New Book Aims to Show the Bible as One Unified Story

Doug Kroeker has been teaching the Bible for most of his adult life. His new book, A Walkthrough of the Bible, published by Writers of the West, is what happens when a teacher finally sits down to explain the whole thing at once instead of one passage at a time. The book runs from Genesis to Revelation across eight chapters, and it doesn't treat any of the sixty-six books as its own island.

Kroeker opens with structure first: how the library actually holds together, who wrote it (more than forty authors across roughly fifteen centuries, by his count), and why the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament arrange the same material two different ways. From there he moves through the great eras of biblical history: Creation, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, the Conquest, the Kingdom, the Exile, and the return. He walks through why the prophets said what they said and to whom, shows how the four Gospels complement each other rather than compete, and unpacks Paul's letters as pastoral responses to real, specific churches. Doctrine gets the same treatment. Sin, salvation, and the church's ongoing mission are handled as one continuous arc rather than a set of standalone topics.

That's really the whole pitch. Plenty of people who grew up around church know their favorite psalm, their favorite parable, maybe a handful of verses memorized in Sunday school. Fewer could explain how Ruth connects to David, or why Revelation ends in a garden the same way Genesis started. Kroeker wrote this book for that gap, whether the reader has never opened a Bible or has been reading one for forty years.

"I wrote this book because I came to realize that understanding the Bible is not always as easy as those of us who grew up in the church might assume," Kroeker said. "Bible stories have been part of our lives for as long as we can remember. We learned about Noah and the ark, Abraham and Isaac, David and Goliath and so on when we were children. Over the years, those stories became familiar to us, and that familiarity gave us a foundation but not everyone has that foundation. Not everyone has grown up in church. They were never taught the stories that we take for granted. When they hear a reference to the Exodus or Promised Land, they may have little idea where those events belong in the Bible or why they even matter. I wanted to write something that would help those who are new to the Bible and as an overview to those who are familiar with it."

The book has received praise from early readers. Sarah Davis, Lead Editor, wrote, "The whole Bible, finally standing as one story. Doug Kroeker takes a library of sixty-six books, forty-some authors, and fifteen centuries and does something few writers attempt and fewer pull off: he shows it's actually one story, with one grammar underneath it. A Walkthrough of the Bible moves from Eden to Patmos without losing the reader in genealogies or getting lost in doctrine for its own sake. Anyone who's tried to read the Bible cover to cover and stalled out by Leviticus will find, here, a map worth following to the end." Chad Malvo, Production Manager at Writers of the West, added, "Not a summary; a summit view. What separates this from the usual 'Bible in a nutshell' title is its refusal to flatten the material. Kroeker treats doctrine as living structure rather than a dry appendix, and he's honest about the hard questions along the way instead of smoothing them over. The result reads less like a reference book and more like a companion for the long haul."

Kroeker, based in Lincoln, Nebraska, has always been drawn to research and to chasing down answers on the hard questions. He came to faith as a young believer, and by the time he hit his thirties, studying and teaching the Bible had turned into a lifelong pursuit. He's stayed at it ever since. What he's after with this book is pretty simple: reach people still looking for answers, and leave something of his own faith behind for his children and grandchildren.

The book is available in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover formats. For more information, visit Amazon or the publisher's website at writersofthewest.net.