The Bible Plot

A New Reading of the Bible That Keeps the Opening Plot

This course teaches a way of reading the Bible developed by HNNH at Lingua Divina. This page explains what the reading does, what it keeps, and how you can check it.

It keeps the opening plot in view

The reading starts with the first chapters of Genesis and does not leave them behind. Genesis 1 builds a whole scene before the man appears: the deep and the light, the land, the plants, the lights, the creatures. Then the identity is placed in it. Genesis 2 to 4 add the rules for union and for missing the mark.

Every later story is read against that opening. A new place is new ground. A new character is a new identity standing on it. The same groups of words come back each time. Lesson 5 explains this in full.

It keeps one narrative model

The reading uses one model the whole way through, in every book: YHVH offers an identity, I AM is the identity, and Elohim, the judges and rulers, make it real. The Bible calls the setting a court, and the court stays the same from Genesis to Revelation. Lesson 2 and Lesson 3 cover it.

It reads names and places as part of the story

People’s names and place names are read by their meaning in Strong’s concordance, not just as labels. The name tells you what state is being lived in, and the story runs out in line with it. Lesson 9 shows the method and Lesson 10 works through Ruth 1.

You do not have to accept it on trust

You do not need any religious commitment to use this course. You need the text and a word list. Every step can be checked:

  1. Read the verse in the Bible in Basic English, with the chapter around it.
  2. Look up each name and place in Strong’s.
  3. Put the meanings in place of the titles and read it again.
  4. See whether the reading fits the passage. If it does not fit, say so.

Where the lexicons disagree, or a meaning is a reading rather than a dictionary entry, the lessons say so. Lesson 10 shows this for Elimelech, Moab and Ephrathites.

It reads from the reader’s side

In this reading the people, places and events show how identity works inside the reader. Nothing is read as an outside being acting on people. That is why the word “God” is read as the plural court of judges, and why the course says the “he” in the text is the reader (Lesson 3).

Where it comes from

The reading is built on the Bible’s own vocabulary, checked word by word against the Hebrew and Greek, and it starts from the plot the text sets out in Genesis 1. Other readers see the text differently. Same Text, Different Rivers sets out a history of how the Bible has been read.

Sources