Introduction

From the beginning of the Gutenberg era the Bible has always been the world’s best selling book. When you add books about the Bible and Bible study aids, print attention to the Bible is the Michael Jordan of the publishing industry and more, in a class of its own, outdistancing its strongest competition by a quantum factor. It goes without saying that there is good reason for this phenomenon. It is widely loved and revered, valued as categorically unique, believed by people in every culture and language exposed to it to be the Word of God, unique in that respect, and entirely so.

The facts of its supernatural source and extraordinary value coupled with its supreme importance supply the explanation of its popularity and the proliferation of aids to understanding it. The present work is one more attempt to help readers of the Bible to understand it. It is my firm and passionate conviction that although this work can greatly aid many toward that end, neither this nor any other existing or yet to be produced work can rival the value of reading the Bible itself. If you must make a choice of one book only to read, please discard this one in favor of the Bible.

The design of this work is simple and clear. Each book of the Bible is treated individually in three approaches: Introduction, Argument, and Outline.

The Introduction sections follow a not invariable pattern, customized according to my sense of appropriateness of issues. It can be characterized as a simplified version of what has become a standard genre of Bible Introduction, addressing such questions as Authorship, Readership, Circumstances of ‘publication,’ and other significant, distinctive features. Thus it is not intended as a substitute for those many excellent standard Bible Introductions, but as a portable review of the issues.

The Argument is a kind of serial rehearsal of the contents of the book. But an argument must be more than a bare Reader’s Digest abridgement: it must be interpretive, addressing more the “How?” and “Why?” questions than the “What?” question. It seeks to demonstrate how the book flows and is tied together, and thus display the logic (hence the name, “Argument”) of the movement from section to section as defined by the intrinsic structure (Outline). Thus focus is periodically zooming in and out, that is, beginning each new section with a panorama before moving to detail examination.

Finally, the Outline does what any outline is supposed to do, namely, summarize the thought of the book displaying the relative major and minor sections and their mutual coordination and subordination. The procedure for generating outlines begins with the task of identifying the intrinsic structure of the work, recognizing the authorial seams to the text. These seams define the limits of a given section, leading to the next task of labeling the section. The process involves movement ‘from the left margin in.’ The primary guiding intention for these outlines was exegetical in the truest sense of the word. That is, I was intentionally attempting to discover and display the outline the author would have produced or could conceivably have worked from. There was little or no effort or concern to make them clever or memorable; rather, the concern was to make them accurate.

One final word: the work that follows was originally produced in fulfillment of a major assignment connected with my Th.D. studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, where they were submitted to Dr. Dwight Pentecost, to whom I owe thanks for evaluation of the work. I have since revised a few of the arguments and outlines, and it is my hope someday to be able to revise the entire work. Thanks also goes to my wife for her support and encouragement in the production and use of this work in my classes. Finally, thanks goes to my students who have affirmed the value of these outlines, taking them quite literally around the world.

This work is copyrighted solely for the purpose of protecting against the possibility of unethical though legal claims which could prevent me from using it or obligating me to pay royalties to them. To the extent that there is truth in these pages, I would not assert proprietary right. Right to reproduce the contents are however restricted to written permission from the author.