Back to the Bible: Introduction

Winter quarter for the adult Bible classes starts in December  — which is only two months away. So I’ve been pondering what to cover after Galatians and Creation 2.0.

Well, for a while now, I’ve been thinking I might teach a Wednesday night class on how to study the Bible — starting with some elementary concepts and building on them for however long the class students could stand to listen to me — maybe even getting into a little New Testament Greek. A little — because I only know a little.

At the same time, I’ve been fascinated by John Walton’s book Covenant, which is a search for the unifying theme of the Scriptures — which kind of goes with how to study the Bible, you know.

So I’m going to try my hand at a few lessons to see if they add up to much of anything.

Now, like most churches, we have some members with Masters of Divinity. We have several recovering ministers. And yet we also have new converts. We have lots of members who barely know Genesis from Maps. Therefore, we have to start with the basics.

But even the basics, taught to adults, aren’t all that basic. After all, I learned that the first five books of the Bible are called “Law” in the fourth grade. But I didn’t learn why or why it matters.

So that’s the idea. Worse case, I’ve written some blog posts that might be helpful to some readers. And maybe it makes into a Sunday morning series. And failing that, well, there’s always Wednesday night.