Leviticus

The book of Leviticus picks up right where Exodus leaves off.  In many ways it could be thought of as "Exodus 2: The Sequel".  Just like in Exodus, Leviticus is a mixture of narrative and declaration of laws, although Leviticus has much more law and less narrative than Exodus does.  In Leviticus, most of the laws given from God deal with offerings, the priests, cleanliness, and other ceremonial issues.  In fact, the name in Greek is a reference to the Levites, the tribe who were the priests in ancient Israel.  The name in Hebrew means something a long the lines of "and He called", again taken from the opening line of the book (as are apparently all the Hebrew titles of the books in the Pentateuch).

While the majority of the laws in Leviticus deal with offerings, cleanliness and priestly duties, there are other more moral commandments given as well, all though they are heavily surrounded in the text by ceremonial rules.  The laws in Leviticus (and all of the Pentateuch) are interesting, in that they are always presented as part of a narrative. ("And God said to Moses...").  They are never directly declared from a first person perspective, but told in an over-arching narrative about what happened with Moses and the early Israelites.  In Leviticus, all of the narratives outside of giving the law deal with the ordination of Aaron and his sons as the first priests, and things related to them.  The vast majority of the text is the giving of the laws.

The narrative about Aaron and his sons takes place in the middle of the book.  Before this narrative Moses enters the Tabernacle (perhaps immediately after the events ending in Exodus) and is told the laws pertaining to offerings and priests.  After this he is told to have Aaron and his sons come into the tabernacle to be ordained for a week.  After this happens we learn about how two of Aaron's sons perform an unlawful sacrifice, and are immediately killed by God for it.  Two of Aaron's other sons also get in trouble with Moses, although are forgiven after they make their sin offering.  After this narrative occurs, the rest of the book is the giving of laws about cleanliness and holiness.  Some authors see this split between the laws before and after this narratives as being theologically significant, while others apparently do not.  I don't know enough about this topic to make any conjectures on it, though.  It is interesting to see the narrative about the first priests failing at their duties, because it does follow the common pattern we saw before in Genesis about the people called by God not living up to God's standard.  And just like before, some of the sons are shown mercy, while some are not.  (Similar to Noah's Flood and other stories, which feature God's wrath and mercy at the same time).  I guess you might say a big theme of Leviticus is that God has very high standards, but is merciful to those who are repentant.

Exodus

Exodus is the 2nd book of the Bible, and picks up immediately from where Genesis left off, with the descendants of Jacob in Egypt, due to the famine. Each of these 12 sons were the original 12 tribes of Egypt (except Joseph, whose two sons were each tribes of their own).  Immediately the story tells us of how the next generations of Egyptian rulers forget about Joseph and what he had done and make these Israelites their slaves.

Of all the books in the Old Testament, Exodus is one of the most well known.  Its name in Greek means "going out", and it subsequently tells of how God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to be a people of their own, called by God to be his chosen people.  (In Hebrew, the name of the book is actually "Names", because of how the book starts off with the list of names of the sons of Jacob.)

The over-arching structure of the book is something like this:

#1. Israelites are in bondage and early life story of Moses.
#2. God calls Moses to deliver them from Egypt, along with his brother Aaron.
#3. The series of plagues on the Egyptians, culminating in The Passover.
#4. The crossing of the Red Sea, and becoming finally free from the Egyptians.
#5. Entering Sinai, and the giving of the 10 Commandments as well as other laws, both moral, civil and ceremonial (religious), including establishing the priesthood (Aaron and his sons).
#6. People sinfully build a golden calf to worship, breaking God's law (and Moses literally breaks the commandments).
#7. Re-making the stone 10 Commandments, and further reminders of the laws of God.
#8. The building of the Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant, according to the earlier commands God gave (#5).

The action oriented narratives are pretty familiar to most of us from the various movies made about the story.  Something those movie depictions don't always make clear, though, is how this event is what really makes the Hebrew people who they are.  Before this point, they didn't really have the Jewish religion or practices that we normally think of.  While God had already made covenant with Abraham and his descendants earlier in Genesis, it's only at this point where they get a cohesive set of laws and rituals (beyond just circumcision) which really sets them apart.  Much of Exodus (especially in the 2nd half of the book) is describing these laws and regulations (some in very exacting detail).

Exodus ends with the people still in the Sinai peninsula.  They won't reach the promised land for years to come.  But they now are a people free from slavery, and people of their own, with their own laws and religion, distinct from any other in the world.

Genesis

The name for Genesis in both Greek and Hebrew means "Origins", which is of course a very appropriate title for the book.  The origins of the world, humanity, sin, cities, diversity of languages, and the Hebrew people themselves are all told in the book.

This, of all the books in the Bible, might be the most well known.  Many of the famous "Bible stories" come from this book (Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, Noah, Tower of Babel, Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, etc.)  As different as some of these stories are, almost all of them seem to follow a similar literary pattern (to my eyes anyway).  It goes something like this:

#1. God has a plan for people.

#2. The people rebel against him (or act sinfully in some way).

#3. God is angry with them, but graciously has mercy on them in some way. (Although often not without some consequences).

Almost every one of these famous stories fits this pattern.  God creates paradise for Adam and Eve, they rebel, God forgives them, but they can no longer live in the garden of Eden.  Cain kills his brother Able, God punishes him, but protects him from being killed in revenge.  God nearly destroys all life in the Flood, but protects Noah and his family, and promises to never destroy all life like that again.  Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery, but God uses that as a way of saving his family.

One strong theme you will almost certainly come away with from reading Genesis is that "People are bad".  Even the great "heroes of the faith" (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc) all come off pretty bad in these stories.  In fact, as you read these an adult you might be struck by just how odd this is.  I don't know if this is common in other religions, but in the Old Testament, the prophets rarely come across as sinless saints.  The theme seems to be again and again, only God is truly good, but he nonetheless uses flawed people (sometimes *really* flawed) for his divine purposes.  People often talk about how much wrath there is in these Old Testament stories, but there is also a lot of mercy.

Introduction

I'm a Christian, but I have to admit that I don't know the Bible as well as I ought.  Every time I read my Bible I keep discovering so much about it that I didn't know before.  While there are unifying themes across the whole Bible, there are also interesting characteristics unique to each of its books.  I decided that a good activity for me would be to attempt to blog about every book of the Bible, giving a quick synopsis about what that particular book is about.  That way, I could have a better mental map of the context of each book, and maybe also help others who are trying to dive into these various passages of scripture.

As a caveat, I have to admit I have no special training in the Bible, and I quite possibly will be getting some things wrong during this process.  Feel free to correct me in my mistakes, or comment on important aspects of these books that I might be missing.

I am also going to try (if possible) to avoid as much as I can some of the more speculative topics involving some of these books.  The synopses I'll be writing should hopefully be useful for people regardless of the denomination they are a part of (or even whether or not they are religious at all).

Oh, and one last thing.  I won't be literally reading all of these books straight through while I do this, so I definitely might be missing out on some key points to make while I do this.  This will definitely be a high-level "bird's eye view" of these books.