All 34 Topics — Jump to Any
Topics 1 & 2 — Getting Started
Start Here
New to the site? Start with these two guides. The first tells you who these learning guides are written for. The second shows you how to use them and what to expect as you move through the material.
For Whom These Guides Are Intended
Written for the non-academic church pastor, lay preacher, Sunday School teacher, Bible Study leader, and anyone with high interest and limited formal training in biblical studies.
Explore Topic 2Using These Learning Guides
How the guides are organized, a note on the use of scholarship, and the relationship between honest inquiry and Christian faith. Start here if you are new to the site.
ExploreTopics 3–7 — Bible Basics
Bible Basics
What the Bible is, who wrote it, how it reached us, how it is organized, how the two testaments relate to each other, and why understanding it matters. The foundation every serious reader needs.
What Is the Bible?
Not one book but a library of 66 books written across 1,500 years in three languages by dozens of authors. What binds it together, and what makes it unlike any other book.
Explore Topic 4Authorship of the Bible
What does it mean that God inspired the Bible? Who were the human authors, what do we know about them, and what does scholarship say about traditional assignments of authorship?
Explore Topic 5How Is It Organized?
The Bible is arranged by type, not in date order of writing. Understanding its major sections and the fact that the books are not in historical order is essential to reading it well.
Explore Topic 6The Two Bible Testaments
The Old Testament lays the historical and theological background necessary to bring much meaning to the New. Much of the linkage between them is found in the 400-year gap that separates them.
Explore Topic 7Origins of the Bible
From oral tradition to written text, from manuscripts to canon, from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek to English. How the Bible moved from spoken word to the translations we read today.
ExploreTopics 8–12 — Bible Overview
The Biblical World
Why studying the Bible matters, followed by a broad overview of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the four centuries between them, and the land and people at the center of the biblical story.
Why Study the Bible?
Faith and knowledge are not enemies. Jesus commanded us to love God with our minds. A thinking faith is a more durable faith — and a more honest one.
Explore Topic 9The Old Testament
From creation to the return from exile — 2,000 years of the biblical story. The Torah, the Historical Books, the Psalms and Wisdom literature, and the Prophets.
Explore Topic 10The New Testament
Four Gospels, one history of the early church, thirteen letters traditionally attributed to Paul, eight general epistles, and one apocalyptic vision — 27 books that changed the world.
Explore Topic 11Between the Testaments
Four hundred years separate the final prophet from the first Gospel. Empires fell, a revolt reshaped Judaism, and the world Jesus was born into took shape during this silent period.
Explore Topic 12Biblical Israel & Judah
The land, the monarchy, the exile, and the archaeology. Understanding biblical Israel — its geography, its history, and the daily life of the people at the center of the Old Testament story.
ExploreTopics 13–19 — Bible Empires
The Empires That Shaped the Bible
The Bible was written inside history, not above it. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and others each left deep marks on the biblical text and the people who produced it.
The Assyrian Empire
The most feared military power of its age destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE and dispersed its population. How Assyria shaped the prophets and what Jonah says about God's mercy.
Explore Topic 14The Babylonian Empire
Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, burned the Temple, and carried Judah into exile. The defining catastrophe of the Old Testament — and how that crisis produced some of the Bible's most profound writing.
Explore Topic 15The Persian Empire
Cyrus the Great decreed the return of the Jewish exiles Babylon had carried away. The Persian period produced Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, and shaped the Judaism Jesus was born into.
Explore Topic 16The Grecian Empire
Alexander the Great spread Greek language and culture from Egypt to India. Koine Greek became the common language of the Mediterranean world and the language of the entire New Testament.
Explore Topic 17The Seleucid Empire
Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Temple and banned Jewish worship. The Maccabean revolt that followed produced the book of Daniel and the festival of Hanukkah.
Explore Topic 18The Roman Empire
Every person in the New Testament lived under Roman rule. Understanding Rome, its occupation of Judea, its roads, its violence, and its religions is essential for reading the Gospels well.
Explore Topic 19Earlier and Later Rulers
Beyond the great empires — Egypt, the Philistines, the Arameans, Edom, the Hasmoneans, and Herod the Great. The biblical neighbors and later rulers who shaped both Testaments.
ExploreTopics 20–24 — Bible Languages
The Languages of the Bible
The Bible was written in three ancient languages and shaped by a fourth. Each language carries meaning that no English translation can fully convey.
Hebrew
The primary language of the Old Testament. Hebrew is a verb-centered language whose vocabulary for spiritual realities is rooted in the physical world. Many words carry more than any English translation can convey.
Explore Topic 21Greek
Every book of the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, the common Greek of the ancient Mediterranean world. Its precision and range shaped how the gospel was expressed across the Roman Empire.
Explore Topic 22Aramaic
The everyday spoken language of Jesus and his disciples. Portions of Daniel and Ezra are in Aramaic, and the words Jesus spoke from the cross were Aramaic. It bridges the Hebrew and Greek worlds of the Bible.
Explore Topic 23Latin
Latin is not a biblical language but it became the language of the Western church. Jerome's Vulgate shaped Christian theology and worship for over a thousand years and influenced every major English translation that followed.
Explore Topic 24Other Early Languages
Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, and others each touched the biblical world through ancient manuscripts, neighboring cultures, or early translations that carried the Bible to new communities.
ExploreTopics 25–28 — Bible Books
Practical Tools
Guides to the individual books of the Bible, choosing a translation, approaches to reading, and the tools of sound interpretation.
The Books of the Bible
A guide to all 66 books — who wrote each one, when, to whom, why, and a summary analysis of its content and place in the biblical story.
Explore Topic 26Choosing a Bible
There is no single correct English translation. A guide to the major translations — what each prioritizes, what it sacrifices, and how to choose the right one for your purpose.
Explore Topic 27Reading the Bible
Six major approaches to reading scripture — devotional, historical-critical, literary, canonical, liberationist, and communal — and what each reveals that the others can miss.
Explore Topic 28Interpreting the Bible
Context, genre, original language, and the original audience — the four tools that prevent the most common reading errors. A practical introduction to biblical hermeneutics.
ExploreTopic 35 — Bible and Scholarship
Enjoy Learning?
If you are on this site, you must enjoy learning about the Bible. You know that understanding it is much more than recognizing and reciting Biblical stories. It is about understanding how the Bible came to be, along with the historical and cultural contexts that shape its content and the language and translation issues that impact the messages drawn from it. This is where scholarship comes in. Today there is access to amazing scholarship like never before. Keep checking here for more additions.
Topics 29–34 — Going Further
Going Further
Six extended explorations covering the development of the Christian church, and the Bible's intersection with prophecy, religious authority, history, science, and literature.
The Church
From a handful of disciples in Jerusalem to two billion believers worldwide — the development of the Christian church across twenty centuries of history, councils, creeds, and reformation.
Explore Topic 30The Bible and Prophecy
What biblical prophecy actually is, how the prophets worked, the messianic texts and how Jewish and Christian traditions read them, and how to read apocalyptic literature honestly.
Explore Topic 31The Bible as a Religious Text
How the Bible functions as sacred scripture in Jewish and Christian communities — its authority, its place in worship and devotion, and how it compares to other religious scriptures.
Explore Topic 32The Bible and History
What archaeology confirms, what it cannot confirm, where the Bible and the historical record diverge, and how to hold faith and honest historical engagement together.
Explore Topic 33The Bible and Science
Scripture and science are not natural enemies. Genesis and cosmology, evolution, the flood, miracles, and the scientific life of faith — major points of intersection examined honestly.
Explore Topic 34The Bible and Literature
The Bible as literary art and as the foundation of Western literature — its narrative techniques, its poetry, its parables, and its profound influence on writers from Milton to Toni Morrison.
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