Study The Church

The Old Testament Story

Almost all Christians know some or many of the OT stories. Therefore, this timeline will not give details about different stories but, instead, will trace the major events of the Old Testament as told in the Old Testament books. This timeline will also not connect the events to different OT books as that will come in another lesson. A hint before we start: frequently Christians are familiar with the chronology up to the time of Solomon. After that, it does get a little confusing. So, if you find yourself uncertain of events after that, you are not alone.

"In the beginning, God created heaven and earth" is how the OT starts. Genesis chapters 1-2 record that God created the universe and everything in it over a six-day span.
On the last (sixth) day of creation, God created Adam and Eve. God then rested on the seventh day.
Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, where they ate fruit from trees and also plants. They were in total obedience to God.
They disobeyed God by eating fruit from the one tree which God had told them not to eat. They were punished by being removed from Eden and had to start finding their own food and taking care of themselves.
Adam and Eve had children: the first two were Cain and Abel. Cain eventually killed Abel. Cain did this because he was jealous of God's favor toward Abel.
Adam and Eve had other children, who had children, they had children, etc. Eventually God looked saw that most people were not following Him, except for Noah and his family.
God decided to kill everyone who was disobedient except for Noah and his family and to began humanity again with them, since they were the only people who remained loyal to God. God told Noah to build an ark, and, once it was completed, Noah and his family (wife, three sons, and their three wives) and sufficient animals to repopulate the world went on board. It rained for 40 days and nights and caused a flood. Everyone outside the ark was killed in the flood.
Once the flood was over, Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives began to have children, who had children, they had children, etc. Eventually God looked down and saw that again most people were not following Him.
This time God decided not to kill those who were disobedient. Instead, He decided on a new plan: to choose one man, Abraham, to be the founding father of God’s people (1950 BC).

Note, different scholars give different dates for Abraham. Some will date him as early as 2100 BC and others as late as 1700 BC.

God and Abraham entered into a Covenant to seal this relationship.

God's part: God promised to make Abraham's descendants into a large nation and give them the land of Israel forever (also known as the Promised Land).

Note: God did not literally say the "land of Israel" but instead told Abraham that all the surrounding land would one day be his descendent's property. This makes up the nation of Israel today. (Plus land that the Israeli nation gave to Palestinians, but that is another story.)

Abraham's part: Abraham's descendants would circumcise all baby boys at 8 days of age.
Cornerstone: The Covenant was one of the two cornerstones of the OT/Jewish faith. The Covenant established the people of God. The word "established" is important because it means God began a people who He could call his own, and it included a requirement for joining God's people: Before Jesus, anyone wanting to be a part of God's people would first became part of the Covenant. For men, this meant circumcision and acceptance of and loyalty to God; for women, this meant acceptance of and loyalty to God.

Abraham became the father of Isaac who became the father of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel.
Israel had twelve sons, and, later, when their families became large enough in Egypt, they became twelve tribes.

After they left Egypt during the time of Moses, the tribe of Joseph split and became two half-tribes.

Joseph, one of Israel's sons, became a powerful man in Egypt. A famine caused the Israel's family to move to Egypt where there was plenty of food.
After Joseph died, the Egyptians made the Jews into slaves.
430 years later, God told a man named Moses to lead the Jews out of their slavery and guide them to the Promised Land (present-day Israel).
God told Moses that the people should call him "Yahweh" (which in Hebrew means "I am"). This occurred at what is called the "Burning Bush," where Moses talked to God.
Moses asked the Pharaoh in Egypt to let the Jews go, but Pharaoh said "no."
God sent 10 disasters (also called "Plagues") on the Egyptians to try to get the Pharaoh to change his mind.
The last disaster involved an Angel going throughout Egypt and killing the firstborn son of every family except for those Jews who killed a lamb to eat and painted its blood on their doorposts. The Angel "passed over" those houses and left the firstborn sons inside unharmed but killed the firstborn sons of all Egyptian families. This is the origin of the Jewish celebration of Passover.
After this occurred, Pharaoh allowed the Jews to leave. Moses led the Jews out of Egypt (1450 BC or in the 1200s BC, scholars disagree on the years).
But, after the Jews left, Pharaoh changed his mind. He and his army set out after the Jews. By that time, the Jews were beside the Red Sea. The jews looked back, saw the Egyptians coming, and complained to Moses that they would die in the desert. God told Moses to raise his staff toward the Red Sea; when he did this, the waters parted. The Jews walked through the parted Red Sea to the desert on the other side. Pharaoh's army got to the Red Sea, saw that it was parted, and decided to follow. Once the army was on the path inside the Red Sea, the waters fell on them and drowned the entire army.
Once in the desert the Jews were free. You would think this was a good thing, and you would be right. But they had a major problem: they did not have any laws/rules/regulations in which to run their tribes nor did they understand what they needed to do to please God. (Think back to the Covenant with Abraham: God told Abraham to have the Jews circumcise all baby boys but did not give any other instructions.) . Therefore, God gave the Jews the Law, which consisted of the 10 Commandments, general rules for living together, which foods to eat, the sacrifice system, the priesthood, the instructions for building the Tabernacle (a large tent where the sacrifices would be made), etc. You can think of this as a nation-building tool because it provided the Jews with what they needed to have a complete political, social, and religious system.

Cornerstone: The Law was the second and final cornerstone of the OT/Jewish faith. The Covenant established the People of God and the Law told the People of God how to live. (**This is an important point to understand, because Jesus would "fulfill" this system. In order to understand what Jesus fulfilled, it is important to understand how the Covenant and Law worked together.) The two actually complemented each other: to join the people of God you accept the Covenant, and to understand how to please God you followed the Law.

The Law of Moses contained 613 different rules. Some of the contents of the Law:

10 Commandments
What to eat and not eat. (Many Jews still follow these guidelines and today call the food they can eat "kosher."")
What the Tabernacle and all its parts would look like.
General rules for living together. For example, if your cow breaks out of your yard and does damage to someone else's yard, what do you do.
Where to worship. God told them to build a big tent, known as a Tabernacle, and described the furniture they would make to put inside it.

See a picture of a life-sized replica of the Tabernacle here.

Which festivals to have.
What to sacrifice. In the Law, God decided that whenever someone disobeyed him, that person could only have that disobedience (sin) removed if the person brought an animal (and the Law has lists of the different animals for different sins) or some food (grain, etc., the Law has lists of the different foods for different sins) to the priest. The priest killed the animal and then the sin would be forgiven. As for the food sacrifices, sometimes the priest got to keep it and sometimes the priest would burn it. (The Law told exactly what to do.)

The Jews traveled across the desert to the Promised Land.
Once there, they sent in twelve spies to search the land, one from each of the twelve tribes. This made sense: since they were going to attack the land, they needed to know what to expect from the people who lived there and what the land looked like.
When the spies came back, ten of the spies said the land could not be defeated, but two said it could. Most of the Jews believed the ten spies and did not believe that they could defeat those who lived in the Promised Land.
God decided that the Jews would wander for forty years until the unbelieving Jews had died; God would then give the Promised Land to their children.
At the end of the forty years, Moses died and Joshua became the leader. The Jews then entered the Promised Land, attacked the people living there, and conquered most of it.
Once the Promised Land was (mostly) controlled by the Jews, it was divided among the different tribes. Then Joshua died.
After Joshua, the Jews did not have a consistent leader. From time-to-time, when it was necessary, God raised up leaders (known as "judges"); sometimes they governed the Jews and sometimes they led them into battle. Once a judge died, his (or her) children did not inherit their authority as judge, but instead there was no judge until God decided that another one was needed.
Eventually the Jews demanded a king, and God gave them Saul.
Saul proved unfaithful to God, and, after he died, he was replaced by David.
David enlarged the Israelite nation and secured the borders. He was the most successful Jewish king, and he captured and made Jerusalem his capital.

Go here to read a short, complete history of Jerusalem.

At David’s death, Solomon became king and eventually built the Temple (950 BC) in Jerusalem. The Temple took the place of the Tabernacle. (Scholars do not know what happened to the Tabernacle nor does the Bible say.)
Solomon eventually disobeyed God by worshipping gods other than Yahweh. At Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah).
[Note: We are coming to the confusing part!]
The Jews in the Northern Kingdom (Israel) continued worshipping other gods plus Yahweh, and God sent the Assyrians to defeat the Northern Kingdom approximately 200 years later (in 722 BC). The Assyrians then took many of the Jews back to Assyria to ensure that they would not revolt.

A sidebar idea: This is a good place to pause and consider why studying Old Testament history is important. For example, understanding OT history helps one to understand these two questions from the New Testament: Why did the Jews hate the Samaritans? And why did Jesus use a Samaritan as the hero in the “Parable of the Good Samaritan?"" The answers are intertwined and you can find them here.

Meanwhile in the southern kingdom of Judah: Some of the kings only worshipped Yahweh, but most of the southern kings worshipped Yahweh plus false gods. Eventually, the Babylonians defeated the Assyrians and then God sent them to defeat the southern kingdom (Judah). They destroyed the Temple and took some of the Jews back to Babylonia to live in exile (586 BC). (This included Daniel.)
Once in exile in Babylonia, the Jews repented of worshipping false gods and only worshipped Yahweh. Those Jews in exile needed a place where they could worship Yahweh since the Temple had been destroyed. They developed "synagogues" to take the place of the Temple. (There was one Temple but many synagogues; synagogues are like churches, there is not one church but many churches.)

For more on the history of the Tabernacle, Temples, and synagogues, go here.

The Persians defeated the Babylonians in 539 BC, and the next year the emperor, Cyrus, proclaimed that Jews could return to Israel and rebuild the Temple.
Many Jews did return and rebuilt the Temple (516 or 519 BC, I have seen both.).
Soon after more Jews returned and rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem.

The Protestant Old Testament ends there, around the year 450 BC.

Interesting note: God's people of the Covenant were known by three names in the Bible
Hebrews: This word comes from a regional word meaning "wandering ones." So, other people in the region saw this group of people wandering about (they did not build cities at first) and so called them the "wandering ones" or "Hebrews"
Isrealites: This comes from the name of one of the forefathers of the Jews: Jacob, whose name was changed to "Israel."
Jews: This name came much later on after Solomon. The Jews made up 12 tribes (technically 11 tribes and 2 half-tribes). The largest tribe was Judah, who dominated the Southern Kingdom after Solomon. The Northern Kingdom was named Israel. After the Israel (the northern kingdom) was destroyed, most of its people were taken back to Assyria and disappeared. Since most of the remaining people were from the tribe of Judah, eventually this was shorted (as words tend to do over time) to just Ju, or "Jew."