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Don't Know Much About the Bible: Everything You Need to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned

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Overview

With wit, wisdom, and an extraordinary talent for turning dry, difficult reading into colorful and realistic accounts, the creator of the bestselling Don't Know Much About,series now brings the world of the Old and New testaments to life as no one else can in the bestseller Don't Know Much About The Bible. Relying on new research and improved translations, Davis uncovers some amazing questions and contradictions about what the Bible really says. Jericho's walls may have tumbled down because the city lies on a fault line. Moses never parted the Red Sea. There was a Jesus, but he wasn't born on Christmas and he probably wasn't an only child.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews for this product are not available at this time.

Author Information

Bio of Kenneth C. Davis

Kenneth C. Davis is the New York Times best-selling author of Don't Know Much About ' History, Don't Know Much About ' Geography, Don't Know Much About ' The Civil War, and Don't Know Much About ' The Bible. People magazine has said that "Reading [Davis] is like returning to the classroom of the best teacher you ever had." A frequent visitor to classrooms and teacher groups, Davis has appeared often on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, National Public Radio, and many other television and radio shows. He is a contributing editor to USA Weekend, which features his Don't Know Much About ' quizzes on a variety of subjects. Born and educated in Mt. Vernon, New York, he now lives in New York City and Vermont with his wife, Joann, and their two children, Jenny and Colin.

Customer Reviews

  • 5 stars out of 5Great for beginner or intermediate students of the Bible

    Posted October 28, 2009 by John Allen, Gulfport, MS

    Scholarship on the Bible can be a complex and daunting task for anyone. Many devote their entire lives to it - whether as theologans or secular scholars.

    Davis takes a scholarly approach in "Don't Know Much About the Bible", helping to enlighten readers through a framework of synopsis and scholarship. The book is lively and written in a very entertaining, easy-to-understand voice. The book includes a full bibliography for those wishing to dig deeper.

    Davis poses and tackles such questions as: Who wrote the Old Testament? Who really killed Goliath? Did Jesus have brothers and sisters? among many others. And, in this reviewer's opinion, does a great job in asking some questions readers may not have even thought to have themselves. I recommend this book to family, friends, and strangers alike.

Additional Info

Imprint

PerfectBound

Filesize

3.88 MB

Number of Pages

560

eBook ISBN

9780060775889

Excerpt from: Don't Know Much About the Bible by Kenneth C. Davis

When I was in the sixth grade, a building was going up across the street from my school. Like most ten- or eleven-year-old boys, I preferred watching bulldozers in action and concrete being poured to whatever was being written on the blackboard. I spent a lot of sixth grade gazing out the window. I don't think I learned anything that year.

The redbrick structure I watched rising with such absorbed fascination was a church. Unlike the soaring Gothic cathedrals of Europe or the formidable fortress-like stone church my family attended, this was not a typical church. It was being built in the shape of a mighty boat. Presumably, it was Noah's ark. Most of us have a mental picture of Noah's ark and we all think it looks like a cute tugboat with a little house on top.

Except that Noah's ark didn't look anything like that. You can look it up yourself. Right there in Genesis, you'll find God's Little Instruction Book, a set of divine plans for building an ark. Unfortunately, like most directions that come with bicycles or appliances, these are a little sketchy, providing little more than the rough dimensions of 300 by 50 by 30 cubits (or roughly 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high). God told Noah to add a roof and put in three decks. Beyond that, God's instructions came without a diagram, unless Noah threw away the blueprints when he finished. So we should count Noah putting this thing together in time to beat the rains as one of the first miracles.

Many years after I gazed out that classroom window, I discovered that the original Hebrew word for "ark" literally meant "box" or "chest" in English. In other words, Noah's ark actually looked like a big wooden crate, longer and wider than an American football field, and taller than a three-story building. So the architect who designed that church to look like the Titanic may have understood buttresses and load-bearing walls. But he didn't know his Bible.