[This is the best way to subdivide the Bible and is the way we recommend. There are three categories in the Old Testament and three categories in the New. The nature of the three categories in both Testaments is the same.]
[1. History: From Genesis to Esther there are seventeen books on history. It begins from God’s creation of the universe and continues until the Israelites were returned from captivity to rebuild the temple and the holy city. This is the history and journey of God’s people before Him; it is everything that they have passed through before God.
2. Experience: There are the five books of poetry: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. There may be some history records in these books, but they are not on history. There are also some prophecies in them, but their main emphasis is not prophecy. These five books emphasize the spiritual experiences of God’s saints before Him. If there were only the history in the preceding category without the experience that followed, we could only see the historical facts without understanding the inward condition under those circumstances. These five books of poetry in the Bible precisely describe the inward condition of the chosen people before God under various circumstances and experiences. When we read these five books of poetry, we can find out the spiritual experiences of these people before God.
3. Prophecy: From Isaiah to Malachi there are seventeen books. There are seventeen books of history at the beginning, and seventeen books of prophecy at the end, with five books of experience in the middle, making up a total of thirty-nine books.]
[1. History: The four Gospels plus the Acts are five books on history. The four Gospels cover the experiences of the Lord Jesus on earth together with the experiences of His disciples in following Him. The Acts shows us how the disciples testified for the Lord everywhere they went. These five books are all on historical facts.
2. Experience: These are the twenty-one Epistles from Romans to Jude. These twenty-one books speak of the Christian experiences. The Gospels and Acts show us what Christ and the Christians encountered. They show us their activities, their moves, and their works. The twenty-one Epistles explain to us the inward spiritual experiences of Christians.
3. Prophecy: There is only one book, the book of Revelation.
Whether it is the Old Testament or the New Testament, they both begin with the history, then proceed to tell of the experiences, and end with the prophecies. For the individual Christians, the order is the same. First, we have our history before the Lord. Next, we develop some spiritual experiences during the course of the history, and then there is the hope and the anticipation for the future. The Old Testament recounted much history and many spiritual experiences; then at the end, it spoke of the saints being filled with hope and anticipation of the coming of Christ. The New Testament is written the same way. There are many facts and experiences, and then at the end, there is an expectation and a hope, which is the return of the Lord Jesus. No Christian can avoid these three steps. There are the history, the experiences, and the expectation.]
[The Old Testament was originally in the hands of the Jews. Some teachers among them were authoritative Bible expositors. The Jews called them rabbis. The word rabbi means teacher. In the ancient time, the subdivision of the Old Testament among the rabbis was like what the Lord Jesus said in Luke 24:44. In other words, the Lord’s word in Luke 24:44 was based on the subdivision of the Old Testament into three categories by the rabbis.]
[These refer to the Pentateuch. Sometimes the Jews abbreviated the Pentateuch as Moses. When the Jews mention Moses, sometimes they are not referring to the person Moses, but to the five books of the Law written by him. These five books are sometimes simply called the Law. When the Jews refer to the Law, they mean the Pentateuch. Therefore, among the Christians and the Jews, there are five different ways of referring to the first five books of the Old Testament. They are referred to as the Pentateuch of Moses, as the Pentateuch, as the Law of Moses, as the Law, and as Moses.]