Take a look, it's in a book
July 11, 2025
Many years ago, probably in my tweens or early teens, I decided one summer to just read my way through the Bible. It was a slog; I got bored and gave up somewhere in I or II Kings, if I'm remembering right. Over the years I also realized that reading the thing in a vacuum like that isn't particularly useful. There's just too much stuff in there to just let it all wash over you like it's a paperback novel.
I started thinking about it again many years later, while I was working my way out of my Obnoxious Atheist phase, probably about the time I saw references online to the book Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman. I'm pretty sure the first mention I saw was on the Straight Dope web site, in a five-part series there. (Note: the links within the articles haven't been updated; if you want to read the series you'll have to go to the home page and search for it, then link to them that way.)
The history of the Bible was far more interesting than the work itself, probably due to me being ten years older when I saw that, and maybe also because without belief the book itself looked like the cobbled-together collection of works that it is. Seeing what went into its construction was an interesting glimpse into the times when the Tanakh/Old Testament and the New Testament were written.
For a while I had the idea of a large Annotated Bible. Similar to how when you pick up a copy of one of Shakespeare's plays you'll get an opposing page or column that translates the original writing into something more understandable in the modern era, and brings in some cultural context to help out. Something like that needs to exist for the Bible, I thought.
I started piecing together in my head what it would look like: an introduction at the beginning of each book describing the traditional holding of how and when it was written. Setting the stage for its place in history, both when it was alleged to have been written and when it actually was written. Pulling out words and phrases that are interesting, from translation fade or with a meaning that has changed over time, or for arguments over what something really says within its historical context. It would probably be a life's work, I figured, but it would be nice if someone did it.
Then YouTube decided to send me videos by a Biblical scholar named Dan McClellan, which are again interesting nuggets that hint at the larger world available than what's in a surface reading. And one of those videos was recommendations and discussion about study Bibles... which are basically the exact idea I'd come up with. So after I got back from my vacation I bought one. Thirty-five years later a second look, without the baggage of belief, is in order.
