Most of what people believe about Jesus came to them secondhand, from culture, critics, or people who claimed his name. There are four first-century accounts of his life: two from men who walked with him, two from their close companions who interviewed the people who did. They're short, they're free, and you can start one right now.
2Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in their midst 4they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 5Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" 6This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
7And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." 8And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.
10Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" 11She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."
12Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
Reading that just took you about a minute. Five of those a day, and you'll have read John's entire account in three weeks.
Start John from chapter 1After the crucifixion, the men who wrote and sourced these accounts were hiding behind locked doors, afraid they'd be next. Weeks later, those same men stood in public, in the same city, saying they had seen him alive.
They had every reason to walk it back. They were beaten, imprisoned, exiled, and executed for what they claimed. Recanting would have cost them nothing and saved their lives. Not one of them did. No fortune, no fame, no comfortable retirement waited on the other side of the story. Only the story itself.
People will die for something false they believe is true. People do not die for something they know they made up.
So the question isn't whether they believed it. The question is what they saw. And the only way to weigh that is to read what they wrote.
An animated walkthrough of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus's most famous teaching, made by BibleProject.
That video is a summary too. Someone else's, just an honest one. Don't stop at the trailer. Read the book.
Written by a man who walked with Jesus, so that you could weigh it for yourself.
Each chapter takes about five minutes. No study guide required. Just read what he said and did.
John has 21 chapters. Three weeks from now, your view of Jesus will be your own, not someone else's.
John first. Then Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the other three accounts of the same life. You'll notice they share stories but tell them differently, the same way you and a friend would each tell the same event from your own perspective. So did the apostles. If anything, those small differences should give you confidence: nobody smoothed them out afterward, the goal was to preserve what each witness actually recorded. After that, try Psalms when life gets heavy and Romans when you want the why behind it all. You don't need to start at page one, the Bible is a library of 66 books, not one long novel.
Every major translation comes from the same ancient manuscripts, thousands of them. The versions just trade word-for-word precision against modern readability. We quote the ESV, precise but clean. If you want smoother modern English without losing the substance, grab an NIV. Either way you're reading the same book.
Tell us your name and how to reach you, then check what you want. That's it.
When questions come up, and they will, these are the voices we point people to.
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