1. The Architecture of God’s Word

The Glorious Structure of Scripture & Its Importance for Interpretation & Understanding

Audio recording

Recommended Readings

2. The Glories of the Word and Creation: Genesis, Romans, John

Q: How do you read the Bible? Like aphonebook or encyclopedia, browsing for facts or data? Like an oracle, waiting for a random “word” to leap off the page and “speak” to you? Like a mystery, looking for the hidden clues to solve life’s big puzzle? Like a recipe book, looking for practical ways to improve your marriage or to raise your kids?

Romans 1:18-20

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Genesis 1:1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14-15, 20, 24, 26-27, 28, 29; 2:1-3

¹In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth . . . ³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. . . . ⁶ And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ And God made the expanse and separated the waters . . . ⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so . . . ¹¹ And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so . . . ¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so . . . ²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so . . . ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

²⁸ And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so . . . ^2:1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ² And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. ³ So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

John 1:1 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Luke 24:27

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Reading Scripture well requires giving close attention to the architecture of the text in whole-and-part: the author’s word choices, the text’s structure, it’s organization, tropes, typologies, allusions, and quotations from elsewhere (some from other Scriptures, some extrabiblical sources [e.g., Acts 17:28: Paul quotes Epimenides of Crete and Aratus’s poem “Phainomena” ]). We need to learn to read like Jesus and Paul, and how the other biblical writers read and interpret the Old Testament. And most importantly, we need to let God’s Word shape and reshape us in His image, giving us new eyes and ears, new hearts, new lives.

3. Structure and Meaning Everywhere in Creation: From Sub-Atomic Particles to the Farthest Galaxies

Everywhere you look in creation, stunning complexities abound. No matter how deeply you probe with a microscopic or how far out you look to the limits of our telescopes, there are complex structures everywhere across time and space. If God’s Word spoke all that glory into being, how much more should we see more than just black ink on a white page, but such glories and wonders in the Word itself that simply take our breath away? Do you have eyes to see and hears to hear?

4. Reading Scripture with New Eyes:  Through New Eyes (Jordan), Deep Exegesis (Leithart)

[Deep Exegesis, p. 116] “[E]very reader, no matter how literal-minded and scientific, no matter how committed to exegesis or hostile to eisegesis, is pouring stuff into the text that is not there, or, perhaps more accurately, siphoning off stuff that is not there. . . . Even the most rigorously grammatical and historical exegesis of the Bible depends on connections between text and text, or text and speech, or text and extratextual reality.”

[p. 117] “Everyone brings information to the text that is not in the text and seeks to illuminate the text with light from outside. They fill in the gaps between words and sentences to produce a whole picture. That is perfectly fine and, I have been arguing, inescapable. What is not fine is the pretense that literal reading does not involve this process, the claim that a reading is doing nothing but getting what is there.”

If creation, in all its complexities and interrelationships, reflects the glory and attributes of God, how much more His very own Word. The Bible is not randomly expressed or lacking depth and breadth of structure. It is not an ancient text that only scholars and scientists can peal back the layers of meaning.  As James Jordan right points out, “God doesn’t waste his breath.” Everything in the Bible is meaningful. We have to stop reading it like it is a phone book or encyclopedia, or recipe book, and start looking for how the Bible itself provides the means to interpret God’s Word in all its glory, not just in the data it downloads

5. Structure & Meaning Everywhere in God’s Word: Parallelisms & Chiasms from Genesis to Revelation

The Structure of Creation Week (Gen. 1-3)                                   The Structure of the Human Week (Exodus 20:8-11)

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Dividing Filling

Day 1: Light/dark                                  Day 4: Sun, moon, stars

Day 2: Waters above/below            Day 5: Birds and fish

Day 3: Waters/land                             Day 6: Land animals and man

                             Day 7: Sabbath Rest

The Structure of the Pentateuch (First Five Books of the Bible)

Parallelisms: Psalm 19:1-2

A. The heavens                               A.   Day to day

B. declare                                           B.   pours out

C. the glory of God, and         C.  speech, and

A’.  the sky above                           A’.  night to night

B’.   proclaims                                   B’.   reveals

C’.  his handiwork                       C’.   knowledge

Chiasms: Genesis 11:1-9

A. The whole earth has one language (v. 1)

B. Settled there (v. 2)

C. Said to one another (v. 3)

D. Come, let us make bricks (v. 3)

E. Let us build (v. 4)

F. City and tower (v. 4)

G. Lord came down (v. 5)

F’.      City and tower (v. 5)

E’.     That man built (v. 5)

D’.     Come, let us confuse (v. 7)

C’.     One another’s speech (v. 7)

B’.     Scattered from there (v. 8)

A’.     Confused language of the whole earth (v. 9)

6. The Glories of Scripture:From “Fixed” Text to Jokes—Typologies Allegories (Gal. 4) & Poems

Typology: “Refers to an image impressed onto something else, for instance, wax. It is the word used in Scripture for the imprint of God’s heavenly pattern on the earth . . . . In Acts 7:44 Stephen says, ‘Our fathers had the Tabernacle of Testimony in the wilderness, just as He who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern [type] which he had seen.’ Similarly, Hebrews 8:5, quoting Exodus 25:40, reminds us that Moses was told, ‘See that you make all things according to the pattern [type] which was shown you on the mountain.”

–Mike Bull, The Bible Matrix: An Introduction to the DNA of the Scriptures (West Bow Press, 2010), p. 20

See Hos. 11:1 and Mt. 2:15.

Tropes: Culturally recognized commonplace figures of speech which move beyond a literal meaning of a text (or symbol) to a figurative meaning. “Stop and smell the roses,” “Knock yourself out,” “It’s all Greek to me,” or in cinema, black hats (villains dress in black, good guys in white), capes (superhero [played contra in The Incredibles]) are examples of tropes you’ll find across literature and pop culture. [Leithart, “Shrek is impenetrable unless the viewer comes armed with a cache of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and recollections from pop culture,” Deep Exegesis, p. 115]

Leithart on the Hermeneutics of Humor: Jokes

[Deep Exegesis, p. 113] “A priest, a rabbi, a nun, a doctor, and a lawyer all walk into a bar. The bartender says, ‘What is this, a joke?’”

“. . . [This joke] was puzzling to my children. . . . They knew all the words, grasped the syntax of the sentence. But they did not get it. The joke depends on a confluence of two joke traditions; jokes about diverse religious figures or professionals on the one hand, and jokes about barroom conversations on the other. . . .

[p. 115] Like [all jokes], every text depends for its meaning on information lying outside the text. Every text is a joke, and a good interpreter is one with a good sense of humor, one with a broad knowledge and the wit to know what bits of knowledge are relevant. All interpretation is a matter of getting it. All texts mean the way jokes mean. Or, to put it more sharply, the text is a joke.  [This] is true in the apparently trivial sense that no text defines all its terms for the reader [no could it] . . . .

7. An Overview of the Architecture of Scripture: Luke-Acts, John-Revelation

Parallels between John and Revelation Warren Gage (John-Revelation Project) argues, if the two books are read alongside each other, as the early Church Fathers suggested, they will interpret each other. The parallel chart below illustrates the interrelationship of John’s two books.  Word(s) in bold are from the same root in the Greek.  Italicized words are terms related thematically, but from different Greek roots.

The Gospel of John	The Book of Revelation
1:1 John writes concerning “the Word of God“	1:2 John witnesses to “the Word of God”
1:5 Jesus is “the Light (that) shines in darkness”	1:16 The face of Jesus “shines like the sun”
1:14 “We beheld His glory as the only begotten of the Father”	1:5-6 “Jesus Christ…the firstborn from the dead…to Him be glory“
1:23 John the Baptist introduces the earthly Jesus: “I am the voice of one crying, ‘In the wilderness'”	1:10 John the Apostle “heard … a loud voice, as of a trumpet,” and sees the heavenly Jesus.
1:42 Jesus gives Peter a new name: “Cephas, which is translated, ‘a stone'”	2:17 “To him who overcomes…I (Jesus) will give a white stone, and on the stone a new name”
2:17 Jesus purges the temple: “Zeal for Your house will consume Me”	3:19 Jesus purifies His church: “Be zealous therefore, and repent”
2:24-25 “Jesus…knew all men…for He Himself knew what was in man“	2:23 “all the churches shall know that I (Jesus) am He who searches the minds and hearts“
3:1,10 “now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus…a teacher in Israel”  . . .	2:15 “the teaching of the Nicolaitans” (2:6)   . . .
19:19 “Pilate wrote a title…it was written, ‘JESUS OF NAZARETH.  THE KING OF THE JEWS.'”	19:16 “On His outer garment…a name was written, ‘KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS'”
19:23 “when they crucified Jesus, they took His outer garments“	19:16 “On his outer garment…a name was written, ‘KING OF KINGS'”
19:28, 30, 40, 42 “Jesus, knowing that all things were now finished…said, ‘It is finished!’…and they took the body of Jesus and bound it…and placed it in a tomb.”	20:2, 3, 5 “He laid hold of the dragon…and bound him, and shut him in the abyss…that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years were finished…and the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished“
20:15 “Jesus said… ‘Woman, why are you weeping?'”	21:4 “and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes”
20:17  “Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold to me yet, for I have not yet ascended to My Father…to My God and your God.'”	21: 2 “Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband…”
20:27 “Be not unbelieving but believing”	21:8 “But the fearful and unbelieving“
21:15″Feed my lambs“	19:9 “the wedding supper of the Lamb“
21:24 “this is the disciple who…wrote these things; and we know that his witness is true“	21:5 “And He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true“
21:25 “And there are many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”	22:18-19 “if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part…from the things which are written in this book.”

Parallels and Chiasms between Luke and Acts