An Attempt to Learn the Bible and Some Resources, If You Want to Too

01 Jun, 2025

I just want to preface this to say that this is all just a, for fun, thing. It's mainly driven by curiousity. Although my immediate family and partner are not religious in much sense at all, I've had and have friends who are, and a large part of the media I consume is Western in nature. And a large chunk of that, I'm sure, is influenced by the Bible or its religions that followed thereafter. One specific example of this is The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir. I'm a fan of the series, and if you take a look at some of the reviews or if you've read it, you know that it is rich in Biblical references. And SO MANY of it has flewn past me, I'm sure.

Some others that you might've read or heard about are The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis, East of Eden by John Steinbeick, and His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman.

Now, I've read some Children's versions of the stories, back when I visited my aunt's home frequently. I think it says something when my adult aunt who is fully capable of reading the actual bible, had a thick Children's version as a reference, for herself. She had no kids then and had just recently converted into Catholicalism. The actual book, or book(s), I suppose, are so heavily laced with metaphors, historical context, and has so much word-play within it that I'm sure goes over most adult, practicing Christians too.

I'm interested in learning not only because it would give me a leg up when reading books like The Locked Tomb series (big fan of fantasy and sci-fi stuff, and there's so much religious references in these, in general) and it would be nice not to have to google everything everytime, but also to try to understand just a bit more about it all. If something so much as a binding of books could place so much influence in the world, positive and negative, it's got to be special, right?

Anyhow, this is just me rambling at this point. But I thought it would be fun to write what I'm going to attempt to do to try to learn more about the Bible. No, it's not going to be the right way for everyone. But I think it is for me, with my limited knowledge of the options out there and the limited time and money I have.

There's so much courses and resources out there that it gets confusing. I've went thorugh plenty of posts on the Academic Biblical Studies subreddit to see if there were people asking the same questions. And when I mean questions... I mean:

• Where do I even start?
• What courses should I consider?
• What other supplementary materials should I attempt to go through?

After narrowing down on the options, I've decided to split my learning into a few categories:

Overarching Story

• Material: The Story: The Bible as One Continuing Story of God and His People, NIV
  • I think the academic sources would be great to learn the historical contexts/influences the Bible has, and a more objective (as one could be) towards everything. However, I want to know what is the general flow of the Bible's story, and what is the general public's 'idea' of how the story goes.
  • This is a faith-based resource, and it's an interesting one, in that it basically adapts the Bible into a novel-like collection. I've gone through the first chapter (Genesis) and felt like they did a good job in turning the verses into a continuous narrative.
• Why: Understand the overarching narrative of the Bible (or at least how it has culturally been seen so)

Academic Resources

• Introduction to the Old Testament by Christian Hayes (Open Yale Course)
  • This has been referenced as a great intro course to the subject and although it's a bit old, the content seems to still hold up. Hayes is a great teacher and though she's a bit faster-paced compared to someone like Tim Mackie from the Bible Project¹, she is still comprehensible (with some pauses on Youtube) for someone like me who has the bare minimum knowledge of religion, in general.
  • The course is scholarly in nature, and from the first lecture, Hayes emphasizes that it is intended for those who have yet read the bible and those who are deeply rooted in the faith, itself. It covers sections of the Torakh, not all, but sufficient enough to give an overview of the Bible's literary and historical view of Israel. Additionally, she tries to link how these were viewed over time, into the now (or at least when the course was done haha).
  • I've seen some comments mentioning that Hayes' course is also good as she doesn't purely stick to the 'academic' material and has a few discussions utilizing faith-based resources and presenting compelling criticisms around those, which would be fun to follow along.
  • Additional resources: There are some additional resources such as a specific Torakh translation of the Hebrew Bible, a few books, and some readings, that is referenced in the lecture and on the course page. However, a lot of these seem to be available with a search on Google :)
• Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature (Open Yale Course)
  • This is another course by Yale in the early 2000s that seems to be well-regarded as well, I have not tried it out yet, but similar to the one from Hayes, this is not a faith-based resource. It covers the NT and is more focused on the historical Jesus and the development of early Christianity.
  • Looking forward to eventually going through this one!
  • Additional resources: I would assume it would be similar with the course with Hayes, seeing the course has been floating around for some time now.
• The New Oxford Annotated Bible
  • This one is commonly recommended in the academic circles, and it seems like its agreed upon that its one of the study bibles to get if you want something with a lot of essays and footnotes from academics, with as little bias as possible.
  • Luckily, the 4th edition of this one (the latest is the 5th) is available for free on the Internet Archive.

Additional Resources

These are some of the resources I found that could be useful down the line, or as alternatives to what I've talked about above!

• Books
  • The Action Bible: God's Redemptive Story by David C. Cook
    • A faith-based resource - a comic version of the Bible. I won't lie, it looks pretty cool...
  • A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths by John Barton
  • The SBL Study Bible
    • An alternative to the Oxford Annotated version that seems to has an equal footing in terms of the quality of the essays and overall package.
• Podcasts
  • Apocrypals Apocrypha
    • An interesting podast where the two people hosting the show are non-believers and "discuss its origins, authorship, context and events, while making references to pop culture that may include Roy Thomas, anime and professional wrestling". They have an extensive episode list and even a reading list.
  • History in the Bible
  • Data Over Dogma
• Courses
  • The Hebrew Bible
    • Another course I found commonly cited as a good intro course!
  • The Bible Project Classroom Courses
    • The BP is a really well made free resource if you just want to dip into your toes, especially with their animated video series. If you do not mind that it is a fundamentally faith-based resource (their motto is: "We Help People Experience the Bible as a Unified Story That Leads to Jesus), it's actually really well thought out and organized. They also have very in-depth courses that comes with notes and a whole classroom feature where you're able to interact with the material and write reflections after each session.
• In-depth lists
  • r/AskBibleScholars Guide: Recommended Readings
  • r/AcademicBiblical Guide: Academic Biblical Studies Resources

Approach

My current plan is to listen to the audio version of The Story, while going over the lectures from the Christian Hayes introductory course to the Old Testament. There's some readings within that that are required for subsequent lectures, and I think I'll go through those for the fun of it! And if I feel like there's a need to it, I can revisit sections of the Bible and its corresponding essays on the New Oxford Annotated version. It could be interesting to see the different perspectives offered through the course and through these essays.

I don't know if I will be committing to this in a concistent manner, but if I do end up wanting to continue on with it, I would probably resume to the course from Dale Martin and do the same flip-flopping with the New Oxford essays!

The Apocrypals Apocrypha podcast is definitely something I want to try down the line, but I have so many books and audiobooks I'm going through now that I will keep that on hold for the moment before I overwhelm myself and combust.

That's it?

Yeah! I don't really know what the purpose of this article truly is, aside from trying to rationalize to myself why I want to do this, and to perhaps also help guide anyone that is in a similar situation or has an interest to do so. Or perhaps you were just curious.

This article is certainly from the lens of someone who is not particularly religious, has no explicit desire to seek it out, and moreso of someone who is curious (and maybe just tired of feeling like the only one missing the jokes in the books I read). Mostly, I just want to get a feel for the stories and ideas that seem to be everywhere once you start paying attention, but from a slightly more academic standpoint :)

Thank you for reading this! If you have any other suggestions on what could be some good resources for beginners, please do reach out. I'm always interested in trying to keep my sources updated and I would also love to see if I could improve the way I'm going about this.

[50/100] for #100DaysToOffload

#100DaysToOffload #learning