Genesis speaks of beginnings: God’s creation; the beginning of humanity; the beginning of sin; the beginning of salvation; and the beginning of our story. It is a literary tour de force that makes all other creation stories pale in comparison. The opening scene spans Chapters 1: 1 - 2: 3. In this scene God creates all that is, simply by speaking it into existence…

In the Bible’s longest soliloquy, Moses imparts his final thoughts to the people of Israel. Deuteronomy is not a “repetition” of the Law, but a retelling of it to a new audience, on the backside of 40 years of experience. Join Logos Bible Study’s Dr. Bill Creasy as we listen to Moses address a new generation of God’s people on the plains of Jericho.

The Hebrew canon divides scripture into three categories: Law, Prophets and Writings. In this arrangement, Joshua heads “The Prophets,” with Judges following second, while Ruth is placed in “The Writings.” In the Christian canon, however, Joshua, Judges and Ruth follow sequentially, continuing the linear narrative that begins in Genesis and extends through Esther. Although written by different authors at different times, Joshua, Judges and Ruth function together, continuing the on-going story.

In King David, the Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel, Jonathan Kirsch observes:

“At the heart of the Book of Samuel, where the story of David is first told, we find a work of genius that anticipates the romantic lyricism and tragic grandeur of Shakespeare, the political wile of Machiavelli, and the modern psychological insight of Freud. And, just as much as Shakespeare or Machiavelli or Freud, the frank depiction of David in the pages of the Bible has defined what it means to be a human being: King David is “a symbol of the complexity and ambiguity of human experience itself.”

From Solomon's reign to the prophetic call of Elijah, 1 Kings tells the story of the collapse of David's united monarchy into a nearly 100-year civil war and the fracture of a nation into two kingdoms: Israel and Judah. 2 Kings continues the story, chronicling Assyria's conquest of Israel in 721 BC and Babylon's conquest of Judah in 586 BC, ending with all Israel taken captive to Babylon.

The poetical books in the common canon—Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs—represent five sub-genres of literature and in this course, we’ll be taking a look at each one, learning how to engage each according to its own set of literary conventions, taking one giant step forward in becoming “educated readers of Scripture.”

All four major prophets are brilliant literary works, each written within distinct genres, and each crafted in distinctive styles. There are many misconceptions about prophets and biblical prophecy, and in this series Dr. Bill Creasy sets the record straight with the penetrating insight of a seasoned literary and biblical scholar and masterful teaching that both instructs and delights!

Dr. Creasy dubs Ezekiel "the weird prophet". He was taken captive by the Babylonians and there had his strange radiant visions, writing his prophecies for other Jews living in exile in Babylon as well as those back in Jerusalem.

Written in Babylon around 600 BC, Daniel extraordinary text foreshadows the coming of Jesus and first gives Jesus the title, "the Son of Man".

Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. St. Augustine dubbed them the “minor” prophets, from the Latin minor, meaning “shorter” (City of God, XVIII, 29). Thus, the minor prophets are “minor,” not because they are less important than the four major prophets, but because they are significantly shorter in length: Isaiah consists of sixty-six chapters, Jonah, four; Jeremiah consists of fifty-two chapters, Obadiah, one.

The Deuterocanonical books are those books of Scripture written (for the most part) in Greek that are accepted by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches as inspired, but they are not among the 39 books written in Hebrew accepted by Jews, nor are they accepted as Scripture by most Protestant denominations.