Intro to The Story of Jesus: All Four Gospels In One

Religious education isn't new. Scholars have been studying, interpreting, and teaching theology based on sacred writings for millennia. But the Scriptures are for everyone, not just the learned. In the same way, religion and faith are for everyone, regardless of education, scholarship, race, gender, or social status. The original Gospel writers weren't scholars themselves, at least not originally. They were a tax collector, a missionary's companion, a physician, and a fisherman; it’s unknown whether they had any formal religious education. But it didn't matter – they penned the most popular biography in history.

Such is this The Story of Jesus, which puts the events of Jesus’ life into chronological order. It draws primarily from the four books of the Bible that record it, that is, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It’s always difficult to translate the Bible literally while still being readable. The translation used in The Story of Jesus is original text, based on various contemporary English translations and the original Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew versions of the Bible. This applies both to the main text of Jesus’ life story and the sidebars of the various scriptural references. The Story of Jesus attempts to be as faithful as possible to the original languages it was written in, even at the expense of being readable.