Why the Bible is like a Novel, the plot line of the Bible

About this Lesson         

In this lesson, I’ll briefly explain how the short story view is the dominant, though incorrect, view today, and then why I believe it’s valid to view the Bible more like a novel.

This is a complex lesson, but extremely important to understand and apply.

First, we talk about the dangers of the short story collection view of the Bible

Instead of the Bible being one book, written by God, this view assumes it is a collection of writings written by humanity.

I call that the “short-story view of the Bible.”

This view assumes that we do not know for certain who the authors of the books of the Bible were or precisely when they were written or collected. This is the current presupposition of many biblical scholars, popular writers, and TV programs about the Bible today.

At their base, each of these views assumes the Bible is a collection of books written by human authors.

In contrast, we’ll now look at it more like a novel in these four areas:

1. How God is the One Author of the entire book
2. The unity of the plot of the entire book follows the traditional Structure of a Novel
3. The use of Progressive Revelation in the entire book
4. The voice of the One Author in the entire book

This is much more than a literary exercise but is one that will increase your confidence that God is the author of the entire Bible.

Included with this Lesson package

• An 1080p video
• A PDF of Notes/Transcript of the lesson
• A PDF of Questions on the lesson for individual study or group discussion
• Two digital files of images you can use to promote the topic
• Unlimited reproduction rights of the video and handouts within your church, group, ministry, or business.

In the files below:

• The MP4 file has the video—the name may be a bit odd as the program I’m using automatically sometimes gives it a new name when I save it.
• The ZIP file has the PDFs of notes and question pages, plus the image files.