Book overviews
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Joshua
A conquest account, three competing models to explain it, and the most useful check of all: the first chapter of the next book, which says the land was not taken.
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1 Corinthians
Real answers to real questions from a real congregation, which makes it unusually informative about first-century practice — and it mentions a letter we no longer have.
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Deuteronomy
Speeches, not narrative, shaped like an ancient treaty — a parallel used to argue for both an early and a late date, which is exactly what makes it interesting.
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Daniel
Two languages, two halves, and four centuries between the dates proposed for it. Daniel is where most arguments about biblical prophecy begin, and where the external record is most awkward for everyone.
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Romans
A letter with an occasion, not a systematic theology — which is the commonest misreading. Plus a closing chapter with a textual history of its own.
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Numbers
Two censuses, forty years and a seer called Balaam whose name turns up on a wall in Jordan — attesting the figure, not the episode. The population figures are a genuine unresolved problem.
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Acts
Jerusalem to Rome, the “we” passages and three explanations of them, and the places where it is hard to reconcile with Paul writing about himself.
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John
So different from the other three in chronology, idiom and content that harmonising is not an option. Two endings, and a famous passage the earliest manuscripts do not have.
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Proverbs
Collections inside collections, a stretch running close to Egyptian instruction literature, and the error the form invites: reading an observation as a promise.
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Luke
A formal preface, a two-volume work with Acts, and a census in chapter 2 that remains a real and unresolved historical difficulty.