Preaching on the Stories in Scripture

Abstract

"More than half the Old Testament and more than half the New Testament are comprised of sequences of narratives. The Old Testament is dominated by two versions of an epic which begins with creation and takes us through the story oflsrael (Genesis to Kings and Chronicles to Nehemiah). It also includes a number of shorter stories focussing on individual men and women such as Ruth, Jonah, and Esther; Daniel and Job, too, partly fit this category. The New Testament, in turn, is dominated by four versions of a new kind of story, an account of a messiah who is unsuccessfully crucified; one of these continues with a report of aspects of the early years of the church, persecuted equally unsuccessfully"