Intro to video 1

Every story has to take place somewhere, and very often locations have a special meaning or significance evoked by events that already took place there. In this video, we explore how biblical authors use settings in the narrative to meet the reader's expectations or to mess with them. Paying attention to locations and timelines in biblical stories unlocks deeper layers of meaning.

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Discuss

• There are lots of type-scenes in biblical narrative, for example when a man meets a woman at the well. What type-scenes can you identify?

1. What connections come to your mind when you read about the sea in the bible?

2. A garden?

3. The wilderness?

Intro to video 2

Design patterns are one of the key ways the biblical authors have unified the storyline of the Bible. Individual stories across the Old and New Testaments have been coordinated through repeated words and parallel themes. These patterns highlight core themes of the biblical story and show how it all leads to Jesus!

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Discuss

The biblical authors carefully wove their stories into repeated patterns to reveal some truths (eg. the human condition: we see, desire, take and many suffer).

• Do you think the Bible was written and edited into these patterns? Or are we reading these things into the text?

The New Testament writers show Jesus as the culmination of the repeated patterns mentioned above (eg. Jesus gave up his own desire to not die for God's desire to save humanity and as a result many are saved).

• How could this understanding of design patterns change how we should read the Bible? (When reading the Hebrew Bible, look ahead and think about if and how the New Testament writers connect with the themes and patterns we find. When reading the New Testament, be aware of the highlighting of patterns originating in the Hebrew Bible).