Bible Discussion Thread

(Part 1)

Hello all,

Before I share my introduction to Matthew, I would like to share how I began the bible study I led. I began with a brief rundown of the New Testament, followed by a short introduction to the Gospels. Here is how I laid it out:



The original language of the New Testament was Greek. Its contents are History and Doctrine, or Teaching. Greek is an exact language, and in order for God to give teaching and doctrine, it had to be through an exact language. The New Testament is laid out perfectly. The first part, Matthew through Acts is History. It is an historical account of the earthly public ministry of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, along with the book of Acts, because originally, the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts travelled together. They were actually known as Luke Part 1 and Luke Part 2. They were both written by Luke. And it wasn't until later on in the second century that those two books got split up and divided into two. So, from Matthew Chapter 1, all the way through the end of Acts, that is called the historical section of the New Testament.

The second half of the New Testament is called the doctrine or teaching section. This section was purposely designed with books in order, because the books are not chronological. They are not in the order in which they were written. The first books in the teaching section are Paul's letters. All of Paul's letters, from Romans through Philemon, are at the front of the teaching section for a reason. And I'll share that with you in a minute.

From the book of Hebrews, all the way through Revelation, that is known as Jewish literature. From the book of Revelation alone, out of the 400 and some verses, there are over 800 references to the Old Testament. If we want to understand Jewish literature, we have to understand the Old Testament, because all of the language and the symbols and representations of the book of Revelation, Peter, James, all of them, have been taken from the Old Testament.