Intro To The Old Testament - The Bible Dept.

Summary of "Intro To The Old Testament" Episode on The Bible Dept.
Host: Dr. Manny Arango
Release Date: March 22, 2025

1. Congratulations and Overview

Dr. Manny Arango opens the episode by congratulating listeners who have successfully completed reading the New Testament. He acknowledges the accomplishment and prepares the audience for the more extensive journey ahead through the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh.

2. The Bible as a Cross-Cultural Experience

Dr. Arango emphasizes that reading the Bible is akin to immersing oneself in an entirely different culture. He compares engaging with Scripture to traveling to a foreign country, such as Thailand, where understanding local customs and context is essential to meaningful interaction.

Quote:
"Reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience... entering into a world that is not your world."
— Dr. Manny Arango [04:15]

He stresses the importance of embracing this cultural shift to fully grasp the Scriptures, rather than trying to impose contemporary viewpoints onto ancient texts.

3. Understanding the Tanakh

Dr. Arango delves into the structure of the Hebrew Bible, clarifying the terms Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, and Tanakh as interchangeable. He breaks down the Tanakh into its three main sections:

Torah (Law)
Nevi'im (Prophets)
Ketuvim (Writings/Psalms)

He references Luke 24:44 and Luke 24:27 to illustrate how Jesus viewed the Hebrew Scriptures as foundational and prophetic of His life and mission.

Quote:
"Jesus thought about the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh in this threefold ordering."
— Dr. Manny Arango [07:30]

4. Scriptural References and Ordering of Books

Highlighting the differences in book ordering between the Hebrew Bible and typical English translations, Dr. Arango uses the example of Jesus referencing Zechariah from 2 Chronicles 24 in Luke 11:51. He explains that in the Tanakh, 2 Chronicles is positioned as the final book, offering a more cohesive understanding from Jesus's perspective.

Quote:
"If you were to hand Jesus your average English translation, he'd be flipping through it, kind of confused."
— Dr. Manny Arango [12:45]

This discussion underscores the importance of engaging with the Scriptures in their original context to appreciate their intended message.

5. Transition to the Ancient Near Eastern World

Shifting focus, Dr. Arango contrasts the Greco-Roman backdrop of the New Testament with the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context of the Old Testament. He introduces key cultural groups that constitute the ANE:

Mesopotamian
Fertile Crescent
Assyrian
Babylonian
Canaanite
Egyptian

Quote:
"Ancient Near East is an umbrella term that describes Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Canaanite, and Mesopotamian cultures."
— Dr. Manny Arango [18:20]

6. Moral Framework: Then and Now

Dr. Arango discusses the moral landscape of the ANE, characterizing it as a "barbaric world" compared to both the Greco-Roman society and modern times. He points out that concepts like human rights, freedom of speech, and women's rights were alien in the ANE, emphasizing humanity's moral progression over time.

Quote:
"If I say the Greco Roman world, you've got something to kind of attach your mind to... but none of us probably understand what the ancient Near Eastern world is like."
— Dr. Manny Arango [22:35]

He urges listeners to suspend modern judgments when reading Old Testament narratives, recognizing that God's progressive revelation worked within the moral frameworks of each era.

7. Embracing the Contextual Journey

Concluding the episode, Dr. Arango reiterates the significance of understanding the cultural and historical context of the Old Testament. He invites listeners to embark on a journey that not only explores the biblical texts but also immerses them in the world that shaped these writings.

Quote:
"We don't just want to study the Word of God. We want to enter into the world that produced the Word of God."
— Dr. Manny Arango [28:50]

He sets the stage for upcoming episodes, promising an in-depth exploration of both the Scriptures and their ancient context.

8. Final Remarks

Dr. Arango wraps up by directing listeners to additional resources available on thebibledepartment.com and encourages them to subscribe for daily guidance through their Bible reading plan. He emphasizes the transformative potential of connecting deeply with Scripture through understanding its original cultural milieu.

Access Additional Resources:
Visit thebibledepartment.com or follow on Instagram @hebibledepartment for more information and to download the Bible reading plan.

Transcript

Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full. The glory of Jesus. Let's go. Welcome to the Old Testament, AKA the Hebrew Bible, man. Okay, so you made it through the New Testament. Congratulations. I'm proud of you. But now we gotta go through the Old Testament. And so Old Testament is gonna be a longer journey, but you've got a significant win under your belt. Okay, you did it. You read through the entire New Testament and you got acquainted with a world that is not the world you're from. You're going to hear me say this over and over and over again, that reading the Bible is a cross cultural experience. In the same way that I went to Thailand for the first time in my early 20s and I had to learn Thai culture so that I could engage with people in Thailand in a way that wasn't disrespectful, that wasn't weird, and that was contextually applicable. Contextually informed. When you open the Bible, anytime you open the Bible, this is just like getting on an airplane, going through security, going through immigration, going through customs, and entering into a world that is not your world. And imagine the culture shock that we experience just flying from America to Thailand or anywhere that you visited. We should experience that same culture shock when we read the Bible, when we engage with the Bible seriously, we should be aware. I'm leaving my world, I'm leaving the 21st century world, and I'm entering into another world. If you don't feel that, then you're probably not reading the Bible. Well, it means that you're trying to import the Bible into your world instead of exporting yourself into the world of the Bible. And so the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament as Christians love to call it, the Hebrew Bible is a different world. And if you've got an English translation of the Bible, then you probably have an ordering of the books of the Old Testament that just aren't the same ordering that Jesus would've had. I wanna take you to three passages in Luke, one passage in Matthew, and then I'm gonna bring us to 2 Chronicles, chapter 24, so that we can understand the Tanakh. Okay? The Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. So Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, these are interchangeable terms. So Tanakh is an acronym, stands for the Torah, the Nevi'im and the Ketuvim go to Luke 24:44, Luke 24:44. It says this, this is Jesus. Jesus said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses. That's the Torah, the Prophets, that's the Nevi'im and the Psalms, that's the Ketuvim. Okay? So in the same way that the law of Moses is kind of like the capstone of the Torah, the Psalms is the capstone to all the Ketuvim and the prophets. So the law, the prophets and the Psalms. This verse is proof that Jesus thought, thought about the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh in this threefold ordering. Luke 24:27. Let me just back up a couple verses says this, and beginning with Moses, that's the Torah and all the prophets. He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. So for Jesus, the New Testament wasn't a part of the Scriptures. For Jesus, the only thing that was the Scriptures was the Hebrew Bible. And what we are gonna do is we are gonna show how the Hebrew Scriptures are all about Jesus. Cause that's what Jesus says. He says this entire thing that you call the Old Testament, that the Jews call the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, it all points to me. It points to the person, to the identity, to the ministry, to the gospel of Jesus Christ. So let's talk about the Tanakh. One last verse I want to leave you with before we kind of jump off is Luke, chapter 11, verse 51 says, this woe to you. This is Jesus talking again. He says, from the blood of Abel. Actually, I'll back up to verse 50 just to give us a little bit more context. Therefore, this generation will be held accountable for the blood of all the prophets, the that has been shed since the beginning of the world. And how does Jesus frame the prophets whose blood has been shed? He says this verse 51, from the blood of Abel, so that's the book of Genesis, to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes. I tell you, this generation will be held accountable or responsible for it all. Abel to Zechariah. Jesus says that this generation is gonna be held accountable for all the prophets that have died from the first to the last. So where do we find this prophet Zechariah? Well, it's actually in the book of 2 Chronicles. I wanna read 2 Chronicles 24 to you. 2 Chronicles, chapter 24, verse 20. Then the spirit of God came upon Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, the priest. He stood before the people and said, this is what God says. Why do you disobey the Lord's commands? You will not prosper because you have forsaken the Lord. He has forsaken you. But they plotted against him. And by order of the king, they stoned him to death in the courtyard of the Lord's temple. So Jesus In Luke chapter 11 is actually referencing an event in 2 Chronicles, chapter 24. And when he references that event, he says, hey, you're going to be held accountable for all the prophets from the beginning, starting with Abel to the end, ending with Zechariah. But in our Bibles, Zechariah is like in the middle of the Old Testament, but not in the Tanakh. You see in the Tanakh, the Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim, in the Hebrew ordering of the Scriptures, 2 Chronicles was the last book of the Old Testament. And so when Jesus refers to the Bible, this ordering, if you were to hand Jesus your average English translation, he'd be flipping through it, kind of confused, like who put second Chronicles in the middle and who put, who split up first and second Samuel, like Jesus would be looking at our Bibles, kind of like, what is going on here? And so the reason that we've ordered the Bible reading plan, the way that we've ordered it is so that you can encounter the Hebrew Scriptures the way that Jesus and Paul and Peter and Matthew and the rest of the gang would have encountered the Hebrew scriptures. So that's my introduction into the Tanakh. What is the Tanakh? Why does it matter? Why did we order the Bible this way? It may throw you off guard just a little. But remember, the moment you go to a book and you think, oh yeah, Ruth is about to be next, and then it's not. I want you to feel the cultural whiplash. I want you to go, oh yeah, that's me experiencing the culture shock of experiencing the Bible the way that the original cultures would have experienced it, not necessarily the way that I'm used to encountering it. Remember, you are a tourist, you're a pilgrim. You are entering into a new culture, into a new world. Bible nerds, I have an announcement. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos releases May of 2025 in pre orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really God's solution to chaos is never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into. It's something that you intentionally step into. And that starts with aligning your life with God's order. Order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show notes to pre order or head to crushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book. Now back to the podcast. With that said, all throughout the New Testament, we talked about the Greco Roman world. We said that over and over and over again. And I bet it like, if I were to quiz a lot of us, and I said, when I say the Greco Roman world. What does that mean? We would all have some things to say. I know you don't think you would, but we would. First of all, you may think of Greek mythology. You may think of Zeus and Hercules, you may think of democracy, right? The Greeks created this thing called democracy. You may think of like the movie 300, right? You've seen like Spartans and maybe you've seen other, you know, Greek city states or maybe you've seen the movie Troy. So when I say Greco Roman world, you've got something to kind of attach your mind to. And all we did throughout the entire New Testament was we bridged the gap between our modern world and, and the Greco Roman world. Maybe you would think Pythagorean's theorem, Maybe you would think anything from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, the Great, Caesar, there's all types of things that represent the Greco Roman world. And we've all seen movies like Spartacus and Gladiator. So like, we understand what the Greco Roman world was, but none of us probably understand what the ancient Near Eastern world is like. If I say describe what the ancient near east would look like or point to it on a map, you'd probably just have like question marks. And the reality is that the same way that the Greco Roman world is the backdrop for the New Testament, the ancient Near Eastern world is the backdrop for the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh. And so we are getting ready to go into the ancient Near Eastern world, and we have to leave our modern presuppositions behind. We have to enter into the ancient Near Eastern world. So there's some words that are going to be really, really important. Five to be exact. Mesopotamian. Okay? You probably remember that word from high school, right? The Fertile Crescent, like the birth of civilization. Assyrian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian. These are like ancient Near Eastern world words. And Israel existed with neighbors, okay? Abraham and Jacob and Esau and Joshua. They're existing in a world with cultures and norms. And so we are going to always be comparing what's happening in the Bible to the ancient Near Eastern equivalents that we can't really just read the creation story that we find in Genesis without reading the ancient Near Eastern creation accounts, whether that be Mesopotamian creation accounts or Babylonian creation accounts or Assyrian creation accounts. So Ancient near east is an umbrella term that describes Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Canaanite and Mesopotamian cultures. Okay? So those are the five cultural groups that exist under this umbrella that we call the Ancient near east, modern day Middle East. Last thing I need us to know about the ancient near east is that the ancient near east is a barbaric world. I just need us to, like, think about your phone. K. Now, I do know that there's Android users out there, but we don't acknowledge them. So for everyone who's an iPhone user, okay, you are familiar with an iOS update, okay, so you can get your iOS update. And I think something that people don't realize is that humans like humanity, that God has been working with humans for thousands of years to update our iOS, to update our morality. So in the ancient world, no one would understand what you or I would have meant by human rights. No one would understand what we mean by freedom of speech. Nobody would understand what we mean by women's rights. The ancient near east is a barbaric world. I even dare say if Jesus had walked amongst us in the ancient Near Eastern world, people would just shake their heads and be confused as to what he's talking about. Which means that if I'm operating with an iPhone 4, God wouldn't dare try to put iOS 18 on my iPhone 4. So we can't like, look at Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the ancient erased world and say, how dare they do that? Well, it's a world that God is working with, and he is working via progressive revelation to bring humanity to a greater conscious understanding, to a higher level of morality. So the Roman world is more moral than the ancient Near Eastern world, but the modern world is more moral than the Roman world because humanity is on an upward trajectory. I know that we all would love to think, oh, morals are just a thing of the past. Actually, we're getting morally worse, but we're not. We are actually getting morally better. If you compare America today to maybe like 1950, sure, morally maybe we are worse. But if you compare America today to the Roman world, where 50% of people are slaves and there are no human rights and there are no women's rights and it's normal for people to be fed to lions in the coliseum. Actually, we are way more moral, even when it comes to hot topic issues like homosexuality. The Greco Roman world was far more homosexual and far more immoral than we are today. And the further you go back in time, the more immoral life gets. So the ancient Near Eastern world is a barbaric world. So we are about to read stories of Cain killing Abel, of the Israelites marching into Canaan and putting whole civilizations to the sword. We're gonna read a lot of content that you are gonna maybe want to judge. And I'm going to warn you to suspend judgment because God is actually doing something very strategic and he's doing something very loving and very patient. And we can't go back into time with our current definitions and our current iOS updates and put standards on people that not only didn't have that iOS update, but didn't even have that iPhone. Not only did they not have the software, they didn't have the hardware. And humanity is on an upward trajectory. I'll say it this way. The scriptures say that Jesus came in the fullness of time. And had he come any earlier, the world just wouldn't have been ripe. The world wouldn't have been ready to actually receive the message of the gospel. And so there are ideas that God has communicated to us today, to the church that we are ready to receive. And so as we look back at the ancient Near Eastern world, at the Hebrew Bible, I want us to go, yes, slavery would have been normal. It would have been normal for Abraham to go to war, to kill people, to have a slave. This stuff is maybe uncomfortable for me, but God has a plan, and God's working that plan. So with all that said, welcome to the Old Testament. Welcome to the ancient Near East. Welcome to the world of the Word. We don't just want to study the Word of God. We want to enter into the world that produced the Word of God. Welcome to the world of the ancient Near East. And over the next. I don't know how many days. A lot of days. Couple hundred days. We got a lot of days, man. Over the next months, we are going to journey not just through the books of the Bible, but through the world that has produced the books of the Bible. It's going to be amazing. Let's buckle up and let's enter into the world of the Old Testament. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.