Sum Up The Bible In 14 Words

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Picture made by Bella Tully

It was at the end of a workshop when a lady handed me a chewing gum. Like Mr. Bean lined up to meet the Queen, I almost cupped my hands to sniff my own breath. Why was she giving me this? I grabbed the gum anyway. As any soviet would with freebies.

“Have you ever heard of Fellowship Bible Study?” Asked the gum-lady. “You know studying the Bible is like chewing gum.” She continued as my face betrayed confusion.

“When we chew God’s Word, we get to taste on our own the flavor of that truth. It will speak to us in a personal way. But when we read devotionals, when we listen to sermons-although great things- it’s sort of like chewing someone else’s gum.”

Ew! A little gross, but helpful.

Digest Scripture On Your Own

The Scripture is “not to be gulped down, but chewed up”, I heard a pastor say.

The process of digesting Scripture can feel overwhelming. A jambalaya of sacrifices, feasts, festivals, dietary restrictions; cupped between the Old and New Testament; and nuanced by its three original languages. It sounds intimidating.

Only after my husband taught me 14 words to sum up the Bible, did I say like Stephen King in On Writing “I remember an immense feeling of possibility…” It’s then when I began studying the Scriptures on my own, without relying on surface-level devotionals. (Devotional books are helpful to create consistency, but not depth.)

Bible Sum Up

The Bible Sum Up is like the map at the shopping center. It’s the panoramic view to make sense of our location. As we read any book of the Bible, we need to figure out where in the Bible narrative does it fit. Then we can pin the location flag saying “You are here.”

Consider these 14 words as our training wheels teaching us to navigate through the narrative of the 66 books.

  1. Creation
  2. Fall
  3. Flood (aprox. 1,656 years after Creation)
  4. Nations (Tower of Babel happened aprox. 100-300 years after Flood)
  5. Fathers
    • Abraham
    • Isaac
    • Jacob= Israel (Joseph brings his family of 70+ people to Egypt, while there’s famine in Canaan)
  6. Exodus (70 family members of Joseph came to Egypt, after 430 years, they turned into a nation of over 2 million)
  7. Conquest (Joshua)
  8. Judges (Lasted aprox. 300 years. Ruth belongs here.)
  9. Kingdom
    • Saul (Benjamin tribe)
    • David (Judah tribe)
    • Solomon (David’s son)
    • Split Kingdom
      • Northern Kingdom (Israel, with Samaria as capital, about 19 kings, in around 200 years, taken by Assyrian Empire.)
      • Southern Kingdom (Judah, with Jerusalem as capital, about 20 kings, in around 380 years, taken by Babylonian Empire)
  10. Exile
    • Assyria “swallowed” Israel
    • Babylon “swallowed” Judah
  11. Return
    • Zerubbabel restores the Temple
    • Ezra restores the Worship
    • Nehemiah restores the Walls
  12. Silence
    • Hanukkah period
    • Recap of Empires
      • Greek Empire (aprox. 800-146 BC)
      • Roman Empire (aprox. 27 BC- 476 AD )
  13. Gospels
    • Matthew (By Matthew, disciple and former tax-collector. )
    • Mark (By John-Mark, a co-worker of Paul)
    • Luke (By Luke, a doctor and co-worker with Paul)
    • John (By John, disciple “the one Jesus loved”)
  14. Church
    • Acts- beginning of church
      • Paul’s writings
      • Peter’s writings
      • John’s writings
    • Today- continuation of church

***It’s fun to add details to the skeletal structure of these 14 words.

Benefits Of Memorizing The Bible Sum-Up In 14 Words

Why it is important to memorize them?

  1. They give us chronological clarity on the multitude of events of the Bible.
  2. If we are lost in the books of the Bible, how can we disciple others?
  3. As we hand a Bible to a stranger, or a friend, we can give them a sum up of what to expect in this intimidating Holy Book.
  4. Bible verse of the day on the Bible App is not sufficient to sustain a healthy spiritual life, nor growth. Imagine that all 925 million people who downloaded the Bible App feed on verse-of-the-day globally. That’s spiritual starvation. We can’t go with a toothpick at a sword fight. We must be equipped to handle the Sword of the Spirit.
  5. Once you master these 14 historical departments of the Bible, it’s fun to add meat to this skeletal structure. It will enable us to understand where do prophets fit in historically (17 books in the OT out of the 39. That’s 43% of Old Testament)
  6. We must hone our craft of studying on our own the context, culture, original audience in the Bible etc. Slow and steady wins the race, as my husband reminds me.

Over 70 Bible translations in English, on all formats: codex, audio, pdf, app; leather-bound or paper back; red-lettered or regular; miniature font, or large; kids version, or teen comics; thought-for-thought translation, or paraphrased… Isn’t it strange that the more the Bible is available, the less it is read?

C.S. Lewis said “The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it. The less we pray, the less we desire to pray.” Appetite comes with eating, Romanians say.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:12

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