EA Essential - engaging young people with biblical truth

Review

This book achieves what it set’s out to achieve and does it extremely well.

The front of the book says, “Everything you want to know about the Bible – well…maybe not everything, but enough to get you started.” And the back of the book says, “In short, readable chapters, the authors first answer some basic questions: Who wrote the Bible? Is it accurate? How do you find your way around it? Then they take you on a guided tour from Genesis to Revelation, summarising important people, events and themes. You’ll get a good foundation for understanding and an excitement for reading this most important of books, the Bible.”

This book provides you with an extremely readable introduction to the Bible. Its humorous style makes it an engaging read and the anecdotal stories help bring this guidebook to life. The authors cover a great deal of ground in a clear and concise manner giving the reader and an excellent foundation of where the Bible has come from and a highly readable and informative overview of the story itself.

This book deserves to be read and referred to regularly – so get hold of a copy and keep it accessible! It’s also a book that many young people (competent readers, 16+) would find extremely readable and helpful.

Contents

Part 1 – The Great Journey

1) Ladies and Gentlemen…the Bible!

2) What’s in a Name? [What do the words ‘The Holy Bible’ mean?]

3) Something Old, Something New [What’s with the Bible’s strange table of contents?]

4) Author, Author! [Who wrote the Bible?]

5) It’s All Greek to Me [In what languages was the Bible originally written?]

6) To Craunch a Marmoset [How is the Bible translated into modern English?

7) Not Wrong…Just Different [How do the three translation methods compare?]

8) From Clay to Silicon [What materials were used in the writing of the Bible?]

9) Putting the Pieces Together [How was the official version of the Bible first put together?]

10) Journey through the centuries [How did the Bible cross the barriers of time and language?]

11) At Last…and English Bible [How did God’s Word break through to the English-speaking people?]

12) Chinese Whispers [How do we know the Bible got to us accurately?]

13) Bibscape Navigator [How do you find your way around the Bible?]

Part 2 – The Big Picture

14) Let’s Get Started The Old Testament

15) In the Beginning [God creates the world]

16) We Stuff It Up [The fall, the flood and the building of Babel]

17) The Fathers of the Faith [The lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph]

18) The Great Escape [Moses and the Exodus]

19) God’s Great Tent [The tabernacle]

20) In God’s Country [Into the Promised Land]

21) Here Comes da Judge! [The rule of judges]

22) Three Kings [Saul, David and Solomon]

23) Dividing the Empire [Israel splits into two kingdoms]

24) Losing Their Religion [The exile era]

25) Brand-New Day [Some of the people return]

26) The Dead Poets [Songs and poems from God’s people]

27) Speaking Words of Wisdom [The Wisdom Books]

28) Men of Great Voice [The prophets speak]

29) In the Gap [Between the Old and New Testaments] The New Testament

30) The Man from Nazareth [The life of Jesus Christ]

31) The Death of Jesus [A trial and execution]

32) I’ll be Back [The resurrection of Jesus Christ]

33) Men with a Mission [The start of the church]

34) Your Sincerely, Paul [The letters of Paul to the first Christians]

35) Instructions for the Faithful [The General Letters]

36) Seeing Beyond [What does the future hold?]

Stuff at the Back

Where to from Here [How to read the Bible]

What People Like You Say about the Bible [20 people write a paragraph on their favourite Bible passage. ]