You can find virtually every kind of person in the Bible--every kind of character type.
Some may surprise you.
There are giants and dwarfs, kings and queens, good parents and bad parents, obedient children
and disobedient children, men and women (both holy and immoral), dragons and beasts, lambs
and lions, angels and demons, atheists and believers, the wicked and the righteous, the
foolish and the wise.
There are rags to riches stories and riches to rags.
And plots to eradicate entire ethnic groups.
There are plots to assonate kings.
There are stories reflecting the shameful behavior of otherwise good people, like the
account of King David committing adultery with the beautiful Bathsheba and conspiring
then to kill her husband, Uriah.
Plots involving one nation rising up against another nation.
Plots involving war and peace and love.
I have learned that familiarizing myself with the building blocks that distinguish one kind
of literature from another goes a long ways toward understanding the Bible.
Stories communicate, for example, their message through setting and characters and conflicts.
Poems on the other hand communicate their messages primarily through images.
For example, Psalm 1 revolves around the controlling images of a tree and a chaff.
Read Psalm 1 for yourself and see if that is not the case.
The letters of the New Testament convey their message through formal arguments and the basic
unit is the paragraph.
I think knowing this could help you read the Bible or anyone read the Bible more effectively.
Most importantly, when you read your Bible you are learning about God.
Mortimer Adler--a philosopher and educator of a generation ago--made this observation
in one of the introductory essays to the great books of the Western world, in his article
on God.
"More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than
from answering any other basic question."
I have spent over 40 years reading and contemplating the Bible.
My initial goal was to master its contents.
I have concluded recently that I will never master it.
In fact, the more I tried, the more frustrated I got with that as a goal.
But, I have concluded--along with others--that it all-the-while has been mastering me.
Perhaps you have a Bible, but are not quite sure where or how to begin reading it.
You are not alone.
World Video Bible School has a 10 lesson course designed to get you started.