How to Use This Book

There is one chapter for every book of the Old Testament, thirty-nine in all, in the order your Bible prints them. You can read straight through. You can also keep this beside your Bible and open it to whatever book you are reading.

Your Bible does not print these books in the order things happened. So right after the opening essay comes The Story of My People: the whole history, from Abraham to the year I was born, told once and straight through, with every book in its place. If you read only one thing before you start, read that.

Here is how each chapter works.

It opens with a box called At a Glance. It tells you who wrote the book, when, where it fits in my people’s story, where I quote it, and which chapters to read if you only have time for three.

Then comes Words to Know, so any unfamiliar word is defined before you meet it.

Then comes The Book in Brief: what actually happens in the book, or what it actually says, from beginning to end, in plain words. If you have never read the book, it is all you need to follow the rest.

Then the chapter itself, in short sentences and plain words. The big books get long chapters. The small ones get short ones. I will not pad a book that is one page long.

After it there is a box called Check It Yourself. It sends you to your own Bible so you can see whether I told you the truth.

At the end there is The Short Version, the few lines that hold the whole chapter.

Every chapter also has its own free page on LessonsOfJesus.com, at the name of its book, such as LessonsOfJesus.com/genesis. The pages add Go deeper sections with the longer history, the archaeology and the arguments behind the chapter.

At the back of the book there is a simple timeline, a Who’s Who of the people the book names, and the notes.

Two promises before we start.

One. You can check everything. Bible verses look like this: (Luke 4:18). That means the book of Luke, chapter 4, verse 18. History facts have a small number after them, and the notes at the back of the book tell you where each one comes from.

Two. I will not put words in my own mouth. These were the scriptures I grew up on, and when I tell you how I read one of them, I will stay with what the gospels actually remember me saying and doing. Where they remember nothing, I will tell you that plainly. Silence is part of the record too.

Which Bible this book quotes. Every Bible quotation here comes from the World English Bible, a modern translation that is in the public domain. No one owns it, and anyone may copy it. Where it prints God’s name as Yahweh, this book prints the LORD, as most English Bibles do. If your Bible words a verse differently, that is normal. Translators make choices. Where a choice changes the meaning, I will tell you.