This text provides a comprehensive and definitive introduction to the literature, cultures, and theologies of the early Jewish and Christian traditions. Designed to be read with selected passages from the Bible and the Apocrypha, An Introduction to the Bible offers essential information to students with little or no experience in the academic study of religion. It will help students gain a solid background for future work in biblical studies.The revised edition includes information regarding new directions in biblical studies, a revised bibliography, and a subject index - as well as maps, charts and photographs."This volume is pedagogically self-aware. Here speak teachers who live close to the teaching environment. The narrative account of a great deal of material is patient, attentive to detail, willing to pause to provide small instructional clues, all the time keeping the big picture in focus. This second edition of the book attests both to the vitality of its authors and to the positive reception the book has already enjoyed. Given the large cultural crisis upon us, such instruction in a context that reaches beyond "the choir" is welcome and enormously important.Clear, well organized, up to date, and reflective of reliable scholarly consensus. Most important, I suspect, is the likelihood that its student-users will sign up for more scripture study....[The book] will help students generate not only a beginning with the Bible, but a long-term interest." Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

All of the authors are in the Department of Religious Studies at Stetson University, DeLand, Florida. Clyde E. Fant is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Religious Studies at Stetson University, DeLand, Florida Donald W. Musser is Sam R. Marks Professor of Religion in the Department of Religious Studies at Stetson University, DeLand, Florida Mitchell G. Reddish is O. L. Walker Professor of Christian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Stetson University, DeLand, Florida