THE LIBRARY · 662 BOOKS · 232 PODCASTS & EPISODES · 47 COMMUNITIES & DESTINATIONS · 10 MAPS
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Podcast EpisodeData Over Dogma
Examines what biblical texts call angels and demons and contrasts those texts with later popular images.
BookRobert Alter
A landmark demonstration of how Hebrew Bible stories create meaning through repetition, dialogue, type-scenes, and narrative craft.
Podcast ShowN. T. Wright; hosts
Ask N.T. Wright Anything earns a place as traditional but non-fundamentalist New Testament theology; its recurring Q&A format gives listeners an ongoing way into Jesus and resurrection.
Podcast ShowMarty Solomon; Brent Billings
BookElaine Pagels
Historian Elaine Pagels uses the Gospel of Thomas and conflicts among early Christians to explore how competing understandings of Jesus, revelation, authority, resurrection, and spiritual knowledge were narrowed as canon, creed, and episcopal structures developed. Personal reflection appears beside accessible historical narrative.
BookRobert A. J. Gagnon
Robert A. J. Gagnon makes a long, detailed traditionalist case that biblical texts consistently reject same-sex relationships. He examines ancient context, creation, Israel’s laws and stories, Jesus, Paul, and the larger question of how Scripture should guide Christian ethics. The book became a major academic reference for the conservative side of this debate.
Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, and Daniel J. Harrington
Three biblical scholars—a Jew, a Protestant, and a Catholic—describe how their communities can receive scripture religiously while also using historical and literary criticism. Their essays clarify where the traditions share problems, where their interpretive authorities differ, and how each author personally negotiates tensions between inherited belief and modern scholarship.
Joel M. Hoffman
Biblical linguist Joel Hoffman examines forty familiar claims that he believes depend on mistranslation, missing cultural context, or later assumptions imposed on the text. Written for nonspecialists, the examples show why knowing what English words appear on a page is not always the same as understanding what an ancient Hebrew or Greek text communicates.
Podcast ShowPete Enns; Jared Byas
The Bible for Normal People earns a place as progressive/post-evangelical Christian biblical scholarship; its recurring interview; teaching format gives listeners an ongoing way into Bible and deconstruction.
BookTheron D. Williams
A pastor’s accessible argument for recognizing Africa and Black presence within biblical geography, genealogy, and interpretation.
BookChristian Smith
A sociologist’s critique of biblicism from inside evangelical Christianity and an argument for a more Christ-centered authority.
BookPeter Enns
Biblical scholar Peter Enns argues that the Bible’s diversity, ancient cosmology, morally troubling narratives, and internal tensions are features readers must engage rather than problems to conceal. Using Israel’s stories, wisdom literature, the Gospels, and Paul, he challenges modern expectations of error-free factual reporting and proposes a Scripture shaped by ancient human authors through whom communities continue wrestling with God.
BookIsrael Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman
Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein and historian Neil Asher Silberman compare the Bible’s stories about ancient Israel with evidence found in the ground. They argue that many foundational stories took written shape much later than the events they describe and reflect the concerns of the kingdom of Judah. The book shows how archaeology can change the way readers understand the patriarchs, Exodus, conquest, David, Solomon, and the Bible’s formation.
Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler
Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler examine passages from Israel's Scriptures that Christians have read in relation to Jesus, including creation, exodus, prophecy, suffering, messiah, and resurrection. For each, they place the Hebrew Bible's historical and literary meanings beside later Jewish interpretation and New Testament or Christian rereading, showing both genuine continuity and consequential difference.
BookKaren Armstrong
Karen Armstrong follows the Bible as a changing collection of texts interpreted by Jewish and Christian communities across centuries. Rather than offering a chapter-by-chapter guide, she emphasizes how worship, politics, scholarship, printing, reform, modern criticism, and changing ideas of authority have repeatedly shaped what readers believed the Bible was and how it should be used.
John Riches
Biblical scholar John Riches introduces the Bible's varied writings, the worlds in which they arose, the formation of Jewish and Christian scriptures, and the many ways these texts have shaped—and been reshaped by—later cultures. The second edition also attends to newer scholarship and the Bible's continuing political and global influence.
Podcast ShowHelen Bond; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Working historians make current biblical scholarship approachable without pretending historical method resolves theology.
BookScot McKnight
Scot McKnight argues that Christians do not simply read and obey the Bible without interpreting it. Every church follows some teachings directly, adapts others, and decides how Scripture’s story speaks in a different time. Using women in church leadership as his main example, he invites evangelical readers to make that process more honest and thoughtful.
Podcast ShowDaniel McClellan; Daniel Beecher
Pairs a Bible scholar with an atheist co-host to expose what texts say, what later traditions add, and why the distinction matters in ordinary life.
Podcast EpisodeData Over Dogma
Traces biblical demon language while asking how supernatural explanations can become harmful when applied to mental distress.
BookJohn H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton
Examines biblical language about demons and spirits within its ancient cultural and literary worlds rather than using the texts as a direct catalogue of invisible beings.
Podcast EpisodeMisquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Explores how biblical and later Christian ideas about demons, ghosts, and Satan developed rather than appearing as one unchanged system.
Podcast EpisodeDaniel McClellan; Daniel Beecher
A concrete case study in reading ancient cosmology on its own terms rather than forcing a modern scientific model into the text.
Podcast EpisodePete Enns; Jared Byas; Yolanda Pierce
Corrects false neutrality while showing that critical study can deepen or unsettle faith without prescribing one outcome.
BookMarcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
A reconstruction of Paul that distinguishes radical, conservative, and reactionary Pauline voices within the New Testament.
BookMatthew J. Lynch
An accessible guide to violent portrayals of God in the Hebrew Bible that neither dismisses the texts nor explains away their moral difficulty.
BookKaren L. King
King translates and studies the surviving Gospel of Mary, its manuscript gaps, theology, conflicts over authority, and place in early Christianity.
BookNorthrop Frye
A literary critic maps the Bible’s myths, metaphors, and narrative architecture as a shaping grammar of Western imagination.
BookJohn J. Collins
A university-level historical and literary introduction to the Hebrew Bible and its ancient contexts.
BookJohn Barton
Biblical scholar John Barton traces how the Bible’s writings emerged, were collected, and came to function as Scripture in Judaism and Christianity. He follows the story through composition, canon, interpretation, worship, and moral use. His larger point is that the Bible is not a simple blueprint for either faith; communities have always had to interpret it.
BookRegina Dawn Akers; Foundation for the Holy Spirit
Akers presents a metaphysical interpretation of the New Testament centered on oneness, surrender, willingness, acceptance, and releasing separation-based thought.
Peter Enns
Enns presents the Bible as an ancient, ambiguous, and diverse collection that forms wisdom rather than delivering a timeless answer key. He moves through biblical examples to argue that interpretation has always required communities to reason, adapt, and imagine faithfully in new circumstances. The book offers Christians a positive account of Scripture after rulebook reading, rather than only a critique of inerrancy.
Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart
Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart teach readers to notice the different kinds of writing gathered in the Bible and to ask what a passage meant in its original literary and historical setting before applying it now. Chapters offer practical guidance for epistles, narratives, law, prophets, wisdom, psalms, Gospels, parables, and Revelation.
Podcast EpisodeHelen Bond; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Cornelis Bennema connects ancient mimesis to New Testament formation without treating “imitate me” as simple personality cult. This exact object earns inclusion because hearing the exchange performs work the 574-book shelf cannot supply as directly.
BookRachel Held Evans
Rachel Held Evans approaches the Bible as an ancient, diverse library of stories rather than a single flat instruction manual. Moving through origin, deliverance, war, wisdom, resistance, gospel, fish, and church stories, she pairs creative retellings with memoir and accessible scholarship to ask how Scripture can remain sacred, truthful, and morally engaging without literalism or denied contradictions.
BookRichard Bauckham
A detailed argument that Gospel traditions are more closely connected to named eyewitness testimony than many critical models assume.
BookJohn H. Walton
Old Testament scholar John Walton argues that Genesis 1 reflects an ancient Near Eastern concern with assigning functions and establishing cosmic sacred space rather than offering a modern account of material manufacture. On this reading, the seven days order a functioning world and culminate in divine rest in a cosmic temple.
BookKonrad Schmid and Jens Schröter
Biblical scholars Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter describe the long, uneven processes by which Israelite and early Christian writings were composed, collected, revised, transmitted, and eventually treated as scripture. Their account places the Hebrew Bible and New Testament in related but distinct histories and shows that neither collection appeared all at once in its final form.
BookBart D. Ehrman
Bart D. Ehrman introduces New Testament textual criticism by following the handwritten manuscripts through which the text survived before printing. He explains copying practices, accidental and intentional changes, the number and kinds of variants, and the methods scholars use to compare witnesses and reconstruct earlier readings, while connecting the subject to his own loss of confidence in evangelical inerrancy.
Podcast ShowBart Ehrman; Megan Lewis
Makes specialist New Testament and early-Christianity questions audible in bounded episodes led by a major historical scholar.
BookN. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird
A large integrated introduction to New Testament history, literature, theology, and early-Christian context.
Podcast ShowIan Mills; Laura Robinson
Podcast ShowChris Tilling; Matthew Lynch; guests
BookDeryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West, and Thomas Bohache, editors
A large collection of queer readings across the biblical canon that expands interpretive questions beyond a few contested passages.
BookCheryl Bridges Johns
Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics proposing Spirit-shaped, participatory engagement with Scripture as sacred, dangerous, and mysterious.
BookRichard B. Hays
A compact account of how the Gospels reread Israel’s Scripture to identify and narrate Jesus.
BookMarcus J. Borg
Marcus Borg introduces a historical and metaphorical way of reading the Bible for people who can no longer treat every passage as a literal, inerrant report but still want Scripture to carry spiritual meaning. He addresses the Bible’s origin, authority, and interpretation, then reads central themes and texts through a progressive Christian understanding of God, Jesus, and transformation. The aim is not to reduce Scripture to ancient history, but to recover it as a humanly formed vessel through which the sacred may still be encountered.
BookEsau McCaulley
Esau McCaulley develops what he calls Black ecclesial interpretation: a way of reading Scripture shaped by the historic Black church, committed to biblical authority, and alert to the text's resources for justice, dignity, and hope. Through studies of policing, political witness, anger, slavery, and identity, he argues against both readings that sanctify oppression and accounts that assume liberation requires abandoning the canon.
BookN. T. Wright
N. T. Wright argues that the Bible’s authority is really God’s authority exercised through Scripture—not the authority of a flat rulebook. He places the Bible within the larger Christian story of creation, Israel, Jesus, the Spirit, and the church’s mission. This allows him to defend strong biblical authority while explaining why faithful reading requires history, context, and judgment.
BookWilliam J. Webb
Evangelical scholar William J. Webb proposes a 'redemptive-movement' approach for asking whether biblical instructions represent a final ethic or a movement away from the social arrangements of their ancient world. He tests the method through slavery, the status of women, and same-sex relationships, reaching different conclusions in each case.
BookPhyllis Trible
Phyllis Trible closely reads four biblical stories shaped by violence against women: Hagar, Tamar, the unnamed concubine in Judges 19, and Jephthah’s daughter. She pays attention to the words, silences, and ways interpreters have minimized what happens. Her readings serve as memorials to people whose suffering can disappear when readers feel obligated to defend the Bible.
Podcast EpisodeDaniel McClellan; Daniel Beecher
Explains why Bible translations differ and how linguistic choices can carry theology, giving listeners tools to compare versions without panic.
Community / DestinationWestar Institute
A paid membership community centered on critical, public-facing scholarship about Christian origins and religion.
Podcast EpisodeHelen Bond; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Helen Bond replaces the Christian stereotype of legalistic Pharisees with source-based Jewish diversity. This exact object earns inclusion because hearing the exchange performs work the 574-book shelf cannot supply as directly.
BookRichard Elliott Friedman
An accessible introduction to source criticism and the layered composition of the Hebrew Bible.
BookElizabeth Cady Stanton and the Revising Committee
A foundational nineteenth-century feminist critique of biblical texts and their use in restricting women.
BookWilda C. Gafney
Womanist readings that recover women and marginalized figures within the Torah and monarchy narratives.
Podcast EpisodeIan Mills; Laura Robinson
The hosts use one influential essay to show why “Gnostic” can obscure more than it explains about Thomas. This exact object earns inclusion because hearing the exchange performs work the 574-book shelf cannot supply as directly.