There is a unique genre of patterns spanning the Biblical text.  While university scholars worldwide reject the existence of a pattern genre common to the entire Bible, this book intends to prove otherwise.  It addresses the far-reaching implications of these patterns for the origin, authenticity, and quality of the Biblical text we have today.

Where there are patterns, there must also be art.  In other words, the manner in which the words are written in the Bible is also a visual art form.

Shortly before publication of this book, Graham W. J. Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, was asked if he had ever heard the arrangement of the words in the Old and New Testament texts described as an art form.  This question was posed at the official opening of the DIA’s “Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus” exhibition.

This was not a question about medieval illuminations or the meaning of the text, but the selection and arrangement of words.  Beal replied that he had no knowledge of the Biblical text displayed as art.  However, he noted that Islamic culture, which forbids representation of images, has long viewed the text of the Koran as art, and that Islamic artists have a tradition of decorating objects such as furniture with calligraphy and designs imitating Islamic writing.

The possibility of the Biblical text as art is academic anathema.  For the past 150 years, higher critical scholars have claimed their research proves the Bible is a collected anthology of unrelated myths void of aesthetic value.  This is now enshrined as the canon of scholastic orthodoxy.  Nevertheless, the Bible is replete with its own visual genre.  Our goal is to reveal and display this forbidden art.  Even in the sphere of Jews and Christians devoted to the Biblical text, the popular view is that whatever sparkle was present in the original divine transmission was lost in the original transcription written down by aesthetic neophytes known as prophets and apostles.

This author’s interests are drawn from two professions—art and theology—which over the years he has melded into one discipline.  On the pages of this book are thousands of examples of highly-structured patterns from Biblical texts, meticulously laid out in more than a hundred figures as ordered or abstract art.

Is this visual art form based on human words, or have we found the divine style?  The divine words in the Biblical text are indistinguishable from human words.  Objectivity requires the admission that ancient writers may be employing a hitherto unobserved art form.

This book is not a commentary, so it does not progress from chapter to chapter through any particular book in the Bible.  It is not about Bible history, so it does not address events or people in the Bible.  It is not a lexicon, dictionary, or book on grammar in the Bible; therefore, it does not teach the meaning or usage of words.  Rather, it is about how the Bible is written unlike any other book.

The focus of our study is not on what the Bible says, but on the unique Biblical style employed by the divine Author to communicate His Word.  There are important books about figures of speech in the Bible, such as simile, ellipsis, irony, metaphor, etc., that are common to all human language.  However, this book seeks to identify figures of speech found only in the Bible.

The Bible communicates to children.  It is also filled with mysteries and tells us that only God is the Revealer of Mysteries (Dan. 2:47).  With so much attention directed to the ephemeral distractions of our era, the reader is invited to explore hidden things of God.

Identified herein are previously unrecognized mysteries that have always been in full view on the pages of the Bible.  If they were not mysteries to the men who wrote down the Author’s words, they are mysteries to Western civilization.

This book is written for students of the Bible who are interested in knowing more about its origin.  We are exploring the nature of divine communication.  Showing how the Bible is written is not the same as communicating the simple truths of Scripture.  Art is not faith.  The concepts are neither familiar nor easily grasped, and will require meditation on the part of the reader.

We live in an era when the abundance of superficial words has seemingly depreciated the value of divine words.  However, a wealth of technological advances has opened new vistas to explore essential characteristics that distinguish the Biblical text from human communication.  In a similar fashion, over the past 25 years orbiting telescopes have revealed a universe of unimagined enormity.  If the mysteries into which we delve are beyond our era’s comprehension, it remains for future generations to inquire into the Bible’s enigmatic union of pattern and thought.  This writer has taken the subject to the limit of his abilities, for which we apologize to readers who seek more clarity and information.  This enterprise has strained our capacity to report on what has not been previously observed, explained, and defined.  On completion of this book, readers are invited to revisit this preface in order to understand that the conclusion was merely an introduction to unexplored regions.

To our knowledge, this subject was not addressed until the first edition of this book was published in 1987, following nine years of research and compilation of data.  Our study began in the winter of 1978, while taking a seminary course on 1 Peter taught by Dr. Waldemar Degner, Chairman of the Department of Exegetical Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  After observing aesthetic principles in the structure of the Biblical text, this writer asked Degner why he was not addressing the patterns and motifs in the Greek text.  He suggested that I make my own investigation.  Dr. James Voelz, who received his doctorate in Ancient and Koine Greek from Cambridge University in England, encouraged further study, and became the advisor for a 1986 Masters of Divinity thesis titled The Significance of Word Order and Word Count in the Revelation of St. John.

On November 14, 1984, Dr. Degner wrote the following note announcing that the research proposal was accepted: “What do you know!  The Exegetical Department approved your thesis topic.  What a topic it is!  Why didn’t you pick some woodcut and analyze its kerygmatic versus didactic or charismatic motif?  I must say that when your research is completed and drawn up, I shall be eager to see it.”

Degner was making a humorous reference to this author’s prior experience as Assistant Professor of Art at Southern Indiana State University in Evansville from 1974-77 after earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.  Upon enrolling as a full-time student at Concordia Theological Seminary in the fall of 1977, professional experience in fine art, advertising, and publishing led to a full-time position as the Director of Seminary Relations from the summer of 1978 to the spring of 1981.  This position afforded a rare opportunity to interact with outstanding theologians and exegetes about the first edition of this book.

In 1987 the thesis was expanded and published under the title, In Search of the Biblical Order.  It was endorsed by Dr. Robert Preus, President of Concordia Theological Seminary; the aforementioned Dr. Waldemar Degner; Dr. Harold Buls, Professor of Exegetical Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary; David P. Kuske, Professor at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary; Dr. James Voelz, now a Professor at Concordia Seminary Saint Louis; and other scholars.

Within a few years after publication and the sale of about 5,000 copies, readers were sending in further examples of patterns in the text and supplementing those found by this writer.  However, finding more data did not produce more answers.  The readership kept asking what it all meant.  Dr. Voelz had warned there were too many examples for readers to digest.  At the same time there was a compulsion to publish thousands of examples as proof that the data was representative of the entire Bible.  More analysis was needed.  The book did not answer the question on the meaning and origin of the patterns.

In 1990, at the invitation of Dr. Voelz, In Search of the Biblical Order was presented at a sectional attended by scholars from around the globe at the Society for New Testament Studies meeting in Milan, Italy.  The participants were receptive, polite, and inquisitive.  They were also waiting for this writer to explain the implications of the data as a prerequisite to their own evaluation.  At the same time, this writer was waiting for their evaluation.  Identifying something new does not necessarily mean the one who found it knows what it means.  By the fall of 1992 this writer stopped lecturing on the subject and did not order a second printing.  After twenty-five years of further study and accumulation of more data, we venture the publication of this second edition with the realization that far more research is still necessary.

We have just passed through one of the most tumultuous eras of millennial frenzy in the history of Christendom.  Prior generations, beginning in the 1st century, and then in the years 666, 1000, 1260, 1666, and 1900, experienced similar and, at times, horrific political and religious upheaval associated with the expected return of the Messiah.

In recent years, there has been a rapid succession of millennial dates: 1988, 1989, 1994, 2000, 2001, 2007, and 2011.  No matter how many times millennialists are wrong, the false hope of a millennial kingdom of Christ on earth since the time of the 12 disciples has distracted readers from the subject of this book.  More attention is paid to what they want Christ to do than what Christ actually said and how He said it.

This writer’s aim is to take advantage of the current relative malaise in millennial frenzy to draw more attention to the words on the page rather than the fulfillment of unscriptural fantasies.  This hiatus will not last long.  After their most recent debacle, millennialists will inevitably regroup and focus on another fictitious date for Christ’s return.  Like gamblers trying to win back their money, if they just keep guessing, they will eventually be right.  If, perchance, one of them were to guess the correct date, to whom would they communicate their achievement?  If they cannot draw people to their concocted stories of Christ leading a military victory to establish the Christian empire on earth, they resort to bizarre tales of achieving Abraham’s material abundance through a self-defined, manufactured regimen of faithful obedience.

A far greater problem is complacency among too many Christians about the validity of the Biblical text.  At the time of the Reformation in 1517, all parties in the dispute over whether or not people are justified by faith alone in Christ agreed that the Bible was the verbally inspired Word of God.  The Augsburg Confession (1530) makes no reference to the necessity of believing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God because agreement was taken for granted, as was the existence of God, the Trinity, and the Two Natures of Christ.

Christians who doubt the verbal inerrancy of the text fail to comprehend they have no certainty of any fact in the Bible, and are left with nothing but their own opinions on which to base their faith.  Today, even the Catholic Church questions its previous confirmation of divine inspiration published in the 19th century.

“The Vatican Council of 1869-70 repeated the Tridentine phrase ‘At the dictation of the Holy Spirit’; and in 1893 Leo XIII repeated it again in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus:

“All the books and the whole of each book which the Church receives as sacred and canonical were written at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; as so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with divine inspiration that not only does the latter in itself exclude all error, but excludes and rejects it with the same necessity as attaches to the impossibility that God Himself, who is the supreme Truth, should be the author of any error whatever.” ¹

Of all the libraries and databases in the world, the only book that will remain eternal in the heavens is the Holy Bible.  Christ says, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt. 24:35).  The Bible is the perfect Word of God filled with the eternal truth.  For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12).

Revolutionary changes in technology have vastly improved capabilities in searching the Biblical text.  Our research utilized the BibleWorks 8 program, which allows simultaneous searching and highlighting of keywords in nine Greek texts according to case ending and verb tense.  One need only pass the mouse over a word to see its translation.  We can only imagine the capabilities and technological advances that may be witnessed in another hundred years.  However, the world will remain limited by its inability to ask the right questions.

Today, anyone able to recognize Greek and Hebrew characters with a laptop computer can check the data in this book for themselves and become a welcomed participant in the research.  The subject area is so broad, and there is such a vast amount of potential data, that our goal is to provide enough direction for future readers to venture further on their own.

Copyrights are always an issue when Bible translations are quoted.  Throughout this book the King James Version (the use of which is royalty-free) is regularly quoted or paraphrased, unless otherwise noted. 

¹ John Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, Columbia University Press, New York, 1956, p. 31.

 © 2012 Jack M. Cascione