Bible

Reading the Bible in the languages it was written in, with the original text set beside a fresh English translation, verse by verse. The aim is to make the source text approachable even without the languages: you can follow the English and glance across to see where each phrase comes from. It is a personal study rather than a finished edition. Alongside the books, thematic studies read across them: the parables of Jesus, the mechanism of the cross, grace and the will, a timeline of biblical history, a who’s-who of its main characters, and the people who carried and shaped the early church.

• Old Testament

  The Old Testament in the original Hebrew (the vowel-pointed Masoretic text) set beside the public-domain JPS 1917 English translation of each verse. All thirty-nine books, from Genesis to Malachi.

• New Testament

  All twenty-seven books of the New Testament in their original Koine Greek, set beside an English translation of each verse, from Matthew to Revelation.

• Parables of Jesus

  Every parable Jesus told, gathered from the four Gospels and explained one by one: the story, where it is found, and what it means, grouped by theme from the Sower to the Sheep and the Goats.

• Bible timeline

  The sweep of biblical history era by era, from creation and the patriarchs through the Exodus, the kingdoms, exile and return, to Jesus and the early church, with approximate dates.

• Bible characters

  A who’s-who of scripture: the major figures of the Old and New Testaments, from Adam and Abraham to Moses, David, the prophets, Jesus and the apostles, each introduced in brief.

• The Cross

  The mechanism of the cross explained in detail: how the New Testament says the death of Jesus actually works: sacrifice and blood, substitution, propitiation, redemption, reconciliation, justification, victory over the powers, and union with Christ.

• Grace and the Will

  The long debate over how salvation is applied and what part the human will plays: Pelagius and Augustine, the Council of Orange, Luther and Calvin’s monergism, Arminius, Dort and Wesley, the Eastern synergy, and Rome’s settlement at Trent.

• Martyrs

  A table of Christian martyrs through history (who they were, when and where they died, how they were killed and what they died for), from Stephen and the apostles in the New Testament, through the Roman persecutions and the Reformation, to the missionary age and the present day.

• The early church

  A who’s-who from the apostolic fathers to Gregory the Great and the early medieval West: apologists, the great theologians and councils, and the teachers later judged heterodox like Marcion, Montanus and Arius, for a fair picture rather than one narrative.