateuch is extremely important and critical to understanding the Bible because it tells the story of how the world as we know it came to be, where mankind came from, why man is here on this earth, and what his destiny is. It also tells the story of how God chose the Hebrew people, or Israel, as the instrument he would use to reveal his will to mankind. So the Pentateuch contains a message from God to each one of us about who we are and why we are on this earth.

It might help one who is trying to get inside the Bible to look upon the Pentateuch as one book with five chapters. The chapters consist almost exclusively of narrative (or story) and laws governing divine worship and community life. The plan or plot goes like this, in very simple outline: God creates the world; he gives special attention to Adam and Eve and their children, who are supposed to praise his goodness, but they are disobedient and fall into sin (Gen 1-11); in order to remedy the fall, God chooses Abraham and his descendants (Israel) as a faithful people who will be a light to all other nations (Gen 12-50); through suffering in Egypt and deliverance from bondage, under the inspired leadership of Moses (Exodus), they learn the lesson of God’s goodness and eventually become God’s holy people united to him by an everlasting Covenant (Ex 19-24; Lev; and Num 1-10); then God will lead them into the Promised Land (Num 10-36); but there is a condition—they will have peace and permanent possession of the land if they are obedient to the Torah and worship only the Lord God of Israel (Deuteronomy).

That is a simple outline of what the reader will find in the first five books of the Bible. Is this history or myth? It is not myth in the sense of an imaginative story like a novel; the narrative and the laws are based on events that really happened in the past. Biblical history, however, is not like modern scientific, objective history. The biblical authors did not try to tell everything—to be comprehensive. They told only part of what really happened because the Bible is about God’s dealings with man; it is about salvation history, or how God intervened in history to save mankind; so every sentence and every word is theological, that is, it has to do either with God himself in his inner nature or with his relations to the world and to mankind.

Perhaps we could put it another way and say that these stories were composed in order to make a point, like editorials in the local newspaper. So the Bible tells us about God—who he is, what he wants from us, and what will happen to us if we reject his offer of love. Therefore, this type of history is more interested in explaining why things happened in the past than it is in giving all the details; so the message is more important than mathematical accuracy. This type of history is more interested in telling the reader how to live now and to be happy than it is in giving a complete picture of everything that happened.

If you can approach the Pentateuch with this frame of mind, you will not be unduly disturbed by the many omissions and apparent inconsistencies in the Holy Bible, which is the word of God. The purpose in reading the Bible is to grow in the knowledge and love of God; it is not to become a historian or a scientist.

So what we find in the Pentateuch briefly is: creation (Adam and Eve), sin, choice of a people (Abraham), a Covenant (Moses), a Law to be obeyed, and guidance through the wilderness to the Promised Land (Israel). In a sense, the life of each human being reflects or imitates the story told in the five books of Moses.

The main ideas or themes that run through the Pentateuch are: (1) God created the world, and it is good; (2) sin and death entered into the world because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve; (3) God wants to save man from his sinful self so he makes a promise to Abraham, chooses a people, and makes a binding, everlasting Covenant with them; (4) God gives his people a holy Law for worship and for governance of the community; (5) God liberates his people from the slavery of Egypt and guides them to the Promised Land; (6) even though God is not seen by his people with their eyes, he is always with them to guide them and protect them.

Finally, for us Catholics and Christians it is important to realize that everything in the Old Testament refers to Christ and his Church in one way or another. So Christ and his Church are hidden in every sentence and every word of the Old Testament. The partial revelation of the Old Testament foreshadows the full revelation of the New Testament. The Old Testament promises the Messiah, presents and proclaims him. His name is Jesus Christ.

Genesis

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (1:1, 31).

PLACE IN THE BIBLE: Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It takes first place in the Pentateuch, which means the first five books. The Pentateuch is also called the Torah, a Hebrew word that means Law.

DATE AND AUTHOR: The first draft was written in the tenth century B.C.; the final editing of the book took place in the sixth century B.C. Jewish and Catholic tradition traces the origins of this book back to Moses, but inspired editors worked on it after he did to give it the form in which we now have it.

THEME: Genesis means beginning or origin. So Genesis is about the creation of the universe and everything in it—sun, moon, stars, earth, plants, animals, and man—and the origins of the Hebrew people. It describes how God out of sheer goodness and love created the first man and woman. They sinned or rebelled against God and were punished by expulsion from Paradise. Their sin affects not only them but all their descendants. It is a classic story of good and evil and also of God’s justice and mercy. Sin infects all mankind, but God’s love and mercy work to bring good out of evil. God chooses Abraham and makes him a promise; he fulfills that promise in Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve sons of Jacob. In spite of man’s perversity, God always remains faithful.

SUMMARY: Even people who know very little about the Bible know something about the book of Genesis. This is because it contains many interesting stories that are filled with concrete details.

The book is divided into two main parts. The first part deals with the creation of the world and of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and what happened to their descendants. It tells the story of how the world got started and how the human race began. The second part deals with the three great patriarchs who were the ancestors of the Hebrew people: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Genesis covers the longest time span of any book in the Bible, since it stretches from the creation of the world by God to the presence of the Hebrews in Egypt about 1700 B.C. It lays the groundwork, so to speak, for the great events that will take place in Egypt under Moses—liberation and sojourn in the wilderness, as they are described in the book of Exodus.

The dominant figure in Genesis is the Lord God. He is described directly and indirectly as good, loving, and merciful, but he is also a God of wrath and punishment for those who violate his Law. He is completely above this world, but at the same time he is concerned about his creatures, especially man. But his wrath is always tempered by his mercy and his loving concern for his creatures, even when they turn against him.

In the first eleven chapters the author tells us about the creation of the world, and especially of the first parents, Adam and Eve. God showers gifts on them; he tests them, and they fall into sin, being tempted by Satan in the guise of a serpent. They are expelled from Paradise and now must work for their food; the relationship between the man and his wife is marred by their sin—they feel shame before one another’s nakedness; the woman will be subject to the man, and she will bear her children in pain; sin ushers into the world suffering and death. Sin spreads among their first descendants; for example, Cain murders his brother, Abel. Sin spreads, and so God sends a flood to destroy all human flesh but saves Noah and his family in the famous ark. When Noah’s children multiply, they become arrogant and try to build the tower of Babel reaching to heaven—an attempt to challenge the supremacy of the Lord God. God confounds them by confusing their language so they can no longer communicate. One of the sons of Noah is the ancestor of Abraham. When we get to Abraham, we arrive at the first link in the chain that will lead to the Hebrews in Egypt and eventually to the people of Israel.

In chapters 12 to 50 we find the stories of the three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and the twelve sons of Jacob, especially Joseph. They are important in the Bible because from them the whole House of Israel is descended. The chief person is Abraham. Born in a pagan family and culture in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), he is called by God to leave his family and home and to go to a distant land. God promises him that he will make him the father of many nations (chaps. 12, 15, and 17). This promise from God to Abraham is a theme that runs through the whole Bible and all of revelation. The final fulfillment will come at the Second Coming of Christ on the Last Day.

Abraham is distinguished for his absolute faith in the promises of God to him. For this reason in the First Eucharistic Prayer at Mass he is called our father in faith. He is humble and obedient to God. For this reason he is a type or model of Jesus Christ himself, who was obedient unto death. Therefore God blesses Abraham and establishes a Covenant (agreement, contract) with him. God promises him many descendants; the key one, of course, is the Messiah, who would come about eighteen hundred years later. Today all the members of the Church worldwide, those who believe in Jesus Christ, are descendants of Abraham in a spiritual sense.

Abraham’s most difficult trial is the Lord’s command to him to sacrifice his son, Isaac; the purpose is to test his faith. Abraham does not hesitate to do it, and at the last minute the angel of the Lord prevents him from killing his son. And Isaac is the son of promise.

The story about Isaac is rather short (25:19-26:35). He marries Rebekah, who gives him twin sons—Esau the elder and Jacob the younger son. Through the trickery and collusion of Rebekah and Jacob, Isaac gives his blessing to Jacob (thinking he is Esau), so the birthright passes to Jacob and from him to his twelve sons.

There is real character development in the Bible in the case of Jacob (27:1-37:1). He is clever and scheming and does not seem to have any remorse about lying to get his way. But God makes use of him to achieve his end. In every way God is portrayed as the Lord