The Hebrew Bible can present particular challenges for different people, such as talking animals, genocide, the portrayal of God, and how to truly apply this ancient text to our modern lives. When approaching the Hebrew Bible, it is helpful to be aware of our own assumptions and questions and to pay attention to the intent of the biblical authors.
Jesus and his first followers portray the Hebrew Bible as a unified collection of wisdom literature that tells a story about a future anointed one who will rescue humanity. The Hebrew Bible is about an anointed representative who enters into suffering and death, goes through death and out the other side, and offers new life for humanity. By recovering a way of reading these texts that matches the contours of their design intentions, we willl earn to read the Hebrew Bible as Jesus did.
Jesus’ Bible was a three-part collection of scrolls called the TaNaK. TaNaK is a designation for the Hebrew Bible taken from the first letter of its three major sections. T stands for Torah, which is Hebrewfor "instruction;" N is for Nevi'im, meaning "prophets;" and K is for Ketuvim, meaning "writings." The three-part macro design dates to somewhere in the 3rd-2nd century B.C.E. This order is preserved in modern Jewish tradition and is well-attested in Second Temple Jewish texts and the New Testament.
The Dead Sea Scrolls preserve the technology of scroll making during the pre-Christian period, revealing what the Hebrew Bible would have looked like in Jesus’ synagogue. Within the specific technology of the time, the beginning and end of a scroll are two of the most likely places we can look to find intentional clues and hyperlinks.
The final sentences of the Torah and the opening sentences of the Prophets (“Seam One”) anticipate a coming Moses-like prophet who is promised but is yet to come. The final sentences of the Prophets and the opening sentences of the Ketuvim (“Seam Two”) anticipate a coming Elijah-like prophet who will call the people back to the Torah and restore the hearts of Israel to Yahweh.
Psalm 1 paints a picture of a righteous human who meditates on the Torah day and night, bringing forth life around him. Psalm 2 describes the righteous human of Psalm 1 as the future messianic king from the line of David who is appointed by God to rule the nations and overcome evil once and for all. The portrait of the Spirit of God woven throughout the Bible helps us see the collaboration between God and humans more clearly, revealing how the Bible’s origin truly is human and divine together.
The Bible’s narratives, poems, histories, letters, prophecies, and other writings come from a profound collaboration between humanity and God. Whenever the biblical authors talk about the Spirit’s activity, they describe the Spirit working with and through God’s human partners, not in spite of human partners. God’s divine word is communicated through the words of the human authors. So when we talk abou tthe human author, we are talking about the divine author at the same time.
The first three mentions of the writing of the Bible in the Torah give us important clues to the purpose of the Bible. The Bible shows us that it was written (1) to tell the story of how God has rescued and formed a people, (2) to invite those rescued people into a covenant partnership to represent him to the rest of the world, and (3) to call to account the betrayal of the covenant while offering hope for the future of God’s people and his world.
The Hebrew Bible claims to come from a tradition of prophetic leaders in Israel that stems from Moses. The texts reflect a minority report within ancient Israel that comes from those who were faithful to Yahweh and remained true to the covenant.
The Bible’s divinity and authority doesn’t negate the human processes that brought it into existence. The Hebrew Bible is a collection of collections made up of preexisting textual materials from different periods of Israel’s history and literature. We find clues throughout the Hebrew Bible that reveal how each book is an organized collection of preexisting materials that have been brought into, and play a new function within, a new composition.
The Hebrew Bible is a collection of scrolls that has been arranged with a mosaic (i.e., composite) unity. The Ketuvim (i.e., the Writings) acts as mini-commentaries on the themes and ideas at work elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible can be likened to a family quilt made up of individual pieces from various people throughout different time periods. And each individual piece adds new layers of meaning andsignificance when viewed within the context of the piece as a whole.
The Hebrew Bible can be likened to an aspen grove—it’s a collection of texts that are distinctive yet share interconnected origin points and grow together as a united structure telling one cohesivenarrative. Another way to describe hyperlinks is intertextuality, where a specific text only means what it means in light of the entirety of texts it is connected to. The meaning is found in the interconnection of the texts.
Learning to read the Hebrew Bible well requires an awareness of our personal “encyclopedias of reception” and a discovery of the “encyclopedias of production” assumed by the biblical authors as they communicate. The Hebrew Bible is carefully crafted literature with every word placed intentionally to convey a specific message. Learning to read the Hebrew Bible requires studying the specific conventions and ways the biblical authors wrote narrative, poetry, and discourse.
Hebrew poetry is shaped into a line-rhythm or verse. It is not metrical (based on syllable counts) but a form of free verse. Hebrew poetry uses intentional, creative language (e.g., heavy use of metaphor) with unique word combinations, repetition, patterns, and hyperlinking to other parts of Scripture. The biblical authors build out their theology of God’s character, essence, and purpose from within their worldview.
Poetry is a form of communication that invites the reader into a partnership with the written word inorder to discover its meaning. Learning the function of repetition and of literary design is the most fundamental tool for reading and understanding biblical literature. When reading biblical poetry, the fundamental communication tool is repetition with slight variations that create patterns that build anticipation and expectations for the reader.
Biblical authors often use parallelism in their poetry, which causes the readers to place two or more things in comparison with each other to show their relation. At its root, parallelism is a form of comparison and analogy. It assumes that to truly understand andexperience a thing, you need to grasp not only that thing but also another thing that is both similar and distinct at the same time. Parallelism employs comparison techniques such as analogy, complement, contrast, and sequence — each requiring and aiding the reader to discover the uniqueness and meaning behind the poetic lines.
In biblical poetry, the authors invite us to compare parallel words/images in lines that are not next to each other through the use of symmetry (e.g., a symmetrical design such as ABBA). The biblical authors often employ wordplay using graphically similar words in Hebrew to convey relationships and meaning.
When we read biblical narrative, we are reading an interpretation of the biblical events within the stylized poetics (i.e., conventions) of biblical narrative. Biblical narrative invites us into the narrative world of the authors, and it also invites us to view the world from the their perspective. The narratives work on you, and over time, they begin to affect the way we view ourselves and the world we’re living in. When reading the Hebrew Bible, it is helpful to familiarize ourselves with the basic elements of ancient Near Eastern culture to gain insight into the culture of the ancient Israelites. However, the main key to understanding the text is the text itself. For example, to understand one narrative in Genesis, we need to understand it in light of the entire Genesis scroll and the TaNaK as a whole.
The plot of a narrative invests the story with meaning—the conflict within a plot and how the conflict is resolved invests the narrative with its ethical message. Narrative meaning can also be found through plot sequence, or the use of conflict, climax, and resolution to convey a message. The same characters in the same conflict but with different resolutions of the climax can have a different message.
One way biblical narrative uses plot is through plot embedding, or layers of storylines working together to tell the overall story of the Bible. Individual narratives are framed within a larger context that gives them a meaning that transcends the individual events. The Hebrew Bible is about our need for the messiah, and the New Testament reveals that Jesus is the Messiah we need. Both Jesus and the apostles appeal to the Hebrew Bible to reveal Jesus’ true identity.
Biblical authors use characters as vehicles for their message primarily through showing rather than telling. Narrators rarely make comments in biblical narrative, and when they do, it’s with small details or brief phrases. Biblical authors give us the trace of a character but we have to fill in the rest based on the little we know. The minimalist policy is very intentional. It forces us, the readers, to participate in the making of meaning. Biblical authors use the setting as a tool in biblical narratives to evoke memories and emotions and to generate expectations about what could happen in the story.
The Bible is like a photomosaic with identifiable smaller literary units crafted and arranged to work together and create a larger, overarching message. Biblical authors use repeated scenes, often with slight variations, to develop themes throughout the story. A concordance is a very helpful tool for identifying repeated words and phrases in our Bibles.
Repeated words, phrases, and parallel themes connect individual stories across the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Biblical authors use repetition of lead words to create patterns that guide the reader’s focus and create expectations for the reader. A “lead word” is a word that repeats significantly in a text or group of texts. The biblical authors use variations of Hebrew word roots to create wordplay and repetition.
The message of the text is bound up with its literary form, and the literary form is part of the message. Like biblical poetry, biblical narrative is intentionally designed with an identifiable structure. Although it might not be helpful for everyone, for some, studying the literary design of Bible passages can be exactly what they need in their journey of reading and understanding the Bible.
The relationships between connected literary units can work in different ways (e.g., contrast, create a sequence), but at the core is an analogy. The reader is being asked to read a particular literary unit on analogy with another literary unit in order to discover a deeper meaning. Sometimes entire stories or scenes are designed to repeat elements of other stories. This involves not only repeated words but parallel narrative patterns, themes, and sequences. Sometimes the narratives to be compared are next to each other, like in Genesis 2-3 and Genesis 4. In these narratives, we watch Human and Life set a template for redefining “good” and “bad” on their own terms, which is replayed by the next generation.
Sometimes the narrative comparison is prompted by an identical repetition in distant narratives. Through the use of key word repetitions, biblical authors lead us to compare and contrast characters in order to advance the narrative argument. Biblical authors often compare narratives and create patterns in subtle ways. To find a pattern, watch for embedded key words and images that link stories together, like the repetition of “see and take” in Genesis 3 and Genesis 6.
The story of Abram and Sarai in Genesis 12:10-20 is set on analogy to Genesis 3 through the use of repeated words. The story is an example of one of the main themes of the Bible—the complex and tragic human condition as people give into temptation over and over again. This temptation pattern is marked by repeated words such as “see,” “take,” “desire,” and “good in their eyes.” The story in Genesis 12:10-20 is an example of a dynamic analogy. This means characters move dynamically in and out of previously established character slots from stories to which the author is hyperlinking. For example, in a story hyperlinking to Genesis 3, a character can play the role of the snake and also be an inversion of the snake because their deception brings life instead of death.
Throughout the entire storyline of the Hebrew Bible, there will be snake-people and humanity-people, and they are going to be at enmity with one another in narrative after narrative. In the Hebrew Bible narratives, people can switch back and forth between being a seed of the woman and a seed of the snake. Even the people God calls to be his blessing to the world can become the seed of the snake. The birth of the nation of Israel is depicted as the birth of snake seed. The whole drama of the Jacob story is how God is going to turn Jacob (the snake-like deceiver) into a human.
Design patterns are the main way biblical authors unify hundreds of stories. And every pattern develops a core theme throughout the whole biblical story that leads to Jesus. The stories of Jesus in the Gospels have been designed to carry the patterns of the Hebrew forward to their climax, namely, Jesus.
It is helpful to be aware of our own assumptions and questions and pay attention to the intent of the biblical authors. These early chapters of Genesis form the introduction to the Hebrew Bible. The biblical authors crafted these stories to set the tone and expectations for what will come next.
Our modern views of Heaven and Earth are different from those of the biblical authors. A common modern view of Heaven is that it is a blissful place you go when you die. A common modern view of Earth is that it is a planet that revolves around the sun. In the Hebrew Bible, "heavens" means "sky" and also represents God’s space. In the Hebrew Bible, "earth" is the space of humanity and the animals. In the Hebrew Bible, the waters are a third space that can represent chaos or death.
The New Testament’s view of the universe is really similar to that of the Hebrew Bible. Jesus’ message was that he was joining Heaven, the sphere of God’s reign, and Earth, the space of humanity, within himself. Humans are to partner with Jesus in bringing Heaven to Earth by contributing to human flourishing.
All of our language about God, even the biblical authors' language about God, has certain limitations. But those limitations can be the vehicle for communicating what God wants his people to hear. The Bible is not science fiction, but it is an ancient text. Reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience. And part of respecting and loving our biblical author "neighbors" well is opening our eyes to their way of seeing the world.
Although it can be a difficult task, it is valuable to remain open to perspectives different from our own. The Bible is an ancient text produced within a specific culture, but this does not diminish its capacity to speak to us. Awareness of the ancient cultural context of the Bible begins with maintaining intellectual humility, identifying our assumptions, opening ourselves to other perspectives, being aware of cultural differences, and having some understanding of how biblical literature works.
In Hebrew, the word for "earth" typically means "land," rather than a globe or sphere floating in space. So when you read Genesis 1, imagine the story communicating about the land the people live on. God names the raqia' the shamayim -- the Hebrew word for "skies" or "heavens." In the Bible, the raqia' is the solid dome above the land that holds back the waters above, and the creation of the raqia' creates a place where life can flourish. In the biblical view, God graciously sustains the raqia', keeping its floodgates closed so that the Earth will never again be destroyed (Gen. 9:11).
The creation of light and its separation from darkness generates the fundamental order of time that governs the rest of the chapter--day and night. The light of Genesis 1 is called "day." Day is a period of time that then gets used throughout the rest of the chapter. For example, "It was evening, it was morning, day one." Rather than recounting the creation of photons, the narrative portrays the creation of light as the fundamental order of time so that life can flourish and the narrative can progress.
Israel existed in the same cultural environment as its ancient neighbors. So the biblical authors speak from within their ancient Near Eastern perceptions of the world. They are making worldview claims about the God of Israel through their cultural constructs. Because of this, it can be helpful to compare Israel’s cosmology with its neighbors to see what stands out.
The ancient Babylonians and Egyptians believed that everything was in a chaotic, water state before the ordering of the universe. As in Israelite cosmology, creation is about ordering chaos. The ancient Babylonians also had a view of a multitiered universe, much like Israel. One of the most significant differences between Israel and Babylon is that in the biblical view, Yahweh is the God over all. In the Egyptian and Babylonian views, everything is god (a form of pantheism).
Ancient creation accounts are about function rather than material existence. Things are thought to exist only when they are given a purpose and a name. Genesis 1 then is mainly about the purpose of the universe rather than its material creation (While Yahweh is the creator of all things out of nothing, this may not be what Genesis 1 is about.)
The words used to describe the pre-creation state in Genesis -- tohu va-vohu -- mean "wild and waste" (e.g., Jer. 4:23). Wild and waste, darkness, and the deep waters are images for the pre-creation state of non-order. Jeremiah is activating day one of Genesis, but reversing it. He's talking about the ruin of their city and calling it an undoing of creation--a lack of order and of human flourishing. Using these Genesis 1 images heightens the sense of disaster. God is allowing humans to de-create Jerusalem.
Creation is more about giving order, purpose, and function than it is about material origins (see Ps. 104). In Psalm 104, creation is ongoing, sustaining work. Creating can be used to describe the beginning, the middle, and the whole sustaining process. In Genesis, this means that "created" doesn't necessarily have to mean made out of nothing. It could also mean giving life and purpose to something.
The six days of creation are framed by summary statements (1:1; 2:1) and descriptions (1:2; 2:2-3) that bring us from chaos to completion. Both parts of the frame begin with a summary about how God created "the skies and the land" (1:1 and 2:1). This clarifies for us what days one through six are all about. Both summaries are followed by an exposition or further description (1:2 and 2:2-3). The first one talks about the pre-creation state, and the second shows God resting on the seventh day after all has been completed.
Repeated words are a common literary device that authors use to structure their text and communicate their message. Pay attention to which words are repeated, how many times they are repeated, and where they occur.
Days one through three describe the environments that God creates, and days four through sixdescribe the inhabitants. Creation is all about ordering and populating the skies and the land. Days four and six repeat the similar theme of rulers. Day four is about the rulers above, and day six is about the rulers below. The story culminates in the creation of the human rulers below who will partner with God.
In the Bible, water can be life-giving (streams, rivers, rain) or deadly (the flood waters, the sea, the deep). The waters above the raqia' are not the source of normal rain but of the flood, mirroring the dark watersbelow (Gen. 7:11). The waters below, or the tehom (the deep), are chaotic waters often synonymous with death or the pit (Sheol).
The tannin, or mythical sea dragon, is created on day five with the other sea creatures. It symbolizes disorder, chaos, and death throughout the Bible, but the creation story shows that the tannin is simply one of Yahweh’s creatures. The forces of chaos in the Bible, represented by the waters and the sea dragon, affect human life, but ultimately, they are created things that will be overcome by God himself.
The biblical authors portrayed the dry land as a disc surrounded by and resting on the waters. It is setup on pillars that God upholds by his power. The dry land often symbolizes salvation, most notably, in Genesis 1 and the Exodus narrative.
The ultimate goal of creation helps define what is good, that is, human image-bearers on the dry land, farming and having families. Genesis 1 presents us with an ideal. When the narrative proper begins, the characters never attain the ideal. As the story continues, it points toward an ideal that has yet to be realized. There was potential in the garden of Eden, but not perfection as English speakers would typically define it.
Rivers and springs are life-giving in the Bible. A river flows out of Eden to water the whole Earth, and rivers flow down from holy mountains in Ezekiel, Psalm 46, and Revelation. Rivers, springs, and wells become divine gifts of life in the desert at just the right moment for Hagar, the Israelites, and the Samaritan woman when Jesus gives her living water. The book of Revelation also talks about a river of life flowing down.
Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is portrayed as the true source of life—as the tabernacle dwelling among us (John 1:14), as the temple (John 2:21), and as the garden with rivers flowing out of him (John 7:37). The garden of Eden points to the reality of Jesus being high and lifted up, signifying that Jesus is the source of true and eternal life.
Psalm 36 displays the same ancient cosmology we’ve been looking at in Genesis 1—the heavens above, the deep below, and the dry land in between. In the psalm, the dry land can be used as an image for the space of the wicked even though, as the psalm says, God’s love and justice extend from the heavens all the way to the deep. The psalm exposes this tension between two realities.
In the Bible, the heavens represent God’s dwelling place, the source of life, and the ultimate reality. Although God’s presence permeates the whole universe (Ps. 36, 139), the heavens uniquely signify his dwelling place and the ultimate reality. The point of the biblical story is not that humanity will one day ascend up to Heaven but that the heavenly realm will come and transform Earth.
God consistently brings the heavenly reality into the earthly reality. We see this with Eden, Babylon, Moses on Mount Sinai, Jacob’s dream, the tabernacle, and the temple. Ultimately, this occurs in Jesus, the true human made in God’s image, who "dwelt (literally "tabernacled") among us" (John 1:14) like God’s glory in the tabernacle.
The cosmic mountain, Eden, the temple, and the tabernacle were all symbols pointing toward an ultimate reality. Jesus, in human form, claims to be this ultimate reality. Heaven is the ultimate cause and source of all life, but it is invisible and inaccessible unless we have our imaginations transformed.
The sun, moon, and stars of Genesis 1 are heavenly beings. Heavenly beings are called "signs" (Gen. 1:14) because they are symbols of the true source of light. Heavenly beings form God's divine council, his staff team who are under his divine command. The word "angel" in the New Testament broadly means "heavenly being," and these beings often look like people.
Humans are meant to image or mirror God (Gen. 1:26-27). Humans image God by their unity and diversity as one humanity made of male and female (Gen. 1:26-27). God is dianthropic—he desires and designs to work through (Grk. dia) human beings (Grk. anthropos).Humans image God by ruling, or cultivating, creation as partners with God. God imparts a huge amount of dignity to humanity by appointing them to rule as his partners.
The Hebrew word for "image" is tselem, which literally means "idol." In the ancient world, idols were said to embody a deity or a king. Idols can serve a priestly function by mediating for the deity they embody, or they can serve a royal function by representing the king. Human images do both as a kingdom of priests for the true King Yahweh (Exod. 19:4-6). God commands humans not to make idols because humans are the idol of God.
Daniel 7 is a meditation on Genesis 1-3, where humans give up their role as embodied divine rulers to an animal. They'd rather trust in themselves than in God. And by doing so, they become like beasts. Genesis 3:15 gives us hope in the form of a coming seed, who we learn will be the Messiah or an ointedone. In the New Testament, "Christ" means "anointed one." So Jesus is depicted as the true human and image of God, the seed of Genesis 3:15.
"Seven" (sheva) and "complete/full" (sava) are spelled with the same Hebrew consonants. Seven communicates a sense of fullness or completeness. There are two words used to describe God's Sabbath rest on the seventh day of creation: shabbat (Gen. 2:2-3) and nuakh (Exod. 20:11). Shabbat means rest in the sense of stopping all work. Nuakh means rest in the sense of settling and taking up residence. When God completes his work and rests on the seventh day of creation, the authors are saying that God's glorious presence fills the Earth. But he also takes up residence in creation with humanity -- Heaven and Earth are truly united in this moment.
The seventh day is the only day of creation that has no end. This tells us that God’s ideal is for his glorious presence to dwell among humanity forever. Jesus sees himself as inaugurating God’s ultimate Sabbath rest and the super Jubilee year (Isa. 61:1-2).
Reading the Bible well requires unlearning and relearning what the text has to say. Jonah is a microcosm of all the beauty, potential, and challenges the Bible represents to its readers. Jonah is more than a children’s story. It’s like a symphony—anyone can sit down and enjoy it, but if you want to learn how it’s composed, there are infinite layers of complexity to explore.
The Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, defined reality for Jesus. The story of the Hebrew Bible is fulfilled in Jesus and brings greater understanding to what Jesus did on Earth.
The Hebrew Bible is meditation literature that asks you to give a lifetime of reflection to its meaning. The Hebrew Bible is a diverse collection of literature, but it has been designed into one cohesive story.
The Hebrew Bible is messianic wisdom literature that leads us to understand our need to be rescued by the Messiah, Jesus. In 2 Timothy 3:14-17, "good works" refers to seeking the well-being of our neighbors in the name of Jesus. We need to build a skill set for reading these texts and examine how we talk about the Hebrew Bible with other people.
We’re meeting another mind when we read the Bible, so we have to work hard to make sure we’re not hearing our own voice reflecting back to us.
TaNaK is an acronym for Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim, the three-part design of the Hebrew Bible. Jesus and other Jewish authors spoke about the Hebrew Bible using this three-part design. Torah means "teaching" in Hebrew and includes the same first five books as our English Bibles: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Nevi'im means "prophets" in Hebrew and includes Isaiah through Malachi and begins with Joshua through Kings. Ketuvim means "the writings" in Hebrew and is similar to the poetry section of our English Bibles, but italso includes a few other books such as Ruth and Daniel.
The structure of our modern Bibles does not detract from seeing the Hebrew Bible as foreshadowing Jesus’ rise, fall, and resurrection. Understanding that Jesus read his Bible in the three-part TaNaK structure helps us see what he sees.
The seams of the TaNaK, or the beginnings and endings of the major sections, include repeated words and phrases that show the TaNaK is telling one overarching story of Israel's need for a prophet like Moses and Elijah who will bring life to the nations. The Hebrew Bible is meditation literature (Josh. 1; Ps. 1) designed to foster (1) daily reading and pondering about the meaning of these texts, (2) a future hope in the promised prophet who will herald the messianic Kingdom, and (3) a covenantal way of life that is counter-cultural to prevailing worldsystems.
The Hebrew Bible trains us, through repeated patterns, to expect humans to fail to live up to their divine calling. This repeated pattern shows humanity's need for a divine-human rescuer who will do what only God can do. The incarnation of Jesus is not a surprise twist; it's the only possible solution.
The biblical authors often use words that are meant to recall other parts of Scripture. In this way, one word or image can be loaded with layers of meaning. The scroll of Jonah starts with the Hebrew word for "and." This signals to readers that Jonah has a bigger context and is connected to what came before.
