Golden Press. 1981 VG, HB Color illustrations throughout. Volume 1. Stories include Creation, the Garden of Eden, The Serpent in the Garden, Cain & Abel, Noah & the Ark, The Tower of Babel, God s Promise to Abram, Abram s Vision, A Wife for Isaac, Each volume in this series is beautifully illustrated with color, written in simple text for the early reader and contains an illustrated index. No book has influenced the world more than the Bible. These

holy scriptures are the foundations of the great Christian and

Jewish faiths, and people the world over believe in, and live by,

| the Bible s teachings.

The Bible is a collection of stories about God s chosen peo-

pie. Some of the stories are frightening, some are funny, and

still others are deeply moving The Bible is also a history of

these people. For Christians and Jews, however, the Bible is

something more than literature or history. They believe it is

God s word. They believe that God showed himself to men and

women in its pages. In the Bible, God tells men and women

who he is and what he wants from them.

We read how God created the world out of nothingness,

and put men and women, whom he made in his own image, in

it to worship him. God gave his people ten great command-

ments by which to lead their lives. And people everywhere use

these commandments to tell right from wrong, and to guide

them in their relationships with other people and with God.

The God we read about in the Bible often seems like a per-

son. God enters into friendships with men and women, he talks

to them and leads them. Christians believe Jesus Christ is

God, which means that they believe God walked among men

and women. The Jewish people believe that God had special

~Ians for their nation. They believe that God wanted the patri-

arch Jacob, whom he renamed Israel, to teach all nations about

him. The Bible gives us an account of both these beliefs.

Christians and Jews read the Bible often. They say that they

need the Bible the way a baby needs milk: It nourishes them and

~ makes them healthy and strong. They read the Bible in order to

know who God is and what he wants them to do.

The Bible recounts the history of the people of Israel. The

Old Testament describes the government and the religious faith

of the Jewish people, and records the long and hard wars that

the people of Israel had to fight against their powerful neigh-

bors. It tells us of the eyentual collapse of the Kingdom of Israel

and the exile of the people in the year 587 B.C. The New Testa-

ment records the life of Jesus and the story of Israel when it was

under the power of the Roman Empire.

The word Bible means "the books." The plural is used be-

cause the Bible is not really one book but a collection of 66 small

books. Each book has a different title, like "Genesis" or "Isaiah"