I’ve been reading a book called the “The Story”. This book is by an entity called Zondervan, which is a Christian publishing company. I guess you can’t really take author credit for the Bible. It is basically a book that takes the Bible and puts the stories in order and also puts dates on the events that take place. This book hit my radar because our Pastor at Westside Family Church, Randy Frazee, is credited with writing the forward for the book and is currently doing a sermon series on the book.

 

I’m an avid reader and a Christian who has always wanted to read the Bible cover to cover, but honestly, I just couldn’t stay with it. It’s just too hard to read and the timelines really bothered me. The way the Bible is organized into books often presents stories out of order, or repeats certain stories in different books etc. My puny brain could just never keep it all straight. I needed something to help me keep track of when the events occurred in a historical timeline. This book provides such a timeline for each chapter so you know exactly when things happened like David killing Goliath (1025 BC), or Moses getting the 10 Commandments (1445 BC). Remember that BC counts down, while AD counts up.

 

Everyone has their own opinion and beliefs on religion and I’m not going to try to convert anyone with this post. What I hope you take away is an interest in the actual history of the Bible. I don’t know what it is like to grow up in a non-Christian home, but I think that most kids hear the stories of Noah, Moses, David and Goliath, Daniel in the Lion’s Den and Jesus’ birth sometime during their childhood. This book makes these stories easy to understand and also provides dates for all of them. Did you know that Joseph and his technicolor Dreamcoat (1898 BC) actually happened before Moses was even born (1526 BC). I didn’t. In my head, I see Charlton Heston, Moses in the movie, and think he had to be one of the first people in the Bible. He is early, but a lot happened before he was even born.

 

I’m an avid reader. I read every day. My preferred content is usually mysteries or suspense novels. I’m reading “The Story” in chunks. I read about 100 pages, then read a novel. After finishing the novel, I go back to “The Story” and read another 100 pages or so. I’m currently about halfway through. I’m reading it this way because this book is more like a collection of short stories as opposed to a novel. I often read “history books” in this way, as I miss the suspense and intrigue of my novels but am also interested in historical topics. Some might argue that the Bible does contain drama, but it’s just not quite the same as a John Grisham novel.

 

The coolest part of my experience for me is that book takes my brain down tangents. For example, I started thinking about how we, and the rest of the world talks about time by using, BC and AD. Maybe I’m just a dummy, but I always thought BC, meant “Before Christ” and AD meant “After Death”. Then I thought, if that was the case, what about the years that Jesus was alive, do we just not count those 33 – 38 years? That didn’t make sense to me, you can’t just pretend those years didn’t exist.

 

It doesn’t make sense because I was wrong. I looked it up and found out that BC does in fact mean, “Before Christ”. However, AD actually means “anno Domini”, which means “in the year of the Lord”. So you might think that Jesus was born in 1 AD. Wrong. Most scholars believe that Jesus was born in 4 BC. They arrive at these dates by looking at historic events, such a times when various King’s reigned and other events to figure out exact years. For example, if a certain ruler was governing Rome when Jesus was crucified and experts are confident that he was approximately 33 years old when he died, they can work backwards and figure out that he was likely born in 4 BC. I’m not a Biblical scholar so I found this information by researching on the Internet, but I trust that these experts know what they are talking about. There are some minor disagreements to this timeline, but for the most part it is accepted as correct.

 

My last comment about the time is that it also made me wonder if all other religions also used BC and AD as that would not really make sense that they would use a figure from a different religion to base their calendars upon. If you look this up online, you will see that there are many different opinions and answers. Many religions have used other designations to record their years, but it appears that most of the world has adopted BC and AD, if for no other reason than we (the world) needs a common way to determine the historical years.

 

I should note, that the “The Story” does not give full explanations for all of these types of questions. This book simply takes the Bible, puts it in order and then tells the stories in an easy to read manner. As I said, for me it triggers many questions that I take to the internet to find the answers. There are many other books that translate the Bible into easier to understand language. For me, the timeline is important and is really something that I’m enjoying as I’m reading this book.

 

Next month, it’s back to local history as I’m going to write about McClure Flats, which is a “not so nice” area that existed in downtown Kansas City in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Please go to my website at www.Jonathanjonesauthor.com to purchase my books. Unfortunately, we got rained out at the Harrisonville Farmers Market on September 21st, sorry if we missed anyone that planning on purchasing at the market.

Just a quick FYI, the Paypal payment method on the site was not working, but it is fixed now. As always, thanks for your support.