THE HISTORY OF JESUS: THE BIBLE IN A NUTSHELL

By William Davis

The Bible is a cornucopia of people exhibiting every character trait imaginable. An easy and informative read, there is mystery, intrigue, love, hate, deceit, and jealousy in the journey from Adam in the beginning (Genesis) to the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. The entire Old Testament is the prelude to the coming of the Messiah, whom God sends to redeem the world from their sins. God uses all sorts of people, evil and good, to accomplish his purpose—that is, to bring all of mankind into a loving relationship with him. There is all manner of sin in the ancestry of Jesus, but Jesus, being God incarnate, is perfect, and He shows us how we should live to be right with God. The New Testament reveals the birth, life and death on the cross, of the Savior and the establishment of his church on earth. While most Bible scholars agree that the Bible is organized according to genre, history, law, poetry, and prophecy, this book makes the case for its organization according to the genealogy of Christ.

From Adam through Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Jews enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years, and Moses, being a type of Christ, leading them out of Egypt to the Promise Land, God giving Moses the Ten Commandments, to David who was guilty of adultery and murder, and the prophets, this book reveals how the Bible’s organization follows very closely the genealogy of Jesus. And this genealogy leads to the culmination of the Bible, the birth and life of Jesus Christ, whom God sent to be the propitiation for our sins. This book is God’s love letter to us. Every book in both the Old and New Testaments is summarized with the salient points of each so that the reader understands the who, what, when, where, and why of God’s love letter to us. A short, simple, and straightforward explanation for the person who, heretofore, has been reluctant to read the Bible through because it seems too difficult to understand. This book’s purpose is to encourage people to dig into God’s Word and discover God’s message of love for them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawes & Jenkins Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781637842829

William Davis

Dr. William Davis, M.D. is a renowned preventive cardiologist and bestselling author of six books including the groundbreaking Wheat Belly, Wheat Belly Cookbook, Wheat Belly 30-Minutes (or Less!) Cookbook, Wheat Belly Total Health and Undoctored. Dr. Davis has built a substantial online and social media presence with 10 million visitors and over 30 million visits to his Wheat Belly Blog, a total of 400,000 followers on his Facebook pages, and 2.5 million views of his YouTube videos. His media appearances include the Dr. Oz Show on several occasions, CBS This Morning, Live with Kelly, a PBS special, and others. He lives in Fox Point, Wisconsin.

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THE HISTORY OF JESUS: THE BIBLE IN A NUTSHELL

William Davis

ISBN 978-1-63784-281-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63784-283-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63784-282-9 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by William Davis

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Hawes & Jenkins Publishing

16427 N Scottsdale Road Suite 410

Scottsdale, AZ 85254

www.hawesjenkins.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Old Testament

Chapter 1

Genesis

Chapter 2

Exodus

Chapter 3

Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy

Chapter 4

Joshua and Judges

Chapter 5

Ruth

Chapter 6

1 and 2 Samuel

Chapter 7

1 and 2 Kings

Chapter 8

1 and 2 Chronicles

Chapter 9

Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther

Chapter 10

Job

Chapter 11

Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon

Chapter 12

The Books of the Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel

The New Testament

I have written this summary of the New Testament because it is my purpose to help you make sense of the whole Bible. My desire is that people read the whole Bible through cover to cover. I hope these book summaries encourage you to do that.

Chapter 13

The Gospels

Chapter 14

Acts

Chapter 15

The Epistles

Chapter 16

The Revelation to John

Chapter 17

Making Sense of the Bible

Chapter 18

What the Bible Is All About

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I may know more about the Bible than anything else, but that does not make me an expert. I love the Bible and its message of hope and salvation. My fellow Christian brother and member of First United Methodist Church in Denham Springs, Louisiana, Bob Hill, was a tremendous help to me in ensuring the accuracy of the manuscript and correcting bad syntax. Ms. Colleen O'Connor, a retired English and literature teacher, helped me by reminding me that I needed to stay on theme and making hundreds of punctuation corrections. My son, Daniel, ripped apart my work and got me onto a new track that turned out to be this summary of the Bible that I hope will encourage people to dig deep into God's Word and find out what God's message and will for their lives are. Steve Doan, my fellow officer of the artillery in Vietnam and now a retired army chaplain, gave me great encouragement.

Book cover image: Painting by Pacino da Bonaguida, circa 1310, The Tree of Life," Academia Museum, Florence, Italy.

Introduction

The Bible is, for many people, the most exciting book ever written. It may be the most important book ever written, yet it is also one of the most difficult to understand. It is fundamentally a book of love—God's love letter to us. However, it contains much violence, evil, and intrigue. And what is more, many of the stories of the Bible reveal questionable, if not evil, character traits, even among direct ancestors of Jesus.

If you are one of the many people who do not read the Bible because it is difficult and confusing, I want to simplify it for you so that it becomes your guide for daily living. My purpose in writing this book is to help you make sense of the Bible and know that there are lessons in every one of its sixty-six books from God to you. God gave us his Word to change our character so we can become more like His son, Jesus, who was His gift of love to us.

The order in which the books of the Bible occur is one of the keys to understanding it. Obviously, the Bible is divided into two sections: the Old and New Testaments. Since the Bible is all about the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, in the Old Testament, and the life of Jesus Christ and establishment of His church in the New Testament, the most significant ordering is the organization of the Old Testament. Most scholars say that the books are grouped by literary type or genre—law, history, poetry, and prophecy—and I agree that they are grouped as such. But I do not believe that this grouping by genre helps us understand the Bible nearly as well as studying it from a genealogical view. As to prophecy, we will find that there are prophecies in nearly all the Old Testament books.

The Bible has existed in some form or other for a few thousand years, dating back to when, according to tradition, Moses, some 3,400 years ago, wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers. These five books were referred to in Jewish lexicon as the Pentateuch and were also known as the Torah, or the books of the law.

What is so important about the Pentateuch? It reveals the earliest written history of man from the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, the great flood, which wiped out all of mankind, except for Noah's family, to the repopulation of the earth with all the diverse characters that lived in and around the fertile crescent and were fundamental in carrying out God's purposes in creating a people that He called His own. The Pentateuch contains the Ten Commandments, those laws which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai after the children of Israel escaped from approximately four hundred years of enslavement to the Egyptians. These laws stipulated the way people were to live, both in relation to God and to each other, and they are as applicable to us today as they were to the Israelites over three thousand years ago. In fact, they are the basis for the Judeo-Christian tenets upon which the laws of the Christian nations of the world are based.

All well and good you say, but there is so much in the Bible that begs the question, Why is that particular story or account in the Bible? We understand the places of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph in the history of the Christian religion, more specifically the Jewish religion. We know about King Solomon, the son of David, who was supposedly the wisest man who ever lived. Solomon and David are prominent in the ancestry of Jesus. We know who Jesus's disciples were, who the Apostle Paul was, and the role Paul played in establishing the first Christian churches in what we know now as the Middle East. But what about such characters as Judah, Rahab the Harlot, Samson, Boaz, Ruth, and Jesse? Who was Gideon, and why did God choose him, a man with no battle experience, for a mission of war against people who had conquered a tribe of the Jews and were treating them badly? Why did one of the prophets of the Old Testament knowingly marry a prostitute?

These are very legitimate and even perplexing questions, which I hope to explain so that you will understand the complete story of the Bible, including many diverse people who are critical to an understanding of who Jesus really is. You will understand why Jesus is God incarnate, not just an angel or prophet. Many of these characters in the Old Testament, both good and bad, are listed in the genealogies in the books of Matthew and Luke as direct ancestors of Jesus Christ.

This is not an in-depth scholarly work, but a simple expository meant to whet your appetite to go deeper into God's Word and enjoy its message to you.

The chronology of the Bible, the order in which it was written, generally coincides with the genealogy of Jesus; therefore, giving us the complete history of Jesus from Adam and Eve to His death and resurrection and the establishment of His church by His apostles in the New Testament. The genealogical thread runs throughout the Old Testament all the way to Jesus's birth in the New Testament.

The genealogy of Jesus Christ in the first chapter of the gospel of Matthew begins with Abraham who begat Isaac all the way through Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. The book of Luke contains the genealogy of Jesus in reverse order from Mary, the mother of Jesus, back to Adam and Eve. Note that Matthew's account of Jesus's genealogy shows that Joseph came through Solomon, David's son from Bathsheba, and Luke's account of Jesus's genealogy shows Mary came through Nathan, one of David's other sons (2 Samuel 5:14). This lineage shows Jesus's ancestry dating back to Adam and Eve, the original parents God created to begin the process of populating the earth.

Genesis begins with Adam, and although it tells of many other ancestors or key figures, it tells the story of Adam's descendants in their genealogical order. It is important to note that many of these people are revealed as types of Christ. A type of Christ is a person who, by their actions, led to the saving or freeing of other people from some kind of bondage, capture, or enslavement.

I will touch on several actions or incidents which, even by today's standards, could be considered unholy. In this book, I will explain or describe how God uses all kinds of people for His purposes. God uses these people to demonstrate that He is a Holy God, a jealous God, a God of Love, a God of forgiveness, and a God whose mercies are new every morning as the prophet Jeremiah says in the Bible book, The Lamentations of Jeremiah, more concisely known as Lamentations (chapter 3:22–23). "The Lord's lovingkindnesses never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. When the children of Israel, God's chosen people, would go astray or suffer hardship because of their disobedience, God would use certain people to get their attention and say, Return to me. Return to your first love. I have not divorced you. You have divorced me, and I want you back."

Isn't it a wonderful thing that His mercies are new every morning? That means that when we sin, we can bow before God and say, Father, I have sinned. I am sorry for my sin and ask that you forgive me. God then extends his mercy to us and forgives and restores our relationship with Him. God wants us to strive to live a life free of sin, but He knows that He created humans who are going to sin because He gave us free will. That is why He gave His Son, Jesus, to be the propitiation for our sin. In other words, Jesus would atone for our sins and pay the penalty for us by dying on the cross.

Why? God wants us to know that no matter what kind of despicable actions we may commit, we have an advocate in Jesus Christ, who even though perfect in every way, was born of sinful ancestors. He was born of the Virgin Mary, so He was God Incarnate. Jesus was the son of God sent to earth to be a human just as we are, except without sin. Jesus came to earth to show us how we are to live in relation to each other and in relation to God. Mary's father and the father of Joseph, her husband, were in the lineage of Jesus, which Luke extends all the way back to the creation of Adam and Eve. Jesus was the son of God, sent to earth to be born of a virgin. This is the meaning of being incarnate, being made of flesh, a human being.

I have written this book in two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. "Part 1: The Old