040 For Paul, as well as for the Gospels as they have come down to us, the most meaningful moments of Jesus’ life were his crucifixion and—beyond that—his resurrection. It is not difficult to understand, however, why contemporary cartoons and...

027 Throughout his long and extraordinarily productive career, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) turned repeatedly to the Bible as a source of inspiration for his paintings, drawings and etchings. Although his composition, themes and pictorial style...

More than two centuries ago, it occurred to a few European intellectuals that Jesus as a figure of history may have been quite different from Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. With the awareness of that potential difference, the scholarly quest for the Jesus of history began. At that time and in...

37 Walk through the religion section of any major bookstore, and you’ll see an amazing array of Bibles. The broad selection of translations (also called versions)—and the seemingly endless ways in which they are packaged—is without historical...

015 016 In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture Alister McGrath...

030 Adam and Eve discussing women’s liberation, Methuselah happily listening to Golden Oldies, metal detectors for animals entering Noah’s ark, Moses with the tablets of the law being questioned by civil libertarians, King David increasingly...

034 “Read the fine print,” the lawyers tell us. They’re usually talking about contracts, but the warning also applies to the fine-print footnotes in some editions of the Bible—such as those for the New Testament in the Oxford edition of the New...

013 Five million Christian pilgrims travel each year to the grotto of Lourdes in southwestern France, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a peasant girl in 1858. The map of Rome is spotted with churches dedicated to the Queen of...

024 Gazing in adoration at the newborn Jesus, three shepherds join Joseph and Mary in the manger in an early-15th-century painting of The Nativity, attributed to the Netherlandish artist Robert Campin. Outside the rustic shed appear two...

028029 028 Imagine you are a medieval artist assigned to paint the Annunciation—the very moment when Mary first hears the news that she has...

24 Simon Magus is arguably the worst of the bad guys in the history of the church.1 One of the major sins, simony, the act of buying an ecclesiastical office, is named for this magician who clashed with the apostle Peter. It gets worse. In the...

Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden serves as the foundation for Western theologies of the way we are: sinful and guilty. As the New England Primer of 1683 succinctly states: “In Adam’s fall, We sinned all.” For their sin, Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden in Genesis 3.

034 It often comes as a surprise to laypeople to learn that ancient copies of the Bible vary, sometimes in minor ways, but sometimes, also, in important ways. Variation exists between any two manuscripts of the Bible, even when they are written...

17 During the Enlightenment, the historian’s job changed dramatically. It was no longer enough simply to chronicle events reported in earlier, authoritative texts. Tradition and authority had become suspect, as investigation and reason became the...

018 About 40 scholars, all specialists in the study of the historical Jesus, are seated around a table. They have just completed their discussion of a saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. The time has come for each to vote on a simple but...

050 050 Pity the poor newspaper writer. Every day he (or she) must grab the reader’s attention, convey something newsworthy in a fresh way and do it all in the space of a few inches of type. Is...

025 Who was Thecla? Little known today, especially in Protestant churches, Thecla of Iconium enjoyed fame perhaps second only to Mary, mother of Jesus, in the early Christian era. Thecla’s anonymity is all the more remarkable because women were...