From Gnosticism to Gospel Manga: 6 books to help you unpack the Bible and its history

More than 2 billion people identify as Christians today, making it the world’s largest religion. For many of these believers, the Bible serves as a foundational part of their faith, falling somewhere between the literal word of God to divinely inspired text. What they come to accept as the message of their chosen scripture has had, and will continue to have, a profound influence on the politics and cultures in their societies.

So, what’s the best approach to understanding that message? One potential answer is to read it — just like you would any other book. It’s a necessary step, but one that will only get you so far since the Bible isn’t like any other book.

It was not written by a single author, nor were its various books collected under the watchful eye of a founding figure. Instead, the Bible developed slowly — the outcome of centuries of debates, political infighting, and the exclusion of competing Christian traditions and scriptures. In many ways, this age-old editing process continues today.

Consider that the Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox Bibles contain different books in their Old Testaments and sometimes different versions of shared books. Also, from the 16th century to the modern day, the Bible has been translated roughly 900 times in English alone. Each translation is colored by differences in source material, translation philosophies, and translator agendas — all of which can subtly alter the wording of a passage and, by extension, how readers interpret it.

This history has led to a long tradition of scholarly research into the Bible, looking at everything from the language of different versions to the annals of early Christianity and biblical interpretations. Thankfully, many researchers who have spent their lives investigating the Bible’s intricacies have also written books to help readers deepen their knowledge.

We spoke with several biblical experts and enthusiasts to get their recommendations for the books that can help us understand the Bible better. Here’s what they said:

The Rise and Fall of the Bible by Timothy Beal (2011)

Timothy Beal, a professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University, claims, “There is no such thing as the Bible.” It’s an inciting statement, but what he means is that there is no one Bible but rather many versions of the Good Book, and the further you go in Christian history, the more variation in tradition and scripture you find.

The Rise and Fall of the Bible chronicles this history to understand how our modern concept of the Bible evolved from a diverse and sometimes divisive collection of myths, laws, histories, poems, and prophecies. It even considers how modern retellings, from Biblezines to the Manga Bible, create new versions all their own.

According to Beal, this history reveals that the Bible wasn’t written as a “divine guidebook” for living one’s life. Instead, the Bible is more like a library. To quote Beal: “It’s not a single book with a single voice running from Genesis to Revelation. It’s a library of writings, representing many different voices and times and perspectives.”

Joshua Schachterle, a writer and researcher of early Christianity, recommended Beal’s book to us because he finds its central image enlightening. He explains: “It doesn’t make sense when somebody says, ‘What does the Bible say about that?’ It’s like asking, ‘What does the library say about that?’ You would have to look at several books, and they would not agree with each other.”

Through this analogy, neither Beal nor Schachterle wishes to debunk or discourage. Instead, they hope readers will come to recognize how the Bible’s complicated history creates ambiguities in the text. Once aware of those ambiguities, readers can be more tolerant of them and other people’s interpretations.

How God Becomes Real by T.M. Luhrmann (2020)

Why do some people feel like gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings are vividly real? Not real in the way that we know Albany is the capital of New York — but like they are looking at the footprints of an invisible being as they walk by. Meanwhile, others don’t feel this way at all.

Tanya Marie Luhrmann, a psychological anthropologist at Stanford, wanted to find out. Her 2020 book, How God Becomes Real, details her findings. Drawing on accounts from different spiritual traditions worldwide, Luhrmann argues that it takes serious, sustained effort to make the invisible feel real; however, for the devout and dedicated, the effort comes with spiritual returns. For instance, Luhrmann sees prayer as having a similar effect to activities like cognitive behavioral therapy.

While the book isn’t directly about the Bible, Elaine Pagels, Princeton historian and the author of Miracles and Wonder, still recommends it for the richness of its analysis and what it reveals about the psychology underpinning religious beliefs. 

As Pagels told us: “With these traditions — whether it’s Judaism, whether it’s evangelical Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism — it’s not that people believe in invisible beings because they think they exist in the way that you and I are talking to each other. It’s because they are doing practices that change their capacity for perception. Practices like meditation, prayer, chanting, communal worship, storytelling, music, drumming, and often dancing.”

Of course, the experience of invisible beings isn’t always wholesome. When these experiences are the result of a mental health disorder, such as schizophrenia, these vibrant voices can be dangerous. As such, Pagels adds, an essential part of How God Becomes Real is its exploration of the difference between religious conviction and such disorders.

Reading the Bible Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg (2001)

Marcus J. Borg was a theologian who specialized in the New Testament and described his approach to the Bible as “historical-metaphorical.” In other words, he tried to look at scripture as the ancient peoples who wrote and followed it would have; however, knowing that modern readers do not live in the same world as those authors, he argued that we also need a different approach to understanding the Bible.

This approach is the conceit of his book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. In it, Borg sets out to reject the false dichotomy of either taking the Bible literally or rejecting it entirely. Instead, Borg carves a path that combines a modern, critical, and scientific view of the world with the spiritual approach taken by the compilers of the Bible. Along the way, he recounts his path from the unadulterated faith of childhood to the more developed and refined Christian stances of his adulthood.

A.J. Jacobs, author, journalist, and “human guinea pig,” recommended the book to us, saying, “This book by the late, great theologian Marcus J. Borg has the perfect subtitle: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally. Those are two very different approaches, and the first is far superior (in my humble opinion).” He would know, having famously spent a year trying to follow the Bible literally.

Taking biblical text literally is only one strategy. Wrestling with its historical nuances is another, and one that can be highly rewarding. Borg’s website has several tools to help the reader get more out of the text.

Heaven and Hell by Bart D. Ehrman (2020)

Christian tradition teaches that eternal rewards await the righteous in heaven, while eternal punishments are meted out to unrepentant sinners in the fires of hell. Many believe this teaching goes back to Jesus’ ministry and even has echoes sounding further into the Old Testament. In fact, 62% of Americans believe in hell today — though more vouch for celestial bliss (73%).

In Heaven and Hell, New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman argues that the Bible doesn’t present a uniform vision of the hereafter. Instead, it offers many versions, each reflecting a cultural or social perspective from the times and places in which these books were written. “The ideas of the afterlife that so many billions of people in our world have inherited emerged over a long period of time as people struggled with how this world can be fair and how God or the gods can be just,” Ehrman writes.

Like a historical Dante, Ehrman tours readers through these biblical afterlives. He clarifies the Old Testament concept of Sheol found in Jewish traditions. He considers how the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus and Paul suggests an earthly kingdom rather than one found in the clouds. And he shows how hell, as we would recognize it today, didn’t begin to emerge until the 2nd century — a byproduct of the cultural exchange between Christian beliefs and Mediterranean philosophical traditions.

“The teachings of both Paul and Jesus were eventually changed by later Christians, who came to affirm not only eternal joy for the saints but eternal torment for the sinners, creating the irony that throughout the ages most Christians have believed in a hell that did not exist for either of the founders of Christianity,” Ehrman writes.

Scripting Jesus by L. Michael White (2010)

Many readers approach the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — as a biographical history of Jesus in four parts. However, historians have long noted that the gospels were written decades after Jesus’ life, ministry, and death. The earliest, Mark, is dated to around 70 A.D.; the latest, John, was likely written around 95. This means none of the anonymous authors would have been around to witness the events and instead relied on shared stories, oral traditions, and other writings to craft their evangelicals.

In Scripting Jesus, L. Michael White warns against reading the Gospels as straight biographies. He argues we should read them as stories that script Jesus’ life and ministry to promote different themes and theologies. By comparing their similarities and differences, we can better understand the beliefs, historical circumstances, and social pressures facing some of the earliest Christians.

“The Gospels often tell us more about the faith of individual authors and congregations than they do about Jesus himself,” White writes. “The Jesus of history remains ever elusive, obscured by the passage of time as well as later efforts to portray him.”

Schachterle recommended Scripting Jesus as well because it shows how we receive different images of Jesus from each Gospel. Mark’s Jesus is more misunderstood than Luke’s more Socratic philosopher or John’s heavenly man of mystery. Again, the point isn’t to debunk or cast doubt. Instead, White’s project is to understand what the Gospels were trying to convey to their early Christian audiences and why those beliefs would be so important to them.

As White writes, “[This] is one of the few ways that people from different religious and cultural backgrounds — Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Jews, conservatives and liberals, and many others — can ever come together to discuss these issues in frank and constructive ways.”

The Gnostic Gospels 

As we’ve mentioned, the Bible is a curated text. Throughout the centuries, scriptures have been excluded from the Bible, while others have been added and revised in the search for a broad theological consensus. You may then ask, “What happened to the books that didn’t make it into the canon?”

Most were burned or banned for centuries until they faded from our collective memory. However, one collection of these rejected texts survived into the modern age. Discovered in a jar in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, the collection is believed to be from early Christian thinkers who took the faith in unique directions before orthodox Christianity began to coalesce around the 4th century. Today, we call them The Gnostic Gospels.

Gnosticism, from the Greek gnosis for “knowledge,” centers on the idea that the material world is flawed, created by a lesser deity, and that human beings can only reach salvation through esoteric wisdom. It also strongly focuses on the direct religious experience of the world of the divine. Given this, it is easy to see how such a theology would be at odds with the developing Christian orthodoxy (and the Christianity many practice today). This is precisely why Professor Pagels, who wrote a book on these texts, recommends that anyone interested in biblical history read them.

She explains: “The Gnostic Gospels were rejected very early by bishops because they were based on mystical teachings and convictions and religious experience, and not belief. I think they’re enormously important in understanding that Christianity, as we know it, is deficient in some of the most important parts of its heritage.”

For instance, the most complete text in the collection is the Gospel of Thomas. Named for St. Thomas the Apostle, it offers an entirely different style from the four canonical Gospels, being a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus rather than his biography. Most of the quotes have a clear relationship to those in the New Testament — variations of “love thy neighbor as thyself” and “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” — but others are not clearly related to anything in the Gospels people are familiar with. Aspects such as Jesus’ death and resurrection are unmentioned, nor does the Gospel of Thomas depict him as a messiah.

Understanding the historical context of any book — not to mention its cultural, linguistic, or sociopolitical context — can heighten the reading experience. For the Bible (or rather Bibles), it can be especially enlightening. We hope this recommended reading list helps deepen your understanding and appreciation of the unique, important, contentious, sometimes weird, but always fascinating Book of Books.

(Do you disagree with a selection or want to offer your own recommendation? Let us know on the Big Think Books Substack.)