What Is the Bible? How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything

Bell (Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived), a sometimes controversial but undeniably popular author, speaker, and pastor, has written an introduction to the Bible that is one part biblical theology and interpretational principles and one part spiritual travelogue. Intermixing exegetical wisdom with reflections on life, spirituality, and the universe’s abundance of divine prompts and promises, Bell shares why and how readers might encounter the Bible in a whole new way by considering the relevance of its lessons to daily life as well as to larger life decisions. Bell is an expert in reading Scripture and known for cracking open the context, language, and background of both familiar and obscure Bible stories, but his work can still come off as shallow and glib. Despite not being an in-depth theological treatise, this popular presentation prompts readers to see the Bible as a thoroughly human production meant to elicit questions and connection rather than provide firm answers or theological foes. (May)