ABOUT THE BOOK

Despite the Bible’s pervasive role and importance, it is commonly unread outside of churches and synagogues and often misunderstood. In The Bible Inside and Out, award-winning religious historian William Paul Lazarus presents a unique, research-based look at the Bible that helps a reader separate fact from fiction. In so doing, Lazarus’s book helps the reader come away with a deeper understanding of the Bible’s complexities and historical reality and, ultimately, a better understanding of how they may want to shape their beliefs. For those readers looking to complete their understanding of the Bible or their own beliefs, this book is an important piece of that puzzle.

The opening section of The Bible Inside and Out provides background about the Bible, including its history and the problems of translating it. The book then, in section two, explains research into biblical stories, including carbon-14 dating and archaeological findings that may help separate fact from fiction. In the book’s third section, Lazarus details Jewish and Christian history. He then, in the fourth and fifth sections, provides an in-depth look at accounts contained in each of those religions’ Bible, such as hidden meanings behind the Adam and Eve and Noah’s ark stories, research into various books, and investigations into the four gospel accounts in the Christian Bible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WILLIAM PAUL LAZARUS was born in Maine, resides in Florida, and holds an ABD in American Studies from Case Western Reserve University and an MA in journalism from Kent State University. After graduating from Kent State and serving as a campus correspondent for the New York Times in his senior year there, he was a reporter and editor at the New Haven Register and later the Daytona Beach News-Journal, and he taught writing at various colleges and universities, including Yale, the University of New Haven, and Embry-Riddle (Florida) Aeronautical University. As a longtime religious historian, Bill is a regular speaker at churches on the topic and has hosted a blog and two radio shows devoted to discussing religious history. Among the nearly three dozen books Bill has published are multiple religious history books, including Comparative Religion for Dummies (Wiley Press); Messiah (Bold Venture Press); Joy to the World: The Stories Behind Christmas Carols (Bold Venture Press); One God (Parson Press); and The Other Jesus (Nova Science Press). He also has had short stories and poetry published in a variety of anthologies, was named Florida feature writer of the year in 2001, and won three international writing awards while writing and editing programs for NASCAR races.