The Old Testament Survey Thirty-Nine Books, One Redemptive Story

Open the New Testament almost anywhere and you will find the Old Testament under your feet. Matthew begins with a genealogy reaching back to Abraham and David; the apostles preach Christ "according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3–4); the book of Hebrews is one long meditation on Old Testament priesthood and sacrifice; Revelation is woven from Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, and the Prophets. "Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction" (Rom 15:4). The Old Testament is Christian Scripture — the very Bible Jesus read, taught, fulfilled, and called "the word of God" that "cannot be broken" (John 10:35).

From its opening words — "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1) — the Old Testament unfolds a single story under a single God. Humanity falls (Gen 3), and God answers rebellion not only with judgment but with promise: the seed of the woman who will crush the serpent (Gen 3:15). That promise narrows through Abraham, in whom "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen 12:1–3); is carried through the exodus, where the LORD takes Israel to himself as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exod 19:4–6); and is given a royal shape in the covenant with David, whose throne God establishes forever (2 Sam 7:12–16). The Psalms sing of this anointed King (Ps 2; Ps 110); the prophets foresee a suffering Servant who bears the sins of many (Isa 52:13–53:12), a new covenant written on the heart (Jer 31:31–34), a cleansing and a new Spirit (Ezek 36:25–27), and a divine Son of Man given everlasting dominion (Dan 7:13–14).

The Old Testament ends, in a sense, unfinished — its promises outrunning its history, its hopes still waiting. Then the risen Christ opens the Scriptures to his disciples and shows that all of it — "the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms" — was written about him, climaxing in his death and resurrection and the preaching of repentance and forgiveness to all nations (Luke 24:25–27, 44–47). "You search the Scriptures," Jesus says, "and it is they that bear witness about me" (John 5:39). "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Heb 1:1–2). The same lesson is pressed on the church: these things "were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come" (1 Cor 10:11), and the Scriptures are "able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim 3:15).

The Old Testament, then, is the long preparation for the coming of Christ. It is not a collection of disconnected moral lessons but the unfolding revelation of the one God, the one covenant of grace, the one kingdom purpose, and the one promised Redeemer who comes in the fullness of time.

I. What is the Old Testament?

The word "Testament" translates a Latin rendering of the Greek diathēkē and the Hebrew בְּרִית (berit) — "covenant." So "Old Testament" means, more precisely, the books of the old covenant — the Scriptures given before and under the covenants that God administered with Israel from Abraham and Moses to David and the prophets. "New Testament" names the books of the new covenant inaugurated by the blood of Christ (Luke 22:20). The two Testaments are two acts of one drama, two administrations of one covenant of grace, two stages of one revelation.

Christians receive these thirty-nine books as Scripture for the simplest and strongest of reasons: Jesus did. He treated the Hebrew Scriptures as the authoritative, unbreakable word of God (John 10:35; Matt 5:17–18), settled debates by quoting them ("It is written"), and rebuked his disciples for being "slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken" (Luke 24:25). The apostles followed him, grounding the gospel "according to the Scriptures" and declaring all Scripture "breathed out by God and profitable" (2 Tim 3:16). To reject the Old Testament is to reject the Bible of Jesus and the apostles.

"Old," then, does not mean obsolete, inferior, or irrelevant. The old covenant has indeed been fulfilled and, in its Mosaic administration, brought to its appointed end in Christ (Heb 8:13); Christians are not under the Mosaic covenant in the same form. But the Old Testament Scriptures remain the living word of God — the soil in which the gospel grows, the dictionary of its vocabulary, the prophecy of its coming, and a deep well of wisdom, comfort, and the knowledge of God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Testament prepares for the new covenant by revealing the holiness that requires atonement, the sin that requires a Savior, the promises that require a fulfiller, and the longing that only Christ can satisfy.

This means the Old Testament must be read on two levels at once: historically, as the record of God's real dealings with real people in real time and place; and canonically, as one connected story moving toward Christ and gathered into one inspired book. Neither level may be collapsed into the other. We honour the text by reading Genesis as Genesis and Isaiah as Isaiah — and we honour its Author by seeing how every part fits the whole that finds its centre in his Son.

II. The shape of the Protestant Old Testament

English Bibles arrange the thirty-nine books into five groupings. Phase 1 of this survey (the Pentateuch and the biblical covenants) is now complete; the remaining books are being built batch by batch (see the roadmap below).

The five books of Moses — the foundation of the whole canon

Conquest, judges, monarchy, exile, and restoration

The life of faith before God — in lament, praise, and proverb

Judgment, exile, and the great hope of restoration

One scroll of twelve voices, from Hosea to Malachi

Alongside this book-by-book spine, the site offers thematic resources that go deeper on particular questions: OT Themes, The Law, The Psalms, OT Genres, The OT Canon, Historical Context, Christ in the OT, and OT Textual Criticism.

III. The Hebrew Bible: Torah, Prophets, and Writings

The same inspired books are arranged differently in the Hebrew Bible, which the Jewish tradition calls the Tanakh — an acronym of its three divisions:

This threefold shape is reflected in Jesus's own words after the resurrection: "everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44) — "the Psalms" standing for the Writings, of which Psalms is the head. The Hebrew order also gives the canon a different "shape" to the reader's eye: it ends not with the prophet Malachi looking forward, but (in the standard arrangement) with Chronicles and its closing call to "go up" to rebuild — an open ending of expectation.

Two cautions are in order. First, the differing arrangement changes how the storyline feels at its edges, but it does not imply a different inspired corpus: Protestant Bibles and the Hebrew Bible contain the same writings, merely counted and ordered differently (the Hebrew tradition counts twenty-four books by combining, e.g., the twelve Minor Prophets into one and treating Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah as single books). Second, the detailed history of how the canon reached its settled form is a worthy study but one where confident overstatement should be avoided; for a careful treatment see The OT Canon. What matters here is that the church received, through Israel, a fixed body of Scripture that Jesus and the apostles treated as the authoritative word of God.

IV. The Old Testament storyline

Read as one book, the Old Testament tells a single, movement-by-movement story. Holding the whole arc in view keeps each individual book from becoming an isolated fragment.

The shape of the story is unmistakable: a good creation marred by sin, a promise of rescue, a people chosen and redeemed, a kingdom raised and lost, a hope held out beyond the ruins — and a Redeemer who is always coming nearer. The Old Testament is a book that leans forward.

V. Major OT themes

Certain great themes run like rivers through the Old Testament, gathering force from book to book. Each is developed more fully in the dedicated book pages and the thematic resources; here is the map. (For sustained treatment, see OT Themes.)

• Creation and the image of God — the world made good; humanity made to rule, reflect, and rest.
• Fall and sin — the rupture that runs through every page and demands atonement.
• Covenant — God's chosen way of binding himself to a people in promise and obligation (see The Biblical Covenants).
• Kingdom — God's reign, mediated through human kingship, awaiting the true King.
• The presence of God — the central longing: God dwelling with his people (Eden → tabernacle → temple → Immanuel).
• Temple and tabernacle — the meeting place of heaven and earth, a copy of the true (Heb 8:5).
• Sacrifice and priesthood — the costly way of approach to a holy God (see The Law).
• Law and holiness — the shape of life with a holy God who says, "Be holy, for I am holy."
• Land — the promised inheritance, a foretaste of the renewed creation.
• Exodus and redemption — the pattern of God rescuing his people by power and blood.
• Wisdom — the skill of living rightly in the fear of the LORD.
• Prophecy — God's word of warning, promise, and hope through his messengers.
• Exile and restoration — the judgment of covenant-breaking and the promise of return.
• The remnant — the faithful few preserved through judgment.
• Messiah, Son of David, Suffering Servant, Son of Man — the converging portraits of the coming Redeemer.
• New covenant, the Spirit, and new creation — the prophetic hope of forgiveness, an indwelling Spirit, transformed hearts, and a renewed world.

These themes are not separate strands so much as facets of one jewel. Covenant gives the framework; kingdom gives the goal; presence gives the longing; sacrifice gives the means; Messiah gives the person; new creation gives the end. And all of them find their resolution in Christ.

VI. How Christ fulfils the Old Testament

Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them" (Matt 5:17). Reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture means reading it as the book Jesus fulfils. He does so in several distinct ways, which a careful reader will keep distinct rather than blur:

• Direct messianic prophecy — specific predictions of the coming one (e.g., the ruler from Bethlehem, Mic 5:2; the pierced one, Zech 12:10).
• Typology — divinely intended patterns and persons (Adam, the Passover lamb, the bronze serpent, the temple) that foreshadow Christ and find their reality in him (1 Cor 10:1–11).
• Covenant fulfilment — Christ as the offspring of Abraham, the obedient Israelite, the Son of David, and the Mediator of the new covenant.
• Promise and fulfilment — the long-held promises that come to their Yes in him (2 Cor 1:20).
• Recurring patterns — exodus, exile-and-return, kingship, prophet, priest, that climax in him.
• The three offices — Christ as the final Prophet (Deut 18:15), the great High Priest (Heb 7–10), and the everlasting King (2 Sam 7; Ps 110).
• Institutions fulfilled — temple, sacrifice, priesthood, Passover, and exodus all reach their substance in him (John 1:29; 2:19–21; Heb 9–10).
• Jesus as true Israel and faithful Son — succeeding where the nation failed (Matt 2:15; 4:1–11).
• The apostolic use of the OT — the New Testament's own modelling of Christ-centered reading (Acts 2; Heb 1; Luke 24).

The decisive texts are Jesus's own: "everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44; cf. 24:27, 47); "you search the Scriptures... it is they that bear witness about me" (John 5:39); "all the promises of God find their Yes in him" (2 Cor 1:20). The letter to the Hebrews (chs. 1–10) is the New Testament's most sustained demonstration of how the Old Testament's revelation, priesthood, sacrifice, and rest are fulfilled in the Son. (See further Christ in the OT.)

VII. How to read the Old Testament well

The Old Testament rewards careful reading. A few working principles:

• Identify the genre. Narrative, law, poetry, wisdom, and prophecy each have their own conventions. Read poetry as poetry, not wooden prose; read narrative for what it shows, not only what it says (see OT Genres).
• Locate the text in redemptive history. Where does this passage stand in the storyline — before or after the fall, the law, the kingdom, the exile? Its place shapes its meaning.
• Read paragraphs and books, not isolated verses. Meaning lives in context; a verse torn from its setting can be made to say almost anything.
• Distinguish description from prescription. That the Bible records an act (a polygamous patriarch, a brutal war) does not mean it commends it.
• Understand the covenantal setting. Ask which covenant administration governs the text, and how it relates to believers under the new covenant.
• Observe repetition and structure. Hebrew narrative and poetry signal emphasis through repetition, parallelism, and patterned arrangement.
• Trace OT quotations into the NT. When the New Testament cites a passage, follow the link; the apostles are teaching us how to read.
• Use historical context carefully — and use Hebrew as a tool, not a magic key. A word's meaning comes from usage in context, not from etymological speculation.
• Ask how the text leads toward Christ, and apply it through Christ and the new covenant — never as though the cross had not yet happened.

VIII. Common mistakes to avoid

• Treating the Old Testament as a grab-bag of moral stories with a tidy lesson at the end of each.
• Skipping the Old Testament because it feels difficult or strange — and so cutting the gospel off from its roots.
• Flattening Israel and the church together without careful covenantal reasoning, or severing them so sharply that the Bible becomes two unrelated stories.
• Reading the Mosaic law as though Christians remain under the Mosaic covenant in the same form — while also ignoring the abiding moral wisdom the law reveals.
• Confusing faithful typology with imaginative allegory that the text does not warrant.
• Treating every proverb as an unconditional promise rather than a general truth about how life usually works.
• Reading poetry as wooden prose, or prophecy without its historical context.
• Forcing modern geopolitical headlines into every prophetic passage.
• Building doctrines on isolated Hebrew word studies divorced from context.
• Imagining that the God of the Old Testament is a different, harsher God than the one revealed in Christ — when Christ himself is that God, and reveals his very heart (John 1:18; Heb 1:3).

IX. OT Survey roadmap

This survey is being built in phases. Phase 1 — the Pentateuch and the biblical covenants — is complete; the remaining phases will follow.