Know the Bible
Who is this? What is this place? What does this mean?
The people, places, objects, events, groups and ideas you meet while reading — explained in their own context first, then opened up through symbolic and personal reflection that is always labelled as reflection.
Groups
Who were they?
- Group
The Twelve
The inner group Jesus calls and sends out in the Gospels. The number twelve deliberately echoes the twelve tribes. They are portrayed as slow to understand, competitive about status, and entrusted with responsibility anyway.
Remember: Twelve ordinary arguers who were sent out anyway.
- Group
The Pharisees
A Jewish movement in the Second Temple period committed to applying the law carefully to everyday life, including outside the temple. They were widely respected, and after AD 70 their approach substantially shaped rabbinic Judaism. The Gospels record sharp conflict between Jesus and some Pharisees — an inner-Jewish dispute, not a verdict on Jewish people.
Remember: Serious people trying to live the law in ordinary life — and Jesus' sharpest conversation partners.
How it all connects
A few short threads through the story. Only connections seeded in this library are shown — it is a map of what we have written, not of the whole Bible.
The line of promise
Genesis follows one family across four generations — and ends with them in Egypt.
From slavery to a people
The exodus is the event Israel keeps returning to when it asks who it is.
Jerusalem, temple and the last week
One city holds kingship, worship and the events at the centre of the Gospels.
Loss, exile and return
What happens to a people when the land, the temple and the king are gone.
From Galilee outward
The movement begins in fishing villages, not in the capital.
Instruction, ark and temple
Where the covenant terms were kept, and how instruction stayed at the centre of worship.
One kingdom becomes two
A king who would not listen, two kingdoms, and the long road to exile.