Grow in faith
Learn Scripture for yourself.
What the text says, what its words meant, and how faithful readers have understood it: warmly, clearly, with every claim sourced.
Begin wherever you are
A verse, a name, a story you half remember, a question: try it in your own words.
Searches verses, names and stories. Or compare translations side by side →
Stories, separated honestly
What the text says · what tradition added · what the evidence shows. Start with Adam and Eve: the garden and the fall.
Browse stories →¶Compare translations
Word-level differences highlighted. See why Isaiah 7:14 reads virgin in one Bible and young woman in another.
Open Isaiah 7:14–16 →✎Why Bibles differ
Virgin or young woman? “Pierced” or “like a lion”? The longer ending of Mark? The original words, the ancient translations and manuscripts, and how each tradition reads them.
Start with Isaiah 7:14 →?Hard questions, fairly heard
The case, the strongest responses, and a plain assessment.
Browse question guides →Stories
- Draft · being fact-checked
Genesis 2:4–3:24
Adam and Eve: the garden and the fall
God places the man in Eden and forbids him to eat from one tree. A serpent challenges the death warning; the woman and her husband eat, blame follows, and God announces painful consequences and blocks access to the tree of life. Genesis does not name Satan; Jewish, Christian and Islamic interpretations differ over responsibility, death, inherited sin, marriage and the couple's legacy, while genetics tests recent sole genetic descent rather than supernatural agency. What does the account mean for humanity?
Genesis tells of disobedience and expulsion without naming Satan. Interpretations differ over inherited sin and the husband's rule. Genomic evidence addresses whether humanity descends solely and genetically from a recent couple; it does not independently establish supernatural agency in Eden.
Read the story →7translation notes15interpretations9evidence claims8hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Genesis 4:1–16
Cain and Abel
Cain kills his brother Abel after God favours Abel and his offering but not Cain and his. Before the killing, God warns Cain to resist sin; afterward, God confronts him, sentences him to wandering and protects him from being killed. Cain settles east of Eden. Why was Cain's offering rejected, who could threaten him, where did his wife come from, and what did his protective mark mean and look like?
Genesis says the mark protects Cain but does not describe its form, explicitly explain why his offering was rejected or identify his wife and the people he fears. The reviewed sources yielded no independent corroboration of Cain and Abel as individuals. That finding does not settle whether they existed.
Read the story →6translation notes13interpretations7evidence claims5hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Genesis 1:1–2:3
Creation in six days
God brings light into darkness, separates waters, reveals dry land and fills the world with plants, heavenly lights, animals and humans over six days. Light and plants appear before the heavenly lights. Humans bear God's image and receive his blessing and rule over other creatures; God then rests and makes the seventh day holy. Readers disagree about how long the days last, what the sky is and how the sequence relates to scientific accounts of origins.
God creates over six days and rests on the seventh, but interpreters disagree about what this week describes. Scientific estimates of the universe's and Earth's ages weigh against recent formation. Those estimates alone do not settle whether God creates.
Read the story →7translation notes18interpretations9evidence claims7hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Exodus 13:17–15:21
Crossing the Red Sea (and did the Exodus happen?)
Israel fears death, trapped between the sea and Pharaoh's army; Moses urges trust in the LORD, and God commands an advance. An east wind drives back the water so Israel can cross on exposed ground, then the returning water drowns its pursuers. Moses and the Israelites sing of God's rescue, followed by Miriam and the women. The sources checked do not independently confirm the crossing or settle its disputed location, date or population; wind models show a possible mechanism without establishing that it happened.
Exodus tells of Israel's rescue and the drowning of its pursuers. The sources checked do not independently confirm the crossing or settle its location, date or scale. Merneptah's inscription names Israel in Canaan but does not attest an escape from Egypt. Whether the rescue was God's work is a theological judgment.
Read the story →5translation notes11interpretations10evidence claims8hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Daniel 1:1–21
Daniel and his friends in Babylon
At Babylon's court, Daniel and his friends are trained and given new names, but Daniel refuses the king's food and wine as defiling, though the chapter never explains why. After ten days on vegetables and water, the four look healthier and enter royal service. The chapter credits God with Jehoiakim's defeat, Daniel's favour and the youths' learning. Its siege date can be made to fit other dates only on certain assumptions, with no record from the time confirming it in the sources checked; the chapter does not say the youths were castrated.
The chapter credits God with Jehoiakim's defeat, Daniel's favour and the youths' learning, but does not explain why the food would defile Daniel. Its siege date can be made to fit other dates only on certain assumptions, and no record from the time confirms it in the sources checked. The chapter does not say the youths were castrated.
Read the story →2translation notes8interpretations4evidence claims2hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
2 Kings 2:19–25
Elisha, the jeering boys and the two bears
At Jericho, Elisha announces God's healing of a harmful spring. On the road toward Bethel, boys mock him; he curses them using the LORD's name, and two female bears maul forty-two. He continues to Carmel and Samaria. The passage puts healing and devastating injury beside each other.
The text reports mauling, without specifying ages or deaths or explicitly saying God sent the bears; explaining its meaning does not by itself establish its justice.
Read the story →3translation notes5interpretations3evidence claims3hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Jonah 1:1–4:11
Jonah and the Great Fish
God sends Jonah to warn Nineveh, the great city of Assyria, Israel's most feared enemy. Jonah runs the other way, is thrown into the sea, is swallowed by a great fish that God appoints, and prays his way back to dry land. When he finally preaches, the whole city repents and God relents, and Jonah is furious, because he always knew God was "gracious and merciful". The book ends with God's own question about pity for a great city and its animals. Jews read it on the afternoon of Yom Kippur as a lesson in repentance (a custom the Talmud already records); Christians read it through Jesus's "sign of Jonah"; the Qur'an honours Jonah (Yunus) as a prophet.
Whether the book is history or parable is the central debate, and no Assyrian source records a repentance of Nineveh.
Read the story →11translation notes8interpretations7evidence claims3hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Genesis 6:5–9:17
Noah and the Flood
When human violence fills the earth, God grieves and resolves to judge it, but Noah finds favour and is told to build an ark for his family and the animals. God remembers Noah, brings him through the waters, and makes the first covenant named in Scripture: a promise to all humanity and every living creature, sealed with the bow in the clouds. Jewish and Christian tradition read it as a story of justice and mercy together; the New Testament uses it as a picture of faith, readiness and baptism.
Most scholars see two interwoven sources and close Mesopotamian parallels, and geology finds no trace of a recent global flood.
Read the story →12translation notes12interpretations7evidence claims3hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Joshua 2:1–24 · Joshua 6:1–27
Rahab and the fall of Jericho
Rahab hides two Israelite spies, lies to the king's messengers and wins a promise to spare her family. Israel circles Jericho as commanded; its wall falls, the city burns and its people and livestock are killed, while Rahab's household survives. Hebrews praises her faith and James her actions; archaeologists dispute the walls' date and extent of occupation. Interpreters debate whether the killing language is literal, God's command justifies it or praise for Rahab makes her lie right.
Joshua describes the killing of Jericho's people and livestock and the sparing of Rahab's household. Archaeologists report a Bronze Age wall collapse and fire, dated in the cited evidence to around 1550 BC, before the usual conquest dates; Wood's proposed date of 1400 BC is disputed. Limited occupation in the Late Bronze Age is also reported. Whether God caused the destruction and whether the killing was just are separate questions from the archaeology.
Read the story →6translation notes13interpretations7evidence claims7hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Exodus 19:1–20:21
Sinai and the Ten Commandments
After leaving Egypt, Israel camps at Sinai, where God gives commandments amid thunder, smoke and a trembling mountain. Beginning with his rescue of Israel from slavery, they govern worship, rest, family and conduct toward neighbours; the frightened people ask Moses to speak for them. Deuteronomy repeats them with different wording and a different reason for Sabbath rest. The two versions, different numbering and warning about descendants invite questions about how to understand them.
Exodus and Deuteronomy give different wording for the commandments. The cited research leaves their date and Sinai's location unresolved. Whether God spoke there remains outside what evidence can settle.
Read the story →6translation notes12interpretations6evidence claims6hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Revelation 13:1–18
The beasts and the mark: 666
John sees a dragon empower one beast and a second beast promote its worship; an image threatens death to those who refuse to worship. A mark bars the unmarked from trade, and John calls for endurance and wisdom to understand the beast's number, 666. Does that number identify Nero, and why do some manuscripts read 616? What can ancient emperor worship explain about the mark's ties to worship and trade, and what evidence supports later claims about the mark?
The passage ties the mark to worship of the beast and the ability to trade. Nero's name can explain both 666 and 616, but Williams cautions that this does not make Nero the only possible match. The passage names no technology for the mark.
Read the story →4translation notes10interpretations6evidence claims4hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Genesis 22:1–19
The Binding of Isaac (the Akedah)
God tests Abraham by asking him to offer Isaac, the son of the promise, as a burnt offering. Abraham obeys, Isaac carries the wood, and at the last moment the angel of the LORD stops the knife; a ram is offered in Isaac's place, and God renews his oath to bless the nations through Abraham's seed. Jews read it as the Akedah, recalled on Rosh Hashanah with the ram's horn; Christians see in it the Father who "spared not his own Son"; Muslims remember Abraham's obedience at Eid al-Adha.
Scholars debate the chapter's sources and whether Abraham is historical, and the moral questions are pressed by believers and skeptics alike.
Read the story →8translation notes12interpretations5evidence claims4hard questions - Draft · being fact-checked
Revelation 6:1–7:17
The seven seals and the four horsemen; the 144,000
The Lamb opens seals, releasing four horsemen, revealing slain witnesses awaiting justice, and bringing upheaval in the heavens and on earth. Before the seventh seal, God's servants are sealed: John hears their number as 144,000, then sees a countless crowd before the Lamb, promised shelter. The first rider is unnamed, and interpreters disagree about his identity, how the two groups relate, and whether the calamities belong to the past, the future, or recurring history. Who are the sealed, and what kind of protection do they receive?
Revelation describes a vision, and the historical parallels cited here do not independently show that its seals have been fulfilled. The interpreters named here disagree about the first rider's identity, the meaning of 144,000, and when the seals apply.
Read the story →4translation notes10interpretations6evidence claims4hard questions