Blessed to Bless. Tim Sean Youmans
because we respect our students and families, I’m honest about my own faith and understanding of the scriptures. I am an Episcopal priest who was raised in a Baptist, evangelical home. I do think God is at work in the world, present in the day-to-day lives of people, and that the essence of those interactions and hopes are expressed within the Bible. That is why I’ve entitled this book, Blessed to Bless. God blesses the entire world through the life of Jesus Christ and then invites us to join in this relational equation. Ultimately, I will be pointing this out to you as you move through the Bible, but it is done with respect for my diverse audience. I share Jesus, but I do so in the same way I sense Jesus shared himself: honestly, generously, and nonanxiously. As I walk you through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, it is my hope that you will sense this at work.
This book is for people like these students and their parents. If you are a Christian and you want a basic introduction to the Bible, this book is for you. If you are not religious but you want to have a sense of what the Bible contains and what it means to Christians, this book is also for you. It can be read together as parent and child; it can be used with a group of parents reading the Bible together with their children, and it can be used for a Sunday school class for teens or adults. It’s for all types of beginners as well as those who want a refresher of the scope of our salvation story.
How to Use This Book
Each chapter begins with a reading assignment from the Bible. Do not skip this. I write the commentary assuming you have read that particular text of scripture. If you skip it, the chapter’s content might seem to have a stranger rhythm than if you did read the biblical passage first. In order to get the most out of this survey, read the biblical text first, usually three to five Bible chapters (about the length of three to five normal pages), then read the guide here. Each chapter ends with a few questions for you to consider and discuss.
If you decide to read two chapters of this book each week, you will complete this survey of the Bible in about one year’s time, depending on your consistency. Keep in mind that you will not be reading the Bible in its entirety. This book is a survey, which introduces you to the larger framework of the Bible, not every word. Even so, if you read everything that is assigned, you will have read more of the Bible than the majority of the population, even most practicing Christians. And you will have a foundation upon which to read and study further.
Written on an eighth-grade reading level, there are times when I wanted to get into more complexity but chose not to do so. This is written for approximately the same age as those classroom students who inspired it, namely ten- to fifteen-year-olds. But there is no reason why it cannot be used for older teens and adults, especially ones who have no previous knowledge of the scriptures whatsoever. It is a basic introduction. You’ll also notice places set aside in the text called BVC. This is short for Bible Vocabulary Concept and will help define important concepts along the way as we read the Bible. They will also be listed alphabetically by book of the Bible in the appendix on page 313.
One of the resources I will refer to throughout this book that will help you is called The Bible Project. This group of theologians and artists have created short overview videos for each book of the Bible, as well as videos about various themes and word studies in the scriptures. These videos are wonderfully helpful to understanding your reading and for small group discussion. Visit www.thebibleproject.com.
It is important to mention that some stories in the Bible are rated “R” for violent or sexually charged content. These are difficult stories and some young adult readers may not have the critical thinking skills and sensitivity to understand them. If you are using this in a small group or classroom setting, it will require some discretion of the leader or teacher. Such warnings will be found in the Blessed to Bless Leader’s Guide, which is available online as a free download at www.blessedtobless.us or www.churchpublishing.org/blessedtobless. Some of those stories are mentioned in this book, but more generally (and vaguely) than if we dealt with them in their entirety.
What kind of Bible should you use? If you are new to the Bible, there are a couple of things you need to know. One, there are a wide variety of translations. The scriptures were written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Translating from one language to another requires making decisions on what those words meant by those who wrote them. Sometimes this is straightforward and sometimes it is a puzzle with a variety of possibilities. Some Bibles tend to be more direct translations, which means they chose as close to the equivalent words in English as possible. When this is done, something may get lost in translation. Other Bibles tend to be a paraphrase, which means the translator shaped the English to capture the meaning intended by the author in ways a reader of English can understand. Most Bibles are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. This book draws quotes from the Common English Bible (CEB), which is a combination of both approaches, depending on the passage.
Second, Bibles have what are commonly referred to as “chapter” and “verse.” The Bible was not written with these in place, but they were added later (circa fifteenth century) to help the reader locate places in the books.
Having said all of that, are you ready? Let’s start reading the Bible.
Genesis 1–11
Read Genesis chapters 1–2.
TThere isn’t one creation story, but two. The original stories in Hebrew were not written with chapters and verses; those were added around the fifteenth century BCE (before the Common Era) so people could locate the stories. Sometimes those chapters and verses are mislocated and change the meaning of the story. This is one of those times.
Story One: Genesis 1:1–2:4
Story Two: Genesis 2:5–24
Go look again at the first two chapters and notice where one story ends and the second one starts.
Why does this matter? Notice how they differ. We are not the least bit interested in playing “gotcha” with ancient Hebrew stories and proving them “wrong.” The ways in which they are different doesn’t lessen their value, but asks you, as the reader, to wonder why.
The first story is mostly about the natural world. It is presented with a certain amount of order and in many ways reads like a list. It emphasizes God’s organization of nature, things having “kinds” and categories. It suggests God created with intention and purpose. It repeatedly calls what is created “good.” Pay close attention when any literary text repeats itself (including the Bible); it is trying to underscore that idea. The order and goodness of creation is an important Hebrew idea: creation is intrinsically good because God declared it so. That’s the good news. The bad news will, however, be just around the corner in Genesis, chapter 3.
In the first story, man and woman are created at the same time as the crowning achievement of creation. (In the second story, the man is created first, by himself. Then the woman is created later on, after he becomes lonely.) The first story conveys an engaging idea: human beings are created