The Bible Inside and Out: The History and Ideas Behind Belief

Despite the Bible's pervasive role and importance, it is commonly unread outside of churches and synagogues and often misunderstood. In The Bible Inside and Out, award-winning religious historian William Paul Lazarus presents a unique, research-based look at the Bible that helps a reader separate fact from fiction. In so doing, Lazarus's book helps the reader come away with a deeper understanding of the Bible's complexities and historical reality and, ultimately, a better understanding of how they may want to shape their beliefs. For those readers looking to complete their understanding of the Bible or their own beliefs, this book is an important piece of that puzzle.

The opening section of The Bible Inside and Out provides background about the Bible, including its history and the problems of translating it. The book then, in section two, explains research into biblical stories, including carbon-14 dating and archaeological findings that may help separate fact from fiction. In the book's third section, Lazarus details Jewish and Christian history. He then, in the fourth and fifth sections, provides an in-depth look at accounts contained in each of those religions' Bible, such as hidden meanings behind the Adam and Eve and Noah's ark stories, research into various books, and investigations into the four gospel accounts in the Christian Bible.