The Bible is a book sacred to Jews, Christians, and Moslems, who all believe that in varying degrees and varying ways the Bible represents the revelation of a single God (a form of belief known as "monotheism"). For this reason, taken together, adherents of either of those three religions are known as "The People of the Book." In addition, other religious people who do not ascribe to monotheism (Buddhists and Hindus, for example) revere this collection of texts as a source of wisdom and a guide to living. Even non-believers, including people who profess no belief in divinity or in the supernatural, acknowledge the Bible's influence on Western (Euro-American) culture, art, and literature and admire the Bible for its literary qualities.

This guide is intended for two audiences: Those who have owned a Bible for many years but have not explored its complex and diverse riches in any depth; and those who have never owned, read or studied the Bible. The approach of this guide acknowledges that for many people the Bible is a sacred text, but this guide does not espouse any religious perspective (Jewish, Christian or Islamic) although it attempts to represent those perspectives honestly and respectfully. Instead, this guide's approach employs historical-critical methods, developed by scholars over the past two centuries, which seek materially supported evidence for their claims rather than making supernatural claims based on religious faith. Historical-critical methods are based on human reason and the principles of scientific method (that is, they reach conclusions by gathering data, forming a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis with more data, and finally formulating a theory that is examined by other scholars in order to prove or disprove it). Although they are not based on faith, rational historical-critical methods are not incompatible with religious belief, though they sometimes seem so.

The history of Christianity has often been a story of an uneasy relationship between faith and reason. Church writers known as the Early Church Fathers (authors of works in Greek or Latin composed after the books of the New Testament but before the onset of the Middle Ages), sometimes expressed outright hostility to using pagan Greek philosophy in the theological formulation of Church doctrine. "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?" complained Tertullian. By the Middle Ages, however, the Catholic Church had adapted the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers in order to explain Christian beliefs. Some theologians said they sought understanding in order to come to faith, while others said they sought faith in order to come to understanding. Later, Protestants during the Reformation sometimes rejected philosophy outright; "Reason is a whore," Martin Luther objected, insisting on the primacy of a faith derived from reading the Bible. Even today there are Christians who are hostile to the claims of rational methods when their conclusions seem to conflict with biblical assertions. The enduring controversy between the proponents of creationism and the scientific mainstream espousing evolution is one instance of this conflict.

Historical-critical methods reveal that much of the Bible is factually in error, contradictory in its assertions, and a patchwork of diverse legends, proverbs, traditions, and borrowed pre-existing (sometimes pagan) texts. As a result, some people find those methods' conclusions disturbing and decide that a scientific (as opposed to a fideistic, i.e. "faith based") approach to the Bible is incompatible with religious faith. However, most of the mainstream Christian churches and reformed Jewish congregations employ historical-critical methods in an effort to understand how the Bible can be truthful without being factual, that is to say, how it can convey timeless truths about human existence without being required to be historical documents in our modern understanding of the term. By analogy, one might point out that many of Shakespeare's plays are based on historical figures or legends, but that they are historically inaccurate; their historical errors, however, do not diminish the inspirational, dramatic, or artistic value of the plays.

Translations

While Orthodox Jews and Moslems believe that the original languages (Hebrew and Arabic respectively) are the sole authoritative versions of their sacred scriptures, Christians have long had a tradition of translating the Bible into vernacular languages. Except for serious scholars, most readers of the Bible will read it in their native tongues.

But which translation? No translation is perfect. Few English translations can match the King James Version (KJV) for its elegant majesty and it is certainly a sentimental favorite of Protestant readers since it is the version that they hear their preachers read. However, the KJV (which is also known as the Revised Version or Standard Version) has two weaknesses: First, it does not include all the books of the Hebrew scriptures (the so-called apocrypha) that are included in other versions, and second, its language was already antiquated when it was first published in the early seventeenth century (since it was deliberately based on translations a century older) so that it can be confusing to modern readers.

In addition to completeness (inclusion of the apocrypha) and clarity, readers should also seek translations with scholarly integrity. Popularizing translations and paraphrases (for example, the Revised Standard Version, The Living Bible or Good News for Modern Man) have their place in a believer's devotional life, perhaps, but they are not adequate for a serious student of the Bible. Among the recommended translations, therefore, are the New English Bible (NEB), the Revised English Bible (REB), and the Roman Catholic New American Bible (NAB). The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is a revision of an existing translation (the KJV); it has eliminated archaic or obsolete language and hews carefully to a faithful translation of the original texts, which include Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apocrypha, so it is in that sense the most complete version available to a student-reader. It is familiar, accurate, and complete.

Tools for Biblical Study

Study Bibles. Students of biblical literature can benefit from a study Bible, that is an edition of the Bible that provides introductions, explanatory notes, maps, charts and other materials to guide their reading. These materials should be prepared by scholars of repute and should represent a scholarly consensus, rather than a narrowly doctrinaire view that is only attempting to advance a specific theological perspective. An edition of the Bible should also include the apocrypha, that is the books that some traditions exclude from the canon. In addition, one should also be careful to select an accurate, scholarly translation of the Bible. For these reasons, the Oxford University Press New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha is particularly recommended, though others may serve as well.

Parallel Bibles. Unless one reads Hebrew or Koiné Greek, readers rely on translations of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and different translations, though generally consistent with each other in the main, can differ in some of the details. Some readers benefit from employing a parallel Bible in which several different translations are lined up in parallel columns that offer easy comparison. Again, it is important to select a parallel Bible that collects scholarly, rather than simply popular, devotional, or dogmatic translations. Related to this guide is a Gospel Parallel, which provides side-by-side comparison of the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Gospel According to Mark is the earliest gospel, and a consensus of scripture scholars asserts that the Gospels According to Matthew and Luke both employed the Marcan narrative, to which they added stories and sayings of Jesus from another common source (a hypothetical document called "Q," a shorthand for the German word Quelle, meaning "source"). A Gospel Parallel allows one to see how the Gospels of Matthew and Luke use and revise the Gospel of Mark, in addition to showing how they offer different versions of Q material.

Commentaries. One of the oldest interpretive practices is providing a chapter-by-chapter, verse-by-verse commentary on biblical texts. One can find commentaries on all books of the Bible collected in one volume or separate commentaries on a single book of the Bible. Serious students will find the Hermeneia series published by Fortress Press, Cambridge Bible Commentary: New English Bible, and the Anchor Bible Commentary series (translation and detailed notes) particularly valuable, individual volumes for each book of the Bible. Reputable one-volume commentaries include the Jerome Biblical Commentary and the Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary. Other single-volume reference works, like The Oxford Companion to the Bible, provide readers with general introductions to books of the Bible, in addition to articles on biblical history, language, and theology.

Concordances. A concordance is a word list, developed for a specific translation of the Bible, in which each word is arranged alphabetically and each instance of that word's use is cited by book, chapter, and verse. A concordance is useful if you want to see how a particular word is used throughout a single book of the Bible or in different books of the Bible. A complete concordance lists every word that appears in the Bible, though abridged concordances can also be useful since they list significant words.

Inspirational/meditation books. Those who believe in the Bible as a sacred text sometimes find inspirational guides to its reading to be rewarding. In general, however, these are not very scholarly since they are more interested in the personal application of biblical texts to the life of the reader.