The Library

357 entries across 19 collections, plus the 176 answers, 18 deep dives, 19 topics below.

• The life of Jesus

  The events of Jesus' life placed in order and in their setting.

  79 studies

• The books of the Bible

  Who wrote each book, when, to whom, and what it is for, with disputed authorship stated as disputed.

  66 introductions

• Daily life in Bible times

  Food, work, money, houses, travel, family.

  57 entries

• Empires and rulers of the Old Testament world

  The powers the Bible's story runs through: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome.

  20 entries

• Between the Testaments

  The four centuries between Malachi and Matthew.

  10 entries

• Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

  The between-the-Testaments Jewish writings themselves (1 Enoch, Jubilees, Sirach…).

  9 passages

• The church through history

  Constantine, Nicaea, the 1054 split, the Reformation, the branches today. Backbone: Schaff (PD).

  9 chapters

• Josephus on the New Testament world

  The first-century Jewish historian; our chief non-biblical witness to the period.

  9 passages

• Roman writers on Jesus and the first Christians

  The three earliest non-Christian Roman notices of Jesus and the Christians, quoted word for word from public-domain translations: hostile or offhand, each writer's slant named, and honest about what they do and do not show.

  4 passages

• The Dead Sea Scrolls

  What the scrolls are, the 1947 discovery, and what they do and don't change.

  8 chapters

• What the spade found

  What has been dug up that touches the Old Testament, kept apart from what it is claimed to prove. The same, for the New Testament.

  16 finds

• Why trust the Bible?

  The classic lines of evidence, each with its honest counter-case.

  7 lines of evidence

• Why there are different Bibles

  How translations differ and why. Backbone: the ISBE (1915, PD).

  7 chapters

• Why it happened

  The Roman-world reason behind a scene in the text, the census that sent a couple to Bethlehem, the tax that put money-changers in the temple, the stone that dates Paul's trial. Where the history is disputed, it says so and picks no side.

  6 explanations

• The festival year

  What Israel's appointed times did to the city, the roads and the calendar: the crowds Passover brought to Jerusalem, the water and lamps of Tabernacles, the diaspora that gathered at Pentecost, the fast that dates Paul's voyage against the closing sailing season, and how far a man could walk on the Sabbath. It names a festival only where the text names one.

  8 entries

• Genesis and the new sciences

  What was actually dug up and published in the nineteenth century, and what each writer claimed: the night the Babylonian flood tablet was read out in London in 1872, who the flood hero in it really is and why the names have changed, how old the tablets are, and where the two flood accounts' birds agree and differ. Where a source we hold contradicts another source we hold, it prints both and alters neither.

  4 entries

• The inner life in Scripture's own words

  What the Bible's own vocabulary for the inside of a person actually says: the heart word whose first listed sense is mind, the kidneys the King James calls reins, the nose that is also anger, the womb that is also mercy, and the Greek words that render them. It reports what the lexicons say, what the tagged text shows and what each English version chose, and keeps those three apart.

  19 entries

• Where the oldest copies differ

  The places the surviving copies of the Bible do not agree, with what each one prints: the extra generation the Greek Old Testament has in the genealogy of Genesis 11, the two chronological totals, the twenty places the six hosted English versions differ about whether a verse exists, the longer ending of Mark, the woman caught in adultery and the Johannine Comma. It quotes each text, names the reference works behind any historical claim, and picks no winner.

  13 entries

• Law and covenant

  How the covenants and the law work, and how the traditions read them.

  6 entries

Also written here

• Questions

  The Bible questions people ask most, each answered with every major view shown and every source you can trace.

  176 answers

• People of the Bible

  A deep dive on each person: who they were, their life in order, and the points scholars genuinely disagree about.

  18 deep dives

• What Jesus taught

  Jesus' teaching gathered by subject, in his own words, every verse traceable to the Gospel it comes from.

  19 topics

Where readers genuinely disagree, each entry gives every major view side by side, says who holds it, and picks none. Every source, with its licence, is listed on our Sources page.