What is Scripture?

Until we answer that question we will not properly understand it's message.

I submit this simple proposition: The Bible is not a text book, but a worship book.

For the last 300 years Scripture has been treated as if it were a text book that can only be comprehended only by historical and literary dissection and analysis. 

But Scripture is not a text book, but the church's holy worship book, and can only be understood in "the breaking of the bread". (Luke 24:35)

It is given in the form of ready to use liturgy. Not only the Psalms, but nearly all of the prophets, and other vast segments in Old Testament and New. Consider for example the Sanctus, Benedictus, Magnificat, Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer and in my mind the entire Sermon on the Mount. Much of Romans, Ephesians, Colossians and sections such as 1 Corinthians 13 are liturgy. To say nothing of the entire book of Revelation which I understand to be a Mass from heaven's point of view filled with the liturgy of heaven.

The church implicitly understands this which is why her liturgies, prayers, creeds, hymns, sacraments and practices have always been composed of Scripture. But in the last 300 years she has lost the explicit understanding and has turned the Bible into a text book.

Besides liturgy what else do we have in Scripture? Lectionary. The story of God's people to be read aloud during their worship until the end of the age. What else? Likely catechism. Books such as Proverbs, catalogues of virtue and vice such as is found in Galatians chapter five, and others.

Once we understand what Scripture is, and that its natural habitat is the church's worship, then we will better understand it's message.