Pick a movie and the Internet Movie Database will give you a plot summary, tell you who is in it, give you some favorite quotes, tell you who wrote it and who directed it. Because I like to know what a movie’s about before I spend the time and money, I use IMDb every time we go to a movie.

The Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook is a printed IMDb for the Bible.

At 1100 pages, this is a bigger book than yesterday’s The Heart of the Story (272), but it’s intended to be a deeper resource.

There are three parts: “God’s story (and your story)”, “How the Bible came to be”, and “Digging deeper into the Bible”.

The first part is the largest. There is a chapter for each book of the Bible, with the same sections for each: Intro, Setting, Heart of the book, what makes it Interesting and Unique, the Message of the book, and So What. Each chapter also has sidebars containing timelines, maps, explanations of concepts, and photographs. There are overview chapters for sections of the Bible including Old and New Testament, the Pentateuch (the first five books), the Gospels (the first four New Testament books) and other traditional groupings.

The other two sections are collections of articles that look at the history of the Bible and ways to study and interpret the Bible.

The writing style is thoughtful without being stuffy. Writers use exclamation points when appropriate, humor from time to time. The writers are all what would be called conservative evangelicals.

If the Heart of the Story is a quick read to get the story, this is a slow read to give context.  It’s not a replacement for the actual Bible books, just as IMDb can’t replace the movie, but both help us watch more clearly.

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Here’s the question this week: What if you were to start the fall with a course that would let you get a big picture of the Bible? This week, I’m going to look at some new and new-to-me books that do that. Next week, I’ll talk more about such a course.

Disclosure: The link is to my Amazon affiliate store. I received the book from a friend who works for the publisher.