New features, especially designed for the college student, include maps, images, and study questions. A companion web site includes special resources for both teachers and students including: PowerPoint presentations, chapter by chapter test banks, study questions, suggestions for further reading, and web site links.

Designed for individual study or for group/parish discussion, this guide has the following features for each section and chapter of Jesus of Nazareth:

Both immediate and timeless, Abraham tells the powerful story of one man's search for the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Traveling through war zones, braving violence at religious sites, and seeking out faith leaders, Bruce Feiler uncovers the defining yet divisive role that Abraham plays for half the world's believers. Provocative and uplifting, Abraham offers a thoughtful and inspiring vision of unity that redefines what we think about our neighbors, our future, and ourselves.

David, unlike any Bible character before him, had the charisma to inspire a great nation. Yet in other ways he was a most ordinary man-often gripped by destructive passion, rocked by personal tragedy, and motivated by political gain. Yet, he is the one character the Bible describes as a "man after God's own heart." In this first volume of the "Great Lives" series Charles Swindoll shows how David proved his love for God many times over in an extraordinary life that left an enduring legacy of faith.

Elijah the Tishbite. He stepped out of nowhere to become a significant prophet of God. The rugged, gaunt prophet from the obscure town of Tishbeh became God's powerful instrument of confrontation.

Alone, Elijah faced off with over four hundred prophets of the false god Baal…and won. Yet, on another occasion, he became so terrified of a woman that he ran for his life. He was a man who God sent His ravens to fee. A man who God loved so much that He prepared a special chariot and horses of fire to transport him from earth to heaven. He was Elijah-the man in a whirlwind, the humble hero.

"Like a meteor, he flashed across the inky blackness of Israel's spiritual night."

-J. Oswald Sanders

Like Elijah, we're all subject to times of bravery and times of fear. One day we're able to face life with a smile; the next, we feel crushed by its oppressive weight. We vacillate from courageous to cowardly, from hopeful to hopeless. Like Elijah, we are ordinary people with seemingly overwhelming problems. And the answer is in God alone as the name "Elijah" indicates: It means, "The Lord is my God."

He lived courageously with his peers and walked humbly with his God.

Where are great leaders like Elijah today? Uncompromisingly strong, yet self-controlled. Disciplined, yet forgiving. Audaciously courageous, yet kind. Heroic in the heat of battle, yet humble in the aftermath.

We see a few such men and women, but the list is tragically short. Rarely does someone model these invaluable traits more obviously than God's mighty prophet Elijah, whose calling was anything but calm and free from conflict. Nevertheless, as you are about to discover in this book. Elijah exemplified true heroism and genuine humility amid the relentless pressure of battle.

Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility is the fifth volume in the best-selling Great Lives from God's Word series by Charles Swindoll. The series also includes such powerful biographies as Joseph, David, Esther, and Moses.

Exploring the depths of Elijah's fascinating life as a prophet of God, Swindoll does not gloss over his human weaknesses; rather, he presents an honest picture of this ordinary man who God transformed into His personal spokesman to confront idolatry and evil in the ancient world. You will find that it's a life worth emulating.

In a world that has lost its way, due in part to the lack of balanced, godly leadership, we are more than ever in need of a few Elijah-like men and women who are not afraid to live courageously among their peers as they walk humbly with their God.

"May this book establish deep within you a desire to stand strong for what is right as you bow low before Him who is worthy of your trust and obedience."-Charles Swindoll

In Great Lives: Esther, Dr. Swindoll delves into the real-life story of Queen Esther showing how the qualities that empowered her godly life are available for every Christian.

Everyone loves a transformation story. Rags to riches. Plain to beautiful. Weak to strong. Esther's story is that, but it is much more. It is the account of God working mightily in one life and how godly attributes like courage, dignity, wisdom, and strength can thwart evil and replace terror with joy. Chuck Swindoll celebrates the story of Esther and reveals how every Christian can live a transformation story.

Bests-elling author Charles Swindoll unveils the life and trials of Job and helps readers understand the key to developing heroic endurance.

The trials of Job are legendary. One righteous man suffering so many calamities, so much heartache. Though many have heard about Job and his trials, not all people truly understand what those trials were about and what God was trying to accomplish through them. Job himself was confused about it all. What did I do to deserve such suffering? he cried out.

Eventually, though, through tough questions and unexpected answers from God, Job gained new insights on suffering, patience, and endurance. And, more important, he learned how deeply he was loved by God, a lesson available for every Christian wounded by or in the midst of a trial.

In How to Read the Bible, Harvard professor James Kugel leads the reader chapter by chapter through the "quiet revolution" of recent biblical scholarship, showing time and again how radically the interpretations of today's researchers differ from what people have always thought. The story of Adam and Eve, it turns out, was not originally about the "Fall of Man," but about the move from a primitive, hunter-gatherer society to a settled, agricultural one. As for the stories of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Esau, these narratives were not, at their origin, about individual people at all but, rather, explanations of some feature of Israelite society as it existed centuries after these figures were said to have lived. Dinah was never raped -- her story was created by an editor to solve a certain problem in Genesis. In the earliest version of the Exodus story, Moses probably did not divide the Red Sea in half; instead, the Egyptians perished in a storm at sea. Whatever the original Ten Commandments might have been, scholars are quite sure they were different from the ones we have today. What's more, the people long supposed to have written various books of the Bible were not, in the current consensus, their real authors: David did not write the Psalms, Solomon did not write Proverbs or Ecclesiastes; indeed, there is scarcely a book in the Bible that is not the product of different, anonymous authors and editors working in different periods.

Such findings pose a serious problem for adherents of traditional, Bible-based faiths. Hiding from the discoveries of modern scholars seems dishonest, but accepting them means undermining much of the Bible's reliability and authority as the word of God. What to do? In his search for a solution, Kugel leads the reader back to a group of ancient biblical interpreters who flourished at the end of the biblical period. Far from naïve, these interpreters consciously set out to depart from the original meaning of the Bible's various stories, laws, and prophecies -- and they, Kugel argues, hold the key to solving the dilemma of reading the Bible today.

How to Read the Bible is, quite simply, the best, most original book about the Bible in decades. It offers an unflinching, insider's look at the work of today's scholars, together with a sustained consideration of what the Bible was for most of its history -- before the rise of modern scholarship. Readable, clear, often funny but deeply serious in its purpose, this is a book for Christians and Jews, believers and secularists alike. It offers nothing less than a whole new way of thinking about sacred Scripture.