The Bible

The storyThe Biggest Book in the House — Grandma opens a very big book to page one, and a story begins.

The storyRain on the Window — It rains all day, and a picture book shows a boat full of animals.

The storyMore Stars Than You Can Count — One night, an old man walks out of his tent and looks up.

The storyThe Coat Everyone Wanted — A father gives one son a special coat, and eleven brothers watch.

The storyThe Basket in the Reeds — A mother makes a little boat, and a big sister watches from the tall grass.

The storyDry Ground in the Middle — Water stands up on both sides, and a whole people walks through.

The storyFive Smooth Stones — A boy who watches sheep walks up to a giant with a sling in his hand.

The storyThe One Who Stopped — A man is hurt on the side of the road, and two people walk right past him.

The storyFour Bibles on One Table — A class finds the same sentence in four Bibles that do not look alike.

The storyA Map on Butcher Paper — A class draws the whole journey of the Torah, from Ur to Egypt to the edge of Canaan, on one long sheet.

The storyWhere You Go, I Will Go — On a dusty road, a young widow makes a promise that changes a family's story.

The storyOne Baby, Two Mothers and a Sword — A new king faces a case with no witnesses, and the whole country waits to see what he will do.

The storyThe Man at the Gate — A prophet stands at the city gate saying what nobody wants to hear.

The storyThe Queen Who Spoke — A queen who was told to stay quiet decides to speak.

The storyThe Father Who Ran — A son asks for his money early, wastes it all, and walks home expecting the worst.

The storyA Letter Comes to Corinth — A messenger steps off a ship with a scroll, and a whole church crowds into one house to hear it.

The storyOne Page, Two Books — A student reads the same page as a story, then as a law code, and finds two different books.

The storySix Cards on the Table — Six passages on six cards, and the class sorts them by what kind of writing each is.

The storyThe Tablet in the Glass Case — A broken piece of clay tells of a flood and a boat, and it is older than any copy of Genesis.

The storyAt the Foot of the Mountain — A people camps below a mountain, and the story says a list of ten things is carved in stone.

The storyA Broken Stone at Tel Dan — In the summer of 1993, a surveyor at a dig in northern Israel noticed letters on a stone in a wall.

The storyA Clay Cylinder in a Glass Case — In 1879 a digger working for the British Museum pulled a barrel of baked clay from the ruins of Babylon.

The storyOne Psalm, Two Rooms — The same words are sung in Hebrew on Friday night and in English on Sunday morning, and each room hears them a little differently.

The storySeven Days of Silence — Three friends travel to sit with a man who has lost everything, and the moment they open their mouths, things go wrong.

The storyA Coin and a Trap — In the Temple courts, a small silver coin becomes the center of a question meant to catch a teacher out.

The storyA Letter About a Brother — A prisoner writes to a man he knows well, about a slave who ran away and came back with a new name for himself.

The storyTwo Colors of Ink — Two students take the first three chapters of Genesis and underline every name for God. The pattern they find is one that readers have argued about for more than a century.

The storyA Treaty on the Wall — A peace treaty carved in stone more than three thousand years ago has a shape. A few centuries later, a covenant in the Torah reads as if it knew that shape.

The storyOne Verse, Two Crowds — A line first spoken at a northern shrine around 760 BCE was read aloud again in Washington, D.C., in 1963.

The storyA Hearing on the Ash Heap — A ruined man sits in the ashes, refuses to be comforted, and demands that God answer him in person.

The storyA Question Answered With a Story — A legal expert asks for a definition and gets a road, a wounded man and three travelers instead.

The storyFour Columns on One Table — A class lays the last chapters of four gospels side by side and starts counting what matches and what does not.

The storyA Letter Carried to Rome — A letter to a church its author had never seen changed the life of a German friar more than fourteen centuries later.

The storyPages in a Basket — In a monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, a German scholar found leaves of a Greek Bible copied in the fourth century.

The storyTwo Sermons, One Text, and a Third Reading — In 1860 two American preachers opened the same Bible and argued opposite things; five years later a president answered them both.

The storyOne Passage, Two Translations, Three Commentaries — A senior picks the book of Ruth, opens two Bibles and three commentaries, and finds that the hardest part is deciding what she thinks.