SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The Bible is a biblos, a single book. It has two Testaments, better called covenants or agreements between God and His people. Those two parts of the Bible are inseparably related: the New Testament is in the Old concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed.
Down through the centuries the Bible has been subdivided into sections and has had several different arrangements of its books. The Hebrew Bible came to have a threefold division (Law, Prophets, and Writings), so categorized according to the official position of the writer. However, beginning with the Septuagint and continuing in the Latin and modern English translations, the Old Testament has been given a fourfold topical structure. The New Testament was also given a fourfold topical arrangement of Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Revelation.
When viewed carefully, those sections of the Bible are obviously not arbitrarily put together. Instead, they form a meaningful and purposeful whole, as they convey the progressive unfolding of the theme of the Bible in the person of Christ. The law gives the foundation for Christ, history shows the preparation for Him. In poetry there is an aspiration for Christ and in prophecy an expectation of Him. The Gospels of the New Testament record the historical manifestation of Christ, the Acts relate the propagation of Christ, the Epistles give the interpretation of Him, and in Revelation is found the consummation of all things in Christ.
Geisler, Norman L., and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Rev. and expanded. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986. Print.
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