What is the Bible? How did it get to us? Why are translations so different? - And what might the Bible say to us today?From its very first pages, The Bible: An Introduction offers refreshingly clear answers to the most basic questions that first-time students and curious inquirers bring to the Bible. Without presuming either prior knowledge of the Bible or a particular attitude toward it, Jerry L. Sumney uses straightforward language to lead the reader on an exploration of the Bible's contents and the history of its writings, showing along the way how critical methods can help readers understand what they find in the Bible. Neither polemical nor apologetic, The Bible: An Introduction presents the biblical writings as the efforts of men and women in the past to understand their lives and their world in light of the ways they understood the divine.