Even as the Bible provides inspiration, comfort, and moral instruction, it's also pretty darn weird. Not only is it chock-a-block full of surprising, sometimes disturbing material; but as a book itself it hardly conforms to expectation. A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible makes space for people to reckon with these less-popular qualities of contradictions, instances of ethically-questionable behavior, and frank bewilderments. And even while acknowledging the Bible's great value and continued relevance for believers,  A Most Peculiar Book provides information to help readers appreciate what makes the Bible as a book so very unusual and how to make sense of those features, too. Designed to promote readers' understanding of the Bible, no matter what they do or don't believe, A Most Peculiar Book doesn't explain every bewildering passage or whitewash away what's discomforting in and about the Bible. But it gives readers context for understanding how and why such biblical texts exist and ideas for how people, particularly believers, might reconcile the Bible's strangeness within their own lives of reason and faith.

It took me decades to admit a fact that had been staring me in the face for as long as I could read: the Bible is a very strange book.

See, I grew up in a Christian, church-going family – Protestant Lutheran, no less. So I grew up reading the Bible. And it doesn't take long to discover all sorts of unsettling material in there – from the bizarre (those angels mating with human beings in Genesis) to the disturbing (where was Sarah when Abraham went off to kill their son?) to the ethically problematic (God-sanctioned genocide, for one thing). And that's just what's inside. It's also a strange book-as-a-book. But there's so much that's comforting (the 23^rd Psalm), inspiring (Jesus's Sermon on the Mount), and beautiful (all that nature-poetry in the Song of Songs) that I let a lot of more troubling qualities slide.

I was lucky to have occasion to learn more about the Bible, starting in earnest, in college. There, I came also to appreciate that one of the issues I'm passionate about – what we loosely call ecological or environmental – might get a more nuanced and sustainably healthy treatment than we're accustomed to find, but that a lot is lost in translation.

When I saw that, when I learned that the Bible wasn't actually written in the English of my native language but in archaic languages that demand the interpretive work of translation unless a person could read biblical Hebrew, koine Greek, and a smattering of Aramaic, I was hooked. And I was troubled by the ways that believers sometimes use the Bible to beat up on others or assume an anti-intellectual self-righteousness damaging to communities and to the earth itself. Anyway, I wanted to be able to read it "in the original" for myself.

A Ph.D. and tenured professorship later, I've come to appreciate that in some ways the Bible only gets stranger the more one learns. (For one thing, we don't have an original per se.) But I've also come back around to – ahem – loving the Bible again. It's a love, I hasten to add, as I note in the introduction of A Most Peculiar Book, that looks more like what might happen after decades in an arranged marriage than a starry-eyed, s/he-can-do-no-wrong infatuation.

This book aims to make space for readers to share both the fact that Bible is weird – as a book and as regards what's in it, and that it's extraordinary in all sorts of inexhaustibly intriguing and even beautiful ways. In the process, if not to clear up some of its strangeness, then to understand why and how it is. And maybe, just maybe, resist the twin urges of literalistic application or outright dismissal to apply reason, humility, and kindness in our interactions with one another and with the world around us.

Introduction: An Arranged Marriage

I have a confession to make. But I'm worried that you, intelligent and discerning reader, will hear in it something other than what I mean. Then you'll close this book and put it right back on the shelf. Yet what I am about to tell you—and the fact that feels like a confession—is what drives this entire project. So, here it is:

I love the Bible.

That statement gives me the willies. It sounds so simple, declaring your love for the Bible. It’s something millions of Americans would nod right along with. But my love for the Bible is not of the swept-off-my-feet, love-at-first-sight variety. It is more like the complicated love that might develop after decades in an arranged marriage. I've come to love the Bible for all sorts of reasons, not least its messy and discomfiting problematic-ness.

Most people, religious and not, have noticed these qualities in the Bible. It contains inconsistencies, questionable ethics, a herky-jerky narrative style. Yet these features barely get a passing glance. Believers explain them away while nonbelievers use them as a reason to dismiss the Bible entirely. This book looks squarely at what's so weird, difficult, and problematic both about and in the Bible, and in the process shows how those qualities can actually enrich one's relationship, religious or not, to the text. I am not going to try to convert anybody to anything. Rather, I'm committed to providing information, digging into the text and its background, and sharing questions of my own that might resonate with you. Those questions are both what make me love the Bible, and what make that love so complicated.

Starred review, "Both religious and secular readers will benefit from Swenson’s illuminating analysis..." - Publishers Weekly

"... insightful and instructive,..." - Library Journal

"... stimulating and challenging,... questions all simplistic 'Bible-believing' theories about the authority of Scripture by showing how complex and contradictory it often is. Swenson tackles the problems head on while still making good her claim to love the Bible."—John Barton, author of A History of the Bible: The Story of the World's Most Influential Book

"Do you think you know the Bible?  Wait till you read Kristin Swenson’s new book.  What if you don’t know the Bible at all?  Even better. ... deeply informed, completely accessible, and endlessly fascinating explanation of what scholars know about the Bible and lay people, as a rule, do not.  Read this book and prepare to learn!”—Bart D. Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

"One can only truly love and respect the Bible if one is willing to embrace its complexities, problems, messiness, and just plain weirdness. Whether you are looking to deepen your relationship with sacred scripture or are coming to the Bible for the first time, Kristin Swenson will help you appreciate—even love—the Bible as it is.”—Peter Enns, author of The Bible Tells Me So and How the Bible Actually Works