Martin E. Marty is professor emeritus of religious history at the University of Chicago. He is the winner of the National Book Award and the author of more than fifty books, including Martin Luther: A Life and The Christian World: A Global History. From National Book Award–winning author Martin Marty, the surprising story of a Christian classic born in a Nazi prison cell For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's...

"One of Jewish Ideas Daily.com's 40 Best Jewish Books of 2012" Ronald Hendel is the Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the editor in chief of The Oxford Hebrew Bible and the author of Remembering Abraham and Reading Genesis. An essential biography of one of the Bible's most influential books During its 2,500-year life, the book of Genesis has been the keystone to almost...

"Winner of the 2013 Cover/Jacket Merit Award in the Professional, Scholarly Series category, New York Book Show" John J. Collins is the Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University. His many books include Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, and The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Unraveling the controversies...

Unraveling the controversies surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls
Since they were first discovered in the caves at Qumran in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have aroused more fascination—and more controversy—than perhaps any other archaeological find. They appear to have been hidden in the Judean desert by the Essenes, a Jewish sect that existed around the time of Jesus, and they continue to inspire veneration and conspiracy theories

...

Mark Larrimore directs the Religious Studies Program at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts. He is the editor of The Problem of Evil: A Reader and the coeditor of The German Invention of Race. The life and times of this iconic and enduring biblical book The Book of Job raises stark questions about the nature and meaning of innocent suffering and the relationship of the human to the divine, yet it is also one of the Bible's most...

"Honorable Mention, 2015 Catholic Press Association Book Award, History Category" Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. His many books include Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil and The Presence of God, a multivolume history of Western Christian mysticism. The life and times of...

George M. Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. His books include Fundamentalism and American Culture, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, and The Soul of the American University. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The life and times of C. S. Lewis's modern spiritual classic Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis's eloquent and winsome defense of the Christian...

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan. His many books include The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (with Robert E. Buswell, Jr.) and The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography (Princeton). He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A concise and accessible introduction to the classic Buddhist text The Lotus Sutra is arguably the most famous of all Buddhist...

For millions of Muslims, the Qur'an is sacred only in Arabic, the original Arabic in which it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century; to many Arab and non-Arab believers alike, the book literally defies translation. Yet English translations exist and are growing, in both number and importance. Bruce Lawrence tells the remarkable story of the ongoing struggle to render the Qur'an's lyrical verses into English--and to make English...

Few biblical books have been as revered and reviled as Revelation. Many hail it as the pinnacle of prophetic vision, the cornerstone of the biblical canon, and, for those with eyes to see, the key to understanding the past, present, and future. Others denounce it as the work of a disturbed individual whose horrific dreams of inhumane violence should never have been allowed into the Bible. Timothy Beal provides a concise cultural history of Revelation...