This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

This paradigm-shifting study is the first book-length investigation into the compositional dates of the New Testament to be published in over forty years. It argues that, with the notable exception of the undisputed Pauline Epistles, most New Testament texts were composed twenty to thirty years earlier than is typically supposed by contemporary biblical scholars. What emerges is a revised view of how quickly early Christians produced what became the seminal texts for their new movement.

The Bible is simply a love letter compiled into sixty-six books and written over a period ofsixteen hundred years by more than forty authors living on three continents. Although theauthors came from different backgrounds, there is one message, one theme, one thread that runs throughout the entire Bible from the first book, Genesis, to the last book, Revelation. That message is God's redeeming love for mankind--a message that is as relevant for us today as it was two thousand years ago.These five books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts) begin with the birth of Jesus Christ and conclude with the first imprisonment of the apostle Paul about six decades later. Over the course of these decades, God introduced elements of His sovereign plan that turned the world upside down. He moved from an emphasis on the nation of Israel to an emphasis on the church, from a covenant of law to a covenant of grace, from His Holy Spirit merely coming upon people to actually indwelling them, and from commanding Israel to live in such a way as to attract others to commanding the church to disperse throughout the world and make disciples of all nations.The Gospels give us four similar but distinct accounts of Jesus the Messiah, God's Son. His birth, childhood, ministry, teaching, miracles, arrest, trials, death, and resurrection are all handled differently by the four authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But in every record, by the time the tomb of Jesus was empty, the world had been changed.While the Gospels tell the story of the life of Christ, the book of Acts tells the story of the church of Christ. From its founding on the Day of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem, through its expansion around the then-known world, to its crisis when the apostle Paul was imprisoned in Rome for the first time, the story is one of excitement, intrigue, incredible growth, and life-changing encounters.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Bart D. Ehrman, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus, Interrupted and God’s Problem reveals which books in the Bible’s New Testament were not passed down by Jesus’s disciples, but were instead forged by other hands—and why this centuries-hidden scandal is far more significant than many scholars are willing to admit. A controversial work of historical reporting in the tradition of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan, Ehrman’s Forged delivers a stunning explication of one of the most substantial—yet least discussed—problems confronting the world of biblical scholarship.

Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James