Asimov's Guide to the Bible

Asimov's Guide to the Bible is a work by Isaac Asimov that was first published in two volumes in 1967 and 1969, covering the Old Testament and the New Testament (including the Catholic Old Testament, or deuterocanonical, books and the Eastern Orthodox Old Testament books, or anagignoskomena, along with the Fourth Book of Ezra), respectively. He combined them into a single 1296-page volume in 1981. They included maps by the artist Rafael Palacios.

Including numerous black-and-white maps, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in the order of the King James Version to the extent possible, explaining the historical and geographical setting of each one, and the political and historical influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the main characters. Asimov treats the secular aspects of the Bible with intellectual instead of theological commentary. His appendix "Guides to the Old and New Testament" include biblical verse, footnotes, references and subject indices.

Publication data

• Asimov's Guide to the Bible: The Old and New Testaments, Wings Books (Random House), 1981, ISBN 0-517-34582-X, also Gramercy Press reprint 1988 (same ISBN)