It is the end of the year 2023 and I am happy to say I have finished reading the Bible in my One-Year-Bible plan.

What have I learned? I learned that I have the discipline to be loyal to a task of this magnitude. Until now I had only read Genesis chronologically and parts of the New Testament out of order.

I learned about the order of authority in the establishment of the Israelite people as it was needed through the ages; from prophets, to priests, to judges, to kings. During the age of the prophets and the priests Israel was in communion with God. Prophets received the law from God and priests relayed the law to man. But after Joshua’s generation died the Israelites no longer knew God and started worshipping false Gods. Enter the judges of the tribes of the Israelites who each deliver the people from enemies and lead them back to God. Once the tribes organized into a kingdom the kings ruled over the people.

I learned that if you don’t know how to organize a prayer for recitation you can open the book of psalms and read any one of those. They are beautifully poetic prayers. Psalms is about the supreme kingship of Yahweh and the fundamental perspective in which all people are to view themselves, the creation, nature, history and the future.

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.”

Psalm 139: 13-18 ESV

Proverbs, Hebrew “Mashal”, is a collection of wise folk sayings of poetic and allegorical nature that have been orally passed down from wise men. They are not commandments passed down from God but rather life lessons spoken from wise man to man.

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”

Proverbs 16: 9 ESV

“A just balance and scales are the Lord’s; all the weights in the bag are his work.”

Proverbs 16: 11 ESV

The minor prophets are worth studying. I hope to go back to them with more depth.

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”

Amos 8: 11 ESV

Amos was sent by God to the Israelite people who were politically secure at this point but spiritually smug. He was to warn them that God is going to send an unnamed enemy to totally destroy them for their arrogance, worldliness, and corruption. Also at the time of Amos (792-740 BC) the message of the prophets began being collected in books. The above passage is when Gods judgement begins and the people are met with God’s awful silence.

“After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

Hosea 6: 2-3 ESV

Hosea was a contemporary of Amos and he came to the people to name the enemy that God’s judgement would use to destroy them; the pagan Assyrians. Hosea prophesied for 38 years. In the passage above the people are making their naive last plea, while not repenting, that God’s wrath will only last a mere 3 days and then his favor will surely return to Israel.

The OT is largely a journey of God establishing a covenant with his people: Israel, his people falling away from him, man’s betrayal against God and God’s wrath, God’s yearning for his people to repent, their refusal, God’s judgement, God’s remembrance of his covenant with his people, God’s deliverance of his people though they are not worthy, over and over, for generations.

The books of the New Testament, while fulfilling the word of the Old Testament, are quite revolutionary and fresh. You can feel the modernity in them. There is a transformation of thinking that takes place in the NT.

The OT ends in year 430 BC. The NT begins in 30 AD.

The time between the Old Testament and the New Testament had the Persian period, the Hellenistic period, the Hasmonean period, and 63 years of the Roman period. In the Persian period the Jews were ruled by the Persians but still allowed religious freedom under their own high priests. During the Hellenistic period the Ptolemy Greeks ruled the Jews but also allowed them the freedom of religion and tax exemption. The Greeks also translated the OT into Greek (the Septuagint). During the Hasmonean period under the ruler Antiochus (IV), who was a Seleucid Greek, Judaism is forbidden and Hellenization is forced upon them. All religious texts were ordered to be destroyed and they were subject to cruelty. In 63 BC the Roman Pompey captures Jerusalem, massacres the high priests and the Holy Land becomes subject to Rome. This time also sees the passing of the Near East into Western rule.

During this time Jewish literature was produced; the Septuagint, the apocrypha and the Dead Sea scrolls. Legend has it that the Septuagint was written by 72 scholars in 72 days. The Latin word for 70, “Septuagint” became the name. The Apocrypha means “hidden”. It is a collection of books written during this period that are not canonized. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1947 provide copies of Old Testament texts, apocryphal texts, and others that are 1,000 years closer to the originals than were previously known. Including a full scroll of the book of Isaiah.

The following are some of the revolutions that took place in the intertestamental period that paved the way to the revolutionary aspect of the NT. Jews were now nationless in diaspora, many outside the Holy Land were cut off from the temple so religious practice became personal- studying Torah, personal prayer- rather than corporate sacrifices and sacraments. The emphasis on personal piety and a relationship with God paved the way for the Christian gospel.

I have learned that after reading all 66 books of the Bible my favorite 2 books are still Genesis and John; specifically these verses:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.”

Genesis 1: 1-4 ESV

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”

John 1: 1-5 NIV

After finishing the entirety of the Bible my next project is to understand the Word that is the light and the life.