Thread’s own Bible, in two editions

Genesis was written for us, but it wasn't written to us. The people who first heard it lived in a world of kings and temples, with a god for every river and star, and they heard this book read out loud. That matters, because most of the fights we have over Genesis are about questions its first hearers weren't asking. They weren't asking how old the earth is. Their question was closer to home.

Whose world is this, and what are we doing in it?

The book answers in two movements. Genesis 1:1-11:32 is about the whole world: creation, the garden, the first murder, the flood, the tower of Babel. Then the camera narrows to one family and stays there. Genesis 12:1-3 is the hinge. God calls Abram and promises that every family on earth will be blessed through him, and the rest of the book follows that promise through Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. It's usually hanging by a thread. God keeps choosing the younger son over the older. Women who can't have children keep bearing the child of promise. And the people God picks are no heroes. Abraham lies about his wife, twice. Jacob cheats his own brother. The promise goes forward anyway.

You'll find two creation accounts, Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4-25, and they're different. One stands back and watches the world put in order over seven days. The other comes down into the dirt with one human in one garden. Whoever gave us the book kept both, so we do too. As for who that was, Jewish and Christian tradition names Moses. Many scholars of the last two hundred years think the book was woven together from older sources over a long time. Genesis itself names no author, and Thread leaves the question open. You don't need it settled to hear what the book says.

A word about this translation. Some of it will sound strange: a dome over the sky, sea monsters, a talking snake, God saying "Let us make" to his council. We left those in because the first hearers heard them, and the notes explain what they meant. God's name is printed as Yahweh wherever the Hebrew has it. Hebrew also loves wordplay. Where English could carry it, we let it: Woman taken from Man, the nude humans and the shrewd snake, Cain who was gained, Seth who was set. Where English couldn't, a note tells you what you missed. The biggest one is in Genesis 2:7. The human is formed from the soil, and in Hebrew those two words are nearly the same word.

Here's why Genesis is worth your time. Much of what the rest of the Bible takes for granted gets set down here first: one God who made a good world, humans who carry his image, a rift that runs through everything, and a promise to one family for the sake of all the rest. Skip it and the rest of the Bible reads like a story you walked in on halfway through. It's also honest in a way you don't expect. Nobody in it is cleaned up. Abraham lies, Jacob cheats, the brothers sell Joseph. And God keeps his word to them anyway. If you've ever wondered whether God can work with someone like you, read Genesis.

Genesis was written for us, but it wasn't written to us. The people who first heard it lived in a world of kings and temples, with a god for every river and star, and they heard this book read out loud. That matters, because most of the fights we have over Genesis are about questions its first hearers weren't asking. They weren't asking how old the earth is. Their question was closer to home.

Whose world is this, and what are we doing in it?

The book answers in two movements. Genesis 1:1-11:32 is about the whole world: creation, the garden, the first murder, the flood, the tower of Babel. Then the camera narrows to one family and stays there. Genesis 12:1-3 is the hinge. God calls Abram and promises that every family on earth will be blessed through him, and the rest of the book follows that promise through Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. It's usually hanging by a thread. God keeps choosing the younger son over the older. Women who can't have children keep bearing the child of promise. And the people God picks are no heroes. Abraham lies about his wife, twice. Jacob cheats his own brother. The promise goes forward anyway.

You'll find two creation accounts, Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4-25, and they're different. One stands back and watches the world put in order over seven days. The other comes down into the dirt with one human in one garden. Whoever gave us the book kept both, so we do too. As for who that was, Jewish and Christian tradition names Moses. Many scholars of the last two hundred years think the book was woven together from older sources over a long time. Genesis itself names no author, and Thread leaves the question open. You don't need it settled to hear what the book says.

A word about this translation. Some of it will sound strange: a dome over the sky, sea monsters, a talking snake, God saying "Let us make" to his council. We left those in because the first hearers heard them, and the notes explain what they meant. God's name is printed as Yahweh wherever the Hebrew has it. Hebrew also loves wordplay. Where English could carry it, we let it: Woman taken from Man, the nude humans and the shrewd snake, Cain who was gained, Seth who was set. Where English couldn't, a note tells you what you missed. The biggest one is in Genesis 2:7. The human is formed from the soil, and in Hebrew those two words are nearly the same word.

Here's why Genesis is worth your time. Much of what the rest of the Bible takes for granted gets set down here first: one God who made a good world, humans who carry his image, a rift that runs through everything, and a promise to one family for the sake of all the rest. Skip it and the rest of the Bible reads like a story you walked in on halfway through. It's also honest in a way you don't expect. Nobody in it is cleaned up. Abraham lies, Jacob cheats, the brothers sell Joseph. And God keeps his word to them anyway. If you've ever wondered whether God can work with someone like you, read Genesis.

Exodus begins with a conjunction. "And these are the names" is how a Hebrew scroll says that what follows is not a new story, and the book's Hebrew name is those first words. The English name is Greek, exodos, "the way out," which is what the Greek translators called it. It picks up Genesis's last page: seventy people in the wrong country, a coffin waiting to be carried home, and a promise about a land that nobody in the book has ever owned. What happens in it is an escape, a mountain, and a tent. By the end, a family has become a people with a law, a calendar, a priesthood, and a place to meet God.

The turning point is a name. In chapter 3 a voice from a burning bush answers the question "what is his name?" with a sentence, "I am who I am," and then with a name made of the same verb, and says that it is his name forever and the way he is to be remembered. Chapter 6 says it again and adds that the ancestors did not know him by it. This translation prints that name, Yahweh, wherever the Hebrew has it, which is set out in the charter and in the glossary. Jews stopped pronouncing it centuries before Jesus and say "the Name" or "my Lord" instead, out of reverence, which is why its vowels were never written and why most English Bibles print LORD in capital letters. Exodus is the book where that decision is most visible, because the whole plot turns on a king who says he does not know the name and a God who says Egypt is about to.

Pharaoh is never named. Not here, not anywhere in the book, and that is worth noticing in a book that names two midwives. It also means the book cannot be dated from its own pages. The store cities Pithom and Raamses put the labor in the Nile delta, and Raamses is the name of kings who reigned in the thirteenth century; readers place the exodus then, or two centuries earlier, and Egyptian records do not mention it either way. What the book is interested in is not which king it was.

Pharaoh's heart is the book's hardest problem, and it starts in chapter 4. Exodus uses three different Hebrew verbs for what happens to it: one means to make strong, one to make hard, and one to make heavy. Most English Bibles print "harden" for all three, and this one keeps three words for three words. The subject changes too. Sometimes God does it, sometimes Pharaoh does it to himself, and sometimes the text just says the heart was hard and names nobody. Paul reads the sequence one way and other readers read it another, and the book states both sides and never reconciles them.

One ordinary word runs underneath everything: serve. Israel serves Pharaoh with hard service in chapter 1, and the demand Moses carries is that the people be let go to serve God, and it is the same Hebrew word both times. The same word names the slavery and the worship. The question the book asks is never whether Israel will serve, but whom, and that is still the question in the second half, when the people are free and building a tent.

Some of the wordplay will not fit in English. Moses is given an Egyptian name and the Hebrew explains it with a Hebrew pun, in the mouth of an Egyptian princess. The box his mother puts him in is called by the word for Noah's ark, and those are the only two things in the Bible that carry the name. His first son is named for being a stranger somewhere. The bush sounds like Sinai. And the sentence "I am" and the name Yahweh are made of the same verb, which is the single most important thing about chapter 3 and the one thing no English can show. The notes at the foot of the page say so where it matters.

The Hebrew text of Exodus is well preserved. The Greek differs most in the chapters about the tabernacle, where the order and some of the details are not the same, and the Samaritan text expands the speeches to Pharaoh by repeating God's instructions as speeches actually delivered; the notes give the differences that change the sense. Why read it: because almost everything later in the Bible argues from this book. The law opens by saying "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." The prophets appeal to it when they want to say what God is like. Passover retells it every year at a table. And the New Testament describes what Jesus does in its vocabulary, a passover, a redemption, a covenant, a lamb. If all you know is the plagues and the sea, the second half is a surprise: it is mostly about how to build a tent, because the point of getting the people out was getting God into the middle of the camp.

Exodus begins with a conjunction. "And these are the names" is how a Hebrew scroll says that what follows is not a new story, and the book's Hebrew name is those first words. The English name is Greek, exodos, "the way out," which is what the Greek translators called it. It picks up Genesis's last page: seventy people in the wrong country, a coffin waiting to be carried home, and a promise about a land that nobody in the book has ever owned. What happens in it is an escape, a mountain, and a tent. By the end, a family has become a people with a law, a calendar, a priesthood, and a place to meet God.

The turning point is a name. In chapter 3 a voice from a burning bush answers the question "what is his name?" with a sentence, "I am who I am," and then with a name made of the same verb, and says that it is his name forever and the way he is to be remembered. Chapter 6 says it again and adds that the ancestors did not know him by it. This translation prints that name, Yahweh, wherever the Hebrew has it, which is set out in the charter and in the glossary. Jews stopped pronouncing it centuries before Jesus and say "the Name" or "my Lord" instead, out of reverence, which is why its vowels were never written and why most English Bibles print LORD in capital letters. Exodus is the book where that decision is most visible, because the whole plot turns on a king who says he does not know the name and a God who says Egypt is about to.

Pharaoh is never named. Not here, not anywhere in the book, and that is worth noticing in a book that names two midwives. It also means the book cannot be dated from its own pages. The store cities Pithom and Raamses put the labor in the Nile delta, and Raamses is the name of kings who reigned in the thirteenth century; readers place the exodus then, or two centuries earlier, and Egyptian records do not mention it either way. What the book is interested in is not which king it was.

Pharaoh's heart is the book's hardest problem, and it starts in chapter 4. Exodus uses three different Hebrew verbs for what happens to it: one means to make strong, one to make hard, and one to make heavy. Most English Bibles print "harden" for all three, and this one keeps three words for three words. The subject changes too. Sometimes God does it, sometimes Pharaoh does it to himself, and sometimes the text just says the heart was hard and names nobody. Paul reads the sequence one way and other readers read it another, and the book states both sides and never reconciles them.

One ordinary word runs underneath everything: serve. Israel serves Pharaoh with hard service in chapter 1, and the demand Moses carries is that the people be let go to serve God, and it is the same Hebrew word both times. The same word names the slavery and the worship. The question the book asks is never whether Israel will serve, but whom, and that is still the question in the second half, when the people are free and building a tent.

Some of the wordplay will not fit in English. Moses is given an Egyptian name and the Hebrew explains it with a Hebrew pun, in the mouth of an Egyptian princess. The box his mother puts him in is called by the word for Noah's ark, and those are the only two things in the Bible that carry the name. His first son is named for being a stranger somewhere. The bush sounds like Sinai. And the sentence "I am" and the name Yahweh are made of the same verb, which is the single most important thing about chapter 3 and the one thing no English can show. The notes at the foot of the page say so where it matters.

The Hebrew text of Exodus is well preserved. The Greek differs most in the chapters about the tabernacle, where the order and some of the details are not the same, and the Samaritan text expands the speeches to Pharaoh by repeating God's instructions as speeches actually delivered; the notes give the differences that change the sense. Why read it: because almost everything later in the Bible argues from this book. The law opens by saying "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." The prophets appeal to it when they want to say what God is like. Passover retells it every year at a table. And the New Testament describes what Jesus does in its vocabulary, a passover, a redemption, a covenant, a lamb. If all you know is the plagues and the sea, the second half is a surprise: it is mostly about how to build a tent, because the point of getting the people out was getting God into the middle of the camp.

Isaiah lived in Jerusalem and spoke for God there for about forty years, from the death of King Uzziah around 740 BC into the reign of Hezekiah. He could get to kings, and the book shows him confronting two of them, one on the road outside the city and one on his sickbed (Isaiah 7; 38-39). The empire of his lifetime was Assyria, which swallowed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 and came for Judah in 701, taking every walled city but Jerusalem. His message through all of it had two halves: rely on Yahweh, not on Egypt, not on Assyria, not on your own horses; and Yahweh is going to judge his own city for what it has done to its poor.

The book is sixty-six chapters, and not all of them are set in those forty years. Chapters 40 to 55 speak to exiles in Babylon a century and a half later, as if the fall of Jerusalem in 586 had already happened, and they name Cyrus of Persia, who let the exiles go home. Chapters 56 to 66 seem to speak to the people back in the land after that. Readers have explained this in two ways. For most of two thousand years Jewish and Christian readers read the whole as Isaiah's, seeing the future; most scholars for the last two hundred years have read the later chapters as the work of prophets in Isaiah's school who kept his book growing. Either way, the book was given to us as one, it reads as one, and its great words run from the first chapter to the last: the Holy One of Israel, Zion, the remnant, the nations coming, the servant. The notes point out where the setting changes. What you are reading is the book of Isaiah, and that is the book Jesus read.

Here's what to keep in your head. Isaiah talks to a city that thought God's house made it safe. He says the opposite: because God's house is there, the city will be judged first and hardest, and then, out of the fire, something survives that becomes the light for everyone else. Judgment, then a remnant, then glory, again and again; chapter 1 does it in thirty-one verses and the whole book does it in sixty-six chapters. The nations are everywhere in this book, and at the end they come to Zion not as prisoners but as pilgrims (Isaiah 2:2-4).

Nearly the whole book is poetry, and the translation sets it in lines. Hebrew poetry works by saying a thing twice in different words, and the second line usually sharpens the first, so read the pairs together. Isaiah loves wordplay; where English can carry it the line does, and where it cannot, a note says what the first hearer heard. God's name is printed as Yahweh, and Isaiah's own title for him, Yahweh of Armies, is printed as he said it; older Bibles have "the LORD of hosts." The Holy One of Israel is his name for God more than anyone else's, and it echoes the cry of "holy, holy, holy" he heard the day he saw the throne (Isaiah 6).

Here's why Isaiah is worth your time. The New Testament quotes him more than any book but the Psalms. Mark opens his Gospel with him, Jesus opened his ministry by reading from him (Luke 4:17-21), and every Christmas and every Good Friday you hear him. If you want to know where the church got its words for who Jesus is, this is where. And if you have ever looked at a city, a church, or a country that says the right things and does the wrong ones, Isaiah 1 is the sermon, and Isaiah 2 is the hope.

Isaiah lived in Jerusalem and spoke for God there for about forty years, from the death of King Uzziah around 740 BC into the reign of Hezekiah. He could get to kings, and the book shows him confronting two of them, one on the road outside the city and one on his sickbed (Isaiah 7; 38-39). The empire of his lifetime was Assyria, which swallowed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 and came for Judah in 701, taking every walled city but Jerusalem. His message through all of it had two halves: rely on Yahweh, not on Egypt, not on Assyria, not on your own horses; and Yahweh is going to judge his own city for what it has done to its poor.

The book is sixty-six chapters, and not all of them are set in those forty years. Chapters 40 to 55 speak to exiles in Babylon a century and a half later, as if the fall of Jerusalem in 586 had already happened, and they name Cyrus of Persia, who let the exiles go home. Chapters 56 to 66 seem to speak to the people back in the land after that. Readers have explained this in two ways. For most of two thousand years Jewish and Christian readers read the whole as Isaiah's, seeing the future; most scholars for the last two hundred years have read the later chapters as the work of prophets in Isaiah's school who kept his book growing. Either way, the book was given to us as one, it reads as one, and its great words run from the first chapter to the last: the Holy One of Israel, Zion, the remnant, the nations coming, the servant. The notes point out where the setting changes. What you are reading is the book of Isaiah, and that is the book Jesus read.

Here's what to keep in your head. Isaiah talks to a city that thought God's house made it safe. He says the opposite: because God's house is there, the city will be judged first and hardest, and then, out of the fire, something survives that becomes the light for everyone else. Judgment, then a remnant, then glory, again and again; chapter 1 does it in thirty-one verses and the whole book does it in sixty-six chapters. The nations are everywhere in this book, and at the end they come to Zion not as prisoners but as pilgrims (Isaiah 2:2-4).

Nearly the whole book is poetry, and the translation sets it in lines. Hebrew poetry works by saying a thing twice in different words, and the second line usually sharpens the first, so read the pairs together. Isaiah loves wordplay; where English can carry it the line does, and where it cannot, a note says what the first hearer heard. God's name is printed as Yahweh, and Isaiah's own title for him, Yahweh of Armies, is printed as he said it; older Bibles have "the LORD of hosts." The Holy One of Israel is his name for God more than anyone else's, and it echoes the cry of "holy, holy, holy" he heard the day he saw the throne (Isaiah 6).

Here's why Isaiah is worth your time. The New Testament quotes him more than any book but the Psalms. Mark opens his Gospel with him, Jesus opened his ministry by reading from him (Luke 4:17-21), and every Christmas and every Good Friday you hear him. If you want to know where the church got its words for who Jesus is, this is where. And if you have ever looked at a city, a church, or a country that says the right things and does the wrong ones, Isaiah 1 is the sermon, and Isaiah 2 is the hope.

Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels and, most think, the first one written. It has no birth story and no genealogy. It opens with a man in the wilderness and a voice from heaven, and by the end of the first chapter Jesus has been baptized, tested, called four fishermen, silenced a demon, healed a mother-in-law, and cleansed a leper. Mark's favorite word is "immediately." He uses it more than forty times, and we kept it every time, because the pace is the point. Things happen fast in this book, and the people watching are astonished, afraid, and asking who this is.

Who wrote it? The book never says. Since the early second century the church has said that Mark, the companion of Peter, wrote down what Peter preached (1 Peter 5:13; Acts 12:12), and that is why the book carries his name. Thread leaves it there. What can be seen from the book itself is that it was written for people who did not know Jewish customs, because it stops to explain them (Mark 7:3-4), and who did not speak Aramaic, because it translates the words Jesus said in it (Mark 5:41; Mark 15:34). Peter is the disciple it follows most closely, failures included.

Two things to watch. First, Jesus keeps telling people to be quiet. Demons, a leper, a girl's parents, his own disciples after Peter's confession (Mark 8:30): all are told to say nothing, and mostly they don't. Readers have argued about why for a century, and the note at Mark 1:34 says what they have said. Second, Jesus asks a question in the middle of the book that the whole book is built to answer: "Who do people say I am?" (Mark 8:27). Every scene before it raises the question. The demons know, the crowds guess, and the disciples take half the book to get there and then get it wrong. The first human being in Mark to call Jesus the Son of God, with no one telling him to, is a Roman soldier at the cross (Mark 15:39).

One more thing to know before you start. In the oldest copies the book ends at Mark 16:8, with women running from an empty tomb, afraid, saying nothing to anyone. Later copies add twelve more verses, and most Bibles print them. The notes at chapter 16 tell you what the manuscripts show and what readers have made of an ending like that.

Here's why Mark is worth your time. If you have never read a Gospel straight through, this is the one to start with. It takes about ninety minutes out loud, and it was written to be heard that way. It doesn't explain much. It shows you a man doing things no one could do, and the people around him not knowing what to make of it, and it leaves you standing where they stood. That isn't a flaw. It's the book's way of asking you the question it asks everyone.

Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels and, most think, the first one written. It has no birth story and no genealogy. It opens with a man in the wilderness and a voice from heaven, and by the end of the first chapter Jesus has been baptized, tested, called four fishermen, silenced a demon, healed a mother-in-law, and cleansed a leper. Mark's favorite word is "immediately." He uses it more than forty times, and we kept it every time, because the pace is the point. Things happen fast in this book, and the people watching are astonished, afraid, and asking who this is.

Who wrote it? The book never says. Since the early second century the church has said that Mark, the companion of Peter, wrote down what Peter preached (1 Peter 5:13; Acts 12:12), and that is why the book carries his name. Thread leaves it there. What can be seen from the book itself is that it was written for people who did not know Jewish customs, because it stops to explain them (Mark 7:3-4), and who did not speak Aramaic, because it translates the words Jesus said in it (Mark 5:41; Mark 15:34). Peter is the disciple it follows most closely, failures included.

Two things to watch. First, Jesus keeps telling people to be quiet. Demons, a leper, a girl's parents, his own disciples after Peter's confession (Mark 8:30): all are told to say nothing, and mostly they don't. Readers have argued about why for a century, and the note at Mark 1:34 says what they have said. Second, Jesus asks a question in the middle of the book that the whole book is built to answer: "Who do people say I am?" (Mark 8:27). Every scene before it raises the question. The demons know, the crowds guess, and the disciples take half the book to get there and then get it wrong. The first human being in Mark to call Jesus the Son of God, with no one telling him to, is a Roman soldier at the cross (Mark 15:39).

One more thing to know before you start. In the oldest copies the book ends at Mark 16:8, with women running from an empty tomb, afraid, saying nothing to anyone. Later copies add twelve more verses, and most Bibles print them. The notes at chapter 16 tell you what the manuscripts show and what readers have made of an ending like that.

Here's why Mark is worth your time. If you have never read a Gospel straight through, this is the one to start with. It takes about ninety minutes out loud, and it was written to be heard that way. It doesn't explain much. It shows you a man doing things no one could do, and the people around him not knowing what to make of it, and it leaves you standing where they stood. That isn't a flaw. It's the book's way of asking you the question it asks everyone.

Paul had never been to Rome when he wrote this letter. He was in Corinth, around AD 57, about to carry a collection to the poor in Jerusalem. After that he hoped to come to Rome and be sent on from there to Spain (Romans 15:23-28). So this is a letter of introduction to churches he didn't start. A woman named Phoebe most likely carried it (Romans 16:1-2), and she may well have been the one who read it to them and answered their questions.

Here's the background you need. About AD 49 the emperor Claudius ordered the Jews out of Rome (Acts 18:2), and the Jewish followers of Jesus had to leave with everyone else. For about five years the house churches in Rome would have been left to people from the nations. Then Claudius died and the Jews came home, to gatherings that had changed while they were gone.

Who belongs at this table, and on what terms?

You can hear that strain all through the letter, and it comes to the surface in Romans 14:1-15:7. Paul's answer is the good news itself: "it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). He walks it out in order. Everyone is under sin, the Jew and the nations alike (Romans 1:18-3:20). God justifies as a gift, through Jesus Christ, and Abraham shows it was always by faith (Romans 3:21-4:25). That gift opens into a new life in the Spirit (Romans 5:1-8:39). God has not dropped Israel (Romans 9:1-11:36). So live as one body (Romans 12:1-15:13).

You'll notice a few words that aren't the ones you grew up with: slave where you expected servant, the nations where you expected Gentiles, holy ones where you expected saints. We didn't do that to be clever. Paul's first hearers heard ordinary words from the street and the household, and centuries of church use have turned some of them into a private vocabulary. The glossary explains each one. It also explains two words we kept: "faith" and "believe" are one word in Paul's Greek, a noun and its verb, and "righteous," "righteousness," and "justify" are one family.

One habit of Paul's can trip you up. He argues with an imaginary opponent, a style the teachers of his day used all the time. When he says, "you are without excuse, whoever you are who judges" (Romans 2:1), he's talking to one made-up person and letting the whole room overhear. Other times his "you" is everyone in the room. English can't show the difference, so the notes point it out where it matters. And remember how this letter first arrived. Nobody studied it a verse at a time. They sat in somebody's house and heard it start to finish. Read it that way at least once.

Here's why Romans is worth your time. It's the fullest thing anyone in the Bible wrote about how a person gets right with God, and it was written to settle a fight in a church, not to fill a textbook. If you've ever asked whether God has given up on you, or on someone you love, chapters 8 and 11 were written for that question. It's hard in places. Read it anyway. The people it was sent to heard it in one sitting, in somebody's house, and most of them couldn't read.

Paul had never been to Rome when he wrote this letter. He was in Corinth, around AD 57, about to carry a collection to the poor in Jerusalem. After that he hoped to come to Rome and be sent on from there to Spain (Romans 15:23-28). So this is a letter of introduction to churches he didn't start. A woman named Phoebe most likely carried it (Romans 16:1-2), and she may well have been the one who read it to them and answered their questions.

Here's the background you need. About AD 49 the emperor Claudius ordered the Jews out of Rome (Acts 18:2), and the Jewish followers of Jesus had to leave with everyone else. For about five years the house churches in Rome would have been left to people from the nations. Then Claudius died and the Jews came home, to gatherings that had changed while they were gone.

Who belongs at this table, and on what terms?

You can hear that strain all through the letter, and it comes to the surface in Romans 14:1-15:7. Paul's answer is the good news itself: "it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). He walks it out in order. Everyone is under sin, the Jew and the nations alike (Romans 1:18-3:20). God sets people right as a gift, through Jesus Christ, and Abraham shows it was always by faith (Romans 3:21-4:25). That gift opens into a new life in the Spirit (Romans 5:1-8:39). God has not dropped Israel (Romans 9:1-11:36). So live as one body (Romans 12:1-15:13).

You'll notice a few words that aren't the ones you grew up with: slave where you expected servant, the nations where you expected Gentiles, holy ones where you expected saints. We didn't do that to be clever. Paul's first hearers heard ordinary words from the street and the household, and centuries of church use have turned some of them into a private vocabulary. Set right is another: where older Bibles say a person is "justified," this edition says God sets them right. The Thread Study Bible's glossary explains each one, and it is one tap away. Two words are kept as you know them, and they are one word each in Paul's Greek: "faith" and "believe" are a noun and its verb, and "righteous," "righteousness," and "set right" are one family.

One habit of Paul's can trip you up. He argues with an imaginary opponent, a style the teachers of his day used all the time. When he says, "you are without excuse, whoever you are who judges" (Romans 2:1), he's talking to one made-up person and letting the whole room overhear. Other times his "you" is everyone in the room. English can't show the difference, so the notes point it out where it matters. And remember how this letter first arrived. Nobody studied it a verse at a time. They sat in somebody's house and heard it start to finish. Read it that way at least once.

Here's why Romans is worth your time. It's the fullest thing anyone in the Bible wrote about how a person gets right with God, and it was written to settle a fight in a church, not to fill a textbook. If you've ever asked whether God has given up on you, or on someone you love, chapters 8 and 11 were written for that question. It's hard in places. Read it anyway. The people it was sent to heard it in one sitting, in somebody's house, and most of them couldn't read.

Paul wrote this one from a prison cell, and it's the happiest letter he ever wrote. Some form of "rejoice" comes sixteen times in four short chapters. He doesn't say which prison. Most readers think Rome, around AD 62, because he mentions the imperial guard and Caesar's household (Philippians 1:13; Philippians 4:22). Some think Ephesus, a few years earlier. Either way he's chained to a soldier, waiting on a trial that could end with his execution, and he writes like a man who has already settled the question: "to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).

Here's the background you need. Philippi was a Roman colony, a little piece of Rome dropped into northern Greece, settled by army veterans who held Roman citizenship and were proud of it. Paul started the church there on his first trip into Europe (Acts 16:11-40). The first convert was a businesswoman named Lydia, and the next was the town jailer, after an earthquake. Paul got beaten and locked up in Philippi, and the people there never forgot him. When he left, they sent him money. They kept sending it when nobody else did (Philippians 4:15-16). Now they've sent a man named Epaphroditus with another gift, and he nearly died on the errand. This letter goes home with him.

So it's a thank-you note, mostly. But Paul has heard about a quarrel between two women who worked beside him, Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:2), and the whole middle of the letter is aimed at that. His word for what he wants is "think," and he uses it ten times: think the same thing, think one thing, think the way Christ thought. Then he quotes a hymn the churches were already singing, about the one who was in the form of God and took the form of a slave (Philippians 2:5-11). That's his answer to the quarrel. It's also the oldest statement of who Jesus is that we have.

You'll hear the colony in the words he picks. He tells them to "live as citizens" (Philippians 1:27) and says their citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), which to a Roman colonist didn't mean going somewhere else. It meant living by the capital's laws right where you are, and waiting for the capital to come to you. "Lord" and "Savior" were titles the Greek-speaking East gave the emperor. Paul gives them to Jesus.

Two verses from this letter get pulled out and used for things Paul never meant. "I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13) is a prisoner talking about going hungry, not a slogan for the gym. The promise that "my God will fill every need of yours" (Philippians 4:19) is made to poor people who just gave money away. The notes take both up. Read the letter through once first, the way they heard it, in one sitting, with Epaphroditus standing there.

Here's why this letter is worth your time. It's the clearest picture in the Bible of a man who has lost nearly everything and is glad. Paul isn't pretending. He's in chains, he might be executed, his friends are quarreling, and he keeps saying rejoice. If you want to know what joy that doesn't depend on circumstances looks like, and what it costs, it's here. So is one of the oldest hymns about Jesus we have, and the plainest answer to a church fight ever written: think the way he did.

Paul wrote this one from a prison cell, and it's the happiest letter he ever wrote. Some form of "rejoice" comes sixteen times in four short chapters. He doesn't say which prison. Most readers think Rome, around AD 62, because he mentions the imperial guard and Caesar's household (Philippians 1:13; Philippians 4:22). Some think Ephesus, a few years earlier. Either way he's chained to a soldier, waiting on a trial that could end with his execution, and he writes like a man who has already settled the question: "to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).

Here's the background you need. Philippi was a Roman colony, a little piece of Rome dropped into northern Greece, settled by army veterans who held Roman citizenship and were proud of it. Paul started the church there on his first trip into Europe (Acts 16:11-40). The first convert was a businesswoman named Lydia, and the next was the town jailer, after an earthquake. Paul got beaten and locked up in Philippi, and the people there never forgot him. When he left, they sent him money. They kept sending it when nobody else did (Philippians 4:15-16). Now they've sent a man named Epaphroditus with another gift, and he nearly died on the errand. This letter goes home with him.

So it's a thank-you note, mostly. But Paul has heard about a quarrel between two women who worked beside him, Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:2), and the whole middle of the letter is aimed at that. His word for what he wants is "think," and he uses it ten times: think the same thing, think one thing, think the way Christ thought. Then he quotes a hymn the churches were already singing, about the one who was in the form of God and took the form of a slave (Philippians 2:5-11). That's his answer to the quarrel. It's also the oldest statement of who Jesus is that we have.

You'll hear the colony in the words he picks. He tells them to "live as citizens" (Philippians 1:27) and says their citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), which to a Roman colonist didn't mean going somewhere else. It meant living by the capital's laws right where you are, and waiting for the capital to come to you. "Lord" and "Savior" were titles the Greek-speaking East gave the emperor. Paul gives them to Jesus.

Two verses from this letter get pulled out and used for things Paul never meant. "I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13) is a prisoner talking about going hungry, not a slogan for the gym. The promise that "my God will fill every need of yours" (Philippians 4:19) is made to poor people who just gave money away. The notes take both up. Read the letter through once first, the way they heard it, in one sitting, with Epaphroditus standing there.

Here's why this letter is worth your time. It's the clearest picture in the Bible of a man who has lost nearly everything and is glad. Paul isn't pretending. He's in chains, he might be executed, his friends are quarreling, and he keeps saying rejoice. If you want to know what joy that doesn't depend on circumstances looks like, and what it costs, it's here. So is one of the oldest hymns about Jesus we have, and the plainest answer to a church fight ever written: think the way he did.