‘A short guide to the Bible (part 2)’ by Claire Lynch - 8 March 2026

What is the Bible, how did we get it, and what is it for? Claire Lynch looks at how the different genres, stories and conversations in the Bible fit together into something which has conveyed truth to people for thousands of years - as long as they knew how to interpret it. How can we do this today?

Transcript

Introduction

Something that you may not know about me, is that I’m quite a literal thinker and I’m also quite gullible, a nice way to say that is that I’m quite a trusting person, but in reality, it’s means I can be taken in or completely get the wrong end of the stick sometimes!!

Now I’m really going to show myself up here…did you know that a ‘mute’ point is not actually a ‘mute’ point. I’m really hoping there that I’m not the only person, who think’s it’s a ‘mute’ point!

So I have always thought that a ‘mute’ point, is something that is not worth talking about, like when you mute the sound on something, where there’s no point in debating it any further. But actually I have found out recently, that a ‘mute’ point is actually a ‘moot’ point, its not just that someone is pronouncing it differently to me but that ‘moot’, spelt M-O-O-T, not M-U-T-E, means arguable, a subject to debate!! The exact opposite of what I thought it meant. Who’d have thought it! All these years, when I’ve heard this word in conversations, I’ve been thinking the person meant the exact opposite of what they were saying and I never knew!!

I wonder if you’ve ever got your wires crossed? Maybe with a phrase that is ambiguous or one has two meanings. We use phrases like this all the time in our English language, sometimes for a joke, sometimes to make a point.

Sometimes journalists will create what’s called “crash blossoms” - headlines that are purposely ambiguous to draw in the reader. So things like…

Children Make Nutritious Snacks

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

Here’s a a couple of actual signs that could easily be misunderstood…

Caution Pedestrians slippery when wet

If you see someone drowning IoI call 911

And probably my favourite is this image of someone who picked up their drink at a coffee shop, confused why ‘Cark’ was written on the side, for his name. The quote says,

I said my name was Marc with a “c” !!

Sometimes the double meaning is just nuanced to a particular context or culture.

So we may say things like:

“break a leg” - either meaning literal harm! Or ‘good luck’ in the theatre!

Or

-"Tell me about it!" Which could be a literal request for more info or a way to say "I completely agree”.

How could you guess the double meaning, just from the words - it’s crazy. Maybe you’ve come across this same thing if you’ve tried to learn another language.

Understanding the context, the unwritten rules, who is saying what, to whom and why can be really helpful in not misunderstanding the message.

And that couldn’t be more important than when we are trying to understand the Bible and how it applies to our lives.

The Bible is an ancient document, written in different languages from the one most of us might speak in this room, in a completely different time period in history, to people living in a very different part of the world to us. The potential for misunderstanding is huge!

Which is why, I thought it might be helpful to spend a little time looking at The Bible in this two part series, “A short guide to the Bible.” Looking at what the Bible is and isn’t, and how we might read the Bible well and not get our wires crossed.

Today is Part Two and a few weeks ago, in Part One, we talked about the Bible as if it was a Box Set that we might watch on Netflix - we looked at the “Big Story” of the Bible, as one continuous story from cover-to-cover, made up of lots of smaller stories of a people group and their journey and growing relationship with God. Season One being the time before Jesus was born, the Old Testament, Season Two being around the time of Jesus and the early Church and then Season Three being the one that we are currently in.

We talked about how we are actually part of that same story, and are invited to join with God in restoring and renewing this world as we live our lives together, loving God and loving each other.

If you haven’t listened to part One, I’d encourage you to listen back to it, it’s on our website,

But this morning we are going to look at some foundational questions about the Bible that we maybe don’t think about very much. We’re going to look at some basic questions like..

• What is the Bible?

• How did we get the Bible? and

• What’s the Bible for? — why did God give it to us?

These kind of questions really matter, because the way we understand the Bible, significantly affects the way we live our lives - the way we think, it affects the way we act, it affects how we feel about ourselves.

Reading the Bible can bring such joy, peace and freedom, but depending on which bits we read and how we read them, it can also make us feel discouraged, restricted, guilty or shameful. The way we read the Bible not only causes us to reflect on our own lives but can cause us to make judgements on other people’s live too.

Throughout the centuries the Bible has often been weaponised against people, as a result of reading it badly.

If we are wanting to “hear God” through the Bible, which he very much wants us to DO, then we need to understand the Bible well enough to be hearing him right and not getting our wires crossed.

What is the Bible?

So let’s begin with our first question, what actually is the Bible.

The word “Bible” comes from a Greek word — biblion — that just means “book.”

If you learnt French at school you may remember that the word for “library” is bibliothèque.

And if we were to use its full title , we’d say “Holy Bible” or biblia sacra, which in Latin means a “sacred” book or a “holy” book.

Which is simply a way of saying it has something of God about it, in some way, that “sets it apart” from any other book.

And that “something”, that “some way”, is what we’re wanting to understand.

Although we talk about the Bible as a book, it’s actually a collection of books.

Sixty-six of them, thirty-nine in the Old Testament, and twenty-seven in the New.

So it’s less of a book and more of a book shop!

And like any bookshop it has lots of different kinds or genres of book in it.

And just like we don’t read a history book the way we read a poetry book, or science book the way we read a novel - in the same way, each of these different genres in the Bible need to be read and understood in a way that is specific to that genre.

For example, we don’t ask whether a poem or a song is true, because it’s the wrong question to ask that genre. A poem or song speaks of things that are true — but it doesn’t do that in the way other genres might do.

And it’s just the same with he Bible, each genre communicates differently, the writers know that, and the readers of their time would have known that too.

So we too need to read them differently and expect different things from them.

Here are some of the different genres that we find in the Bible…

Narrative — History and Story

Commandments and Instructions

Metaphor, Picture Language and Parables (which are short stories that hold a deeper meaning.)

Exaggeration and Hyperbole - like plucking out an eye, or moving mountains - deliberately “OTT” language - to make a point and make it memorable.

Letters

Wisdom Literature - like Proverbs

Poetry, Song, and Lament, and

Prophecy and Apocalyptic - imagery about the end times.

The main thing to note here is that the Bible is not just factual statements about God and instructions from God, like an encyclopaedia or instruction manual might be to us today in the 21st Century.

Surprisingly, perhaps, for something we call “The Word of God,” the vast majority of the Bible (about 75%) is narrative — or, “stories.” So even what we might take to be simple, timeless factual statements and instructions are often coming to us within the genre — within the context — of a story. So we need to keep that in mind.

Inspired

Ok , so let’s look at the only thing that the Bible says about itself, in terms of it’s nature.

It’s in the New Testament — in 2 Timothy 3:16.

All Scripture is inspired by God — and is useful — for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

All Scripture is inspired by God.

Our English words “inspired” and “inspiration” come from a Latin word that means to “blow into” or “breathe upon.”

Which might remind us of John 20, when Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

And the same word is used in the Greek Old Testament in Genesis 2, when God “breathed into 'āḏām the breath of life, and 'āḏām became a living being.”

'āḏām here means “humanity”, or humankind, it’s only later In Genesis that the word 'āḏām becomes a name, Adam, so it’s a play-on-words.

Rather than use the word “inspired,” some modern translations say “Scripture is God-breathed” — which is more literal.

Whether we use inspired or God-breathed, both are a little mysterious in what they mean in practice.

But what we CAN say is that, because the Holy Spirit “breathed” the Bible, or “into” the Bible, or “upon” the Bible, so too the Holy Spirit will “breathe out of” the Bible , “through the Bible” to us today - bringing the presence of God, the wisdom of God and knowledge of God - which makes it a very exciting book to read!

The Word of God

Now the Bible is often referred to as “The Word of God” We might call it that out of respect and for good reason.

But this is where it gets a little complicated, because the Bible is the words of people as well!

No biblical scholar thinks the Bible was “dictated”, with the writers hearing God’s voice in their ears or in their heads and writing it down word-for-word.

“Inspiration” doesn’t mean “dictation.”

And although we may call the Bible “the Word of God” very little of the Bible is actually quoting God speaking in the first person.

Some of it is even quoting the devil — in Genesis, Job, Matthew and Luke.

Occasionally we’re also seeing people’s wrong ideas — and wrong understandings, of what God is like and the things he does and doesn’t do, like in the bad advice given by Job’s friends. Here, we’re supposed to be seeing that it’s bad advice and call it out.

Interestingly, the Bible never calls itself “the Word of God”, it’s us who call it that.

In the Bible itself, the “Word of God” is either Jesus himself, the message about Jesus, or what God says or commands.

First and foremost, in the Bible itself, the “Word of God” is Jesus.

And we see this in the book of John when he says of Jesus…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him . . .

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

John 1:1-3, 14

Here, John is tapping into his Greek-speaking audience’s existing understanding of something called the Logos, a Greek philosophical idea, that was understood as like an impersonal divine force through which the whole cosmos was created and holds together.

Now Logos is the Greek word for “Word.”

And so John is saying, this idea, that you’re already familiar with, this impersonal force, Logos, is actually the very personal Jesus , the Logos or Word of God, who “became flesh”, became human like us, and dwelt among us. Jesus is the Logos/Word of God.

So the Bible wasn’t dictated and equally God didn’t “take control” of their pens.

It can feel uncomfortable to emphasise the Bible’s humanity.

But actually the same is true of Jesus.

The Bible having both divine and human sources has been “likened to” Jesus being “fully God” and “fully human” which is one of the hardest doctrines to understand!

So just like with Jesus, in the Bible, sometimes we’re seeing divinity to the fore, God’s voice in the text, and sometimes we’re seeing humanity to the fore, the human writer’s voice in the text. And just like with Jesus, this presence of both, humanity and divinity, is not a weakness or a flaw, but there by God’s design

It was clearly God’s intention that what comes to us through the Bible would come through people — their memories, their experiences, their perceptions (and at times, their misperceptions) — in the context of their lives and stories. Maybe that was because he knows that as humans we relate better to stories. God could easily have had Jesus write some or all of the New Testament; but he didn’t.

Part of reading the Bible well means being aware of both and not confusing one with the other.

How did we get the Bible?

So how did we get the Bible as we know it today?

The last of the Old Testament books was written around 300 years before Jesus.

And the New Testament books were written in the second half of the first century during the time of the Early Church.

By the second century there was already a consensus about which books should be in the Bible. But it was only towards the end of the fourth century that it was formally agreed.

So why were some books included, and others left out? you might ask

In terms of the Old Testament: the Early Church Fathers simply adopted the Jewish scriptures, the Hebrew Bible that was already well established at the time of Jesus.

In terms of the New Testament their main criterion was based on whether something was understood to have been written by one of Jesus’ disciples, or someone who’d known the disciples. In other words, closeness to the people who’d known Jesus personally.

Ultimately, we today two thousand years later need to trust the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of the process they went through, in the same way we trust the inspiration of the writings themselves.

We need to trust those who were closest to Jesus, closest to that process, and also closest to the books they didn’t include and the reasons they didn’t.

And of course, each of those writings have gone through a process of translation and interpretation themselves in order to make them available to those of us who don’t speak Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic!! Some are more ‘scholarly’ translations produced by teams of biblical scholars aiming to translate, word for word, as far as language allows while others aim to paraphrase the text, thought for thought, or update it to modern concepts, these versions are usually produced by one person.

For studying the Bible, the mist suitable translations would be either the NIV, NRSV or The NLT - which is probably the most readable.

What is the Bible for?

So what is the Bible actually for.

You may have heard people refer to the Bible as the “Canon of Scripture” and that comes from another Greek word meaning a “ruler” or “measuring stick.”

And what THAT’S saying is that we look to the Bible to measure our lives against. Our beliefs against , And our understanding of God against - to see how they “measure up.”

And we see that in the passage we looked at in 2 Timothy 3:16, where it says:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

And because we believe the Bible to be inspired or, “God-breathed”, we therefore believe the Bible is reliable in doing this and we trust that the Bible has authority to speak into our lives and guide us.

And this is why, of course, we need to be “reading it well” because there’s a lot riding on it! Poor understandings of what it’s saying, affects our lives. Potentially, for the worse.

Because here’s the thing, not all of the truths in the Bible are timeless truths, some are time-bound truths.

A timeless truth is one that’s just as true now as it was then, it’s equally true for all times and places, irrespective of the context, then, now, and forever.

A time bound truth is one that was a truth for then, in that time and place and no longer applies now.

Problems can occur when we don’t understand the difference between a time-bound truth and a timeless truth, and fall into the temptation of taking a single verse or passage from the Bible out of context and saying, “The Bible says….. .

Because we are quoting the Bible, we believe we are speaking truthfully and with authority and on God’s behalf.

But without fully understanding the context, who was saying what, to whom, and why, at that time, we may be getting our wires crossed, and believe God to be saying something to us today that maybe he is not.

To help explain this a bit better, I have a little quiz for us!!

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I’d like you to imagine, you have a friend, who is new to faith and excited to put this into practice and follow what’s outlined in the Bible! So I am going to read out a bunch of statements or commands from the Bible - and I’d like you to consider which of these commands are..

Y = Yes - applies today in its exact original form - timeless

N = No - no longer applies in its exact original form - time bound

Or P = it applies in Part, or ‘in spirit’ based on the underlying principle.

Commands of Jesus are in bold.

_____ Praise him with the tambourine. Psalm 150:4

_____ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5

_____ Since I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. John 13:14

_____ Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly. Leviticus 19:32

_____ When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce … you shall give it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow … Deuteronomy 26:12

_____ You who are slaves must submit to your masters with all respect. Do what they tell you—not only if they are kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel. 1 Peter 2:18

_____ Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. Matthew 19:21

_____ Is it right for a woman to pray to God in public without covering her head? Isn’t it obvious that it’s disgraceful for a man to have long hair? … But if anyone wants to argue about this, I simply say that we have no other custom than this, and neither do God’s other churches. 1 Corinthians 11:13-16

_____ If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfil the duty of a brother-in-law to her. Deuteronomy 25:5

_____ You shall not … tattoo any marks upon you. Leviticus 19:28

_____ Love your neighbour as yourself. Leviticus 19:18

_____ Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. Leviticus 19:19

_____ Women should be silent during the church meetings. It is not proper for them to speak. They should be submissive, just as the law says. 1 Corinthians 14:34

_____ Greet one another with a holy kiss. 1 Corinthians 16:20

_____ Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel—God’s lost sheep. Matthew 10:5-6

_____ If you punish [a child] with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death. Proverbs 23.13-14

_____ If your stomach is upset, drink a little wine. It can also help the other sicknesses you often have. 1 Timothy 5:23

_____ If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. Deuteronomy 25:11-12

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Some of these are trickier than others. You see everything in the Bible, even the statements of fact and the commandments, come to us within a context, within a genre and often within a story (which is part of a bigger story).

The first rule of biblical interpretation is taking full and proper account of the context of whatever it is we’re reading, to understand first what it would have meant to the reader then, and why, before we consider in what way it might apply to us today, and why.

Conclusion

Recently I was chatting with a friend, who was struggling with the idea that God commanded the Israelites to cause mass genocide in the Old Testament. It didn’t quite fit with the Jesus she saw in the New Testament and she felt bad for questioning what she was reading.

But you know, it’s actually good that she was questioning, I don’t think God gets offended by that, in fact I think he loves it and encourages it - because it’s through that that we discover more of him and what he’s really like. And just maybe, there might be another explanation to those stories, other than God being a mass murderer!

So I’d like you to take a moment to think about whether, for you, there is a passage in the Bible that you’ve struggled to understand. Maybe it doesn’t quite fit with what you think God is like? Maybe it’s affecting how you feel about God?

Is it worth digging a little deeper on that? Could there be another perspective you haven’t yet come across?

As well as the ‘The Bible for normal people’ podcast and the books by Steve Burnhope I recommended last time, another widely trusted book would be ‘The Blue Parakeet - rethinking how you read the Bible’ by Scot McKnight.

If you prefer to watch things, a really great place to go to online is The Bible Project, that has a brilliant way of visually explaining a lot of complex things in a very succinct and clear way.

Chris Simmonds hosts a Deep Chat community group on a Tuesday evening, where the point is to have a place to discuss the tricky questions we come across.

As I conclude today, let’s remember that “the Word of God” is first and foremost JESUS.

God has given us the Bible to help us to see and to hear and to understand Jesus the Word of God, in its pages and through its stories.

But it’s not the only way, we encounter Jesus. The Holy Spirits role it to lead us to Jesus and reveal Jesus to us, and he does that in more ways that just through the Bible.

And Jesus is here right now in this room and so we are going to take this opportunity to worship and spend time with him. As we worship, why don’t you bring your questions to him. Tell him what’s on your heart, ask him to speak to you right now in this time.

More in this series