Deuteronomy and the Great Adventure Bible Timeline Reading Plan

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Tis_Bearself

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I am continuing on my ongoing project to read the Bible all the way through again. I did this once before much earlier in my life and I figured with age and wisdom it was time for a repeat through-read.

I was using this Great Adventure Bible Timeline Reading Plan to try to put stuff in historical perspective.


I completed Genesis, Exodus and Numbers as shown for Month 1, and I also read Leviticus just because it was there, although I understand why it was left out because it can seem like dry/ repetitive/ distracting stuff especially if someone hasn’t read the Bible much in the past.

However, I have just reached the beginning of Deuteronomy, and was taken aback to see it doesn’t even seem to be on the Bible Timeline Reading Plan. This is where I part ways with the Reading Plan. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy something like 10 times, I think it’s his second most quoted OT book and the Reading Plan doesn’t even have it listed?!

I have not taken the Great Adventure Bible Study, so I am mystified why this would be. Anybody have any insight? Does the formal Bible Study course discuss this book of the Bible separately? The timeline reading plan seems to be sending a message that Deuteronomy is not important. Surely that can’t be the case since Jesus quoted it so much.
 
Yes,

The Great Adventure Bible Timeline Reading Plan only includes the books of the Bible deemed to be historical in content. It is meant to read the 14 or so books and get a sense for the history of Israel. I don’t think they are intending to say that the books left out of the plan are not important (note Isaiah is not on the list either).
 
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Good grief, I did not even notice about Isaiah till you mention it.

I’m glad I did not spend the money on this Bible study. Shaking my head.
 
You have to recognize it for what it is. I thought it was terrific. Isaiah is a prophetic book as is Daniel and Ezekiel.

The intent of the reading plan is to walk through salvation history to get an overview. Then you can fill in with the other types of literature. This is so you don’t get bogged down (as you say you did) in a book like Leviticus. Every book in the Bible is obviously important but the designers of this plan are trying to avoid someone picking to the Bible and trying to read it straight through.

So far, I’ve gone through the Bible Timeline, Matthew, Acts, the Prophets, Revelation, James, The Mass, Mary. I think by far the best two for me were the Bible Timeline and Matthew.
 
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I guess it might be good if the person like I said had not read the Bible before. I read it all the way through once before and did have a Bible history course in high school that, while not the greatest, at least hit the high points, so I’m not a total newbie.
 
I think it’s better if you look at the Bible Timeline chart:


The purpose of the study is to help people see “The Big Picture” of salvation history. So many of us know a lot of individual stories in the Bible, but we don’t see how it all fits together. To put it another way, we know the strands, but don’t see the picture they create when woven together.

Towards this end, Cavins has picked 14 books that, when read together in sequence, give us that narrative “big picture.” Note, there is only one Gospel in there, too. This is not to say that these 14 books are the most important, or that the other 59 books are only of secondary importance. Not at all. The only purpose is to have people first read through the Bible to see the story. It’s a way of reading through the Bible that many people never experience either because they decide to read it front to back (like a novel) or they flip around here and there as they feel like (like a reference book).

The expectation with the study is that you first read through these 14 books to get the story. Then you read through the 14 books again while also plugging in the other 59 books in context.

He’s not trying to leave out large swaths of the Bible, but to help people make more sense of it. It helps us, for example, to know what is happening in the larger narrative in order to understand what the prophets are talking about.
 
Joe_5859 said:
He’s not trying to leave out large swaths of the Bible, but to help people make more sense of it. It helps us, for example, to know what is happening in the larger narrative in order to understand what the prophets are talking about.
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OK, you and the other guy make some good points.

But is it really that hard to “make sense” of the Bible?

Many Protestants seem to be able to make sense of it pretty well, even at a young age. Catholics may disagree with them on the interpretation of certain teachings, or on particular translations of Scripture, but the Protestants don’t seem to be at sea with the general gist of what’s going on.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
But is it really that hard to “make sense” of the Bible?
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Maybe it depends on the person. 😁

Speaking from my own experience, I grew up Catholic, and went to Catholic schools. I heard a lot of Scripture at Mass every Sunday. I read through our Children’s Bible several times in elementary school. So I knew a lot of the stories. But I never really connected them to the larger Story.

For me, making the mental shift to viewing the Bible as one story of salvation history rather than a loosely connected compendium of short stories was monumental in opening up my understanding of the Bible and what God is trying to communicate to me and the whole human race through the Scriptures.

It’s like I had been playing for years with all these LEGO pieces, but then someone finally showed me the box and the instruction manual. Where before I was content to wander around making quaint little cars and rudimentary planes, now I see that all this time I had the pieces to build the Millennium Falcon. Everything just sort of clicked.

Now, depending on where you are at, maybe you have already read and learned such that you have that mental framework in place. If so, more power to you. 🙂
 
Did you check out the Agape link I posted above?

Also, Matthew from Ascension was very good.
 
I gave up on “canned” bible studies long ago…now i use the bible, CCC, Church Fathers, and Church documents exclusively.
 
Thanks for the Agape link. Our posts crossed in the refresh, so I didn’t see it till I came back to the page.

I’ll check that out. if that doesn’t work for me, I’m probably going to go the way of Hereiam and stick with my independent reading study.
 
Joe_5859 said:
shift to viewing the Bible as one story of salvation history rather than a loosely connected compendium of short stories was monumental in opening up my understanding of the Bible and what God is trying to communicate to me and the whole human race through the Scriptures
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This ^ is what the GBA is about. I took the course at a parish, and it had a similar effect. Plus, there was a lot of insightful points mentioned by Cavins throughout the course.
Joe_5859 said:
now I see that all this time I had the pieces to build the Millennium Falcon
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You must keep this a secret. The instructions for building the Millennium Falcon that are coded into the Bible must not fall into the hands of Dan Brown. If he finds out he’ll write a book about it!
 
This is the best Bible Study I have participated in. It is well worth the time and money to take the course. The books Cavins uses trace the Salvation history time-line from Genesis to Christ. The books not used are considered supportive and supplementary and can/should be read if you have time and desire. I concur with Joe_5859: it’s an overview of Salvation History. Many books take place during the same historical time frame, so Cavins uses the book that is central to the story. As a former Baptist, I had over 50 years of intense Bible study, yet I learned more from this study. I was able to see how the Catholic teaching was the true interpretation of scripture and read Maccabees for the first time. The course requires many hours of reading preparation. It is not meant to be used as a “read through the Bible tool.”
 
Dlee said:
The books not used are considered supportive and supplementary and can/should be read if you have time and desire.
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I’m glad you found it useful, but I am extremely uncomfortable with this statement being made about Deuteronomy and Isaiah. They may not be required for understanding a historical timeline. But speaking as a cradle Catholic who is already familiar with both Catholic teaching and the Catholic Bible, to me they are pretty central to understanding the Gospels and New Testament.

Also, the fact that he picks out one Gospel to use doesn’t indicate to me that said Gospel is “central to the story”. As I was taught back in high school, the Gospels were written for different purposes and different audiences, and a Catholic Bible study course in my opinion should cover that.

I’m sure there’s an audience for what Cavins is doing but it is really not my cup of tea. I already wasn’t too thrilled with the initial e-mails I received when I tried to follow his reading plan with the suggested e-mail reflections advertised on the website. The one or two e-mails I got were not really in depth, several more of them never arrived at all (not even in my spam filter), and meanwhile I was flooded with about 5 spam advertisements for a video the website was selling on how to improve your marriage, which I didn’t want or need and hadn’t expressed any interest in.
 
Not quite true. There are 4-5 layers of weekly readings: the Narrative Book, the Main Reading (chapters and verses) and Going Deeper (the entire book), Additional Bible Readings, and the Catechism Readings. It is all charted out. Isaiah is read during the Divided Kingdom, the Return, Messianic fulfillment. I’ve read and studies the Bible my entire life and learned so much from this study - i.e., about the different covenants and what they meant, about historical customs and practices, and that the Queen Mother was referred to as the Queen (Mary!) If you wanted something from, say King David, you asked his mother. This is the best study out there. Cavins adds so much information during the dvd portion - the ahah! moments.
 
Deuteronomy and Isaiah are part of the required reading - whoever said they weren’t is wrong. Also, he does use more than Luke. He uses Matthew, Mark, John, Acts, Romans, I Corinthians, Galatians, Hebrews, I Peter, Revelation, I Timothy, Philippians, I Thessalonians, James, Colossians. I participated in a Bible Study at my Parish, we had workbooks and weekly dvd, 2 hours per week. We didn’t do anything via email. I loved it. There is a 90 Day Reading Plan at the end of the book, but that is for after you’ve completed the study - to refresh your memory of the salvation history story. Best to you.
 
Whatever you attended is therefore different from the Bible Reading Plan that I linked, then, and we’re talking about apples and oranges.

I am not in a position where I can go attend a weekly course, and the cost of just buying the materials to watch on my own was very high.

I’ll be looking at the other course called Agape that someone linked because that looks like maybe it is more for me and my needs as a longtime Catholic.
 
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