Understanding the Bible

Understanding the Bible: Head and Heart provides readers a forum for more fully comprehending the Bible. Each book of the Bible tells a story that relates to the larger story, and to understand each book's story it is important to understand the larger story, and vice versa. To do so, however, entails a careful reading of the entire Bible, grasping both the fact of the story and the spirit of the story. Understanding the Bible: Head and Heart provides prose summaries for helping the reader to understand and remember the fact of the story, and poetic summaries for helping the reader to experience the story and thereby to more readily ingest its spirit.

Since Understanding the Bible: Head and Heart would be a bit lengthy under one cover, it is divided into two parts: Part One addresses The Old Testament, and Part Two addresses The New Testament. This publication is Part One. Part Two is forthcoming.


Bob Dowell, English professor, retired from the University of Texas-Pan American in 1999 in order to devote full time to a project conceived while teaching his favorite course: "The Bible as Literature." He envisioned developing a forum in which readers could readily engage in a head and heart understanding of the Bible. For a decade he worked on the project all the while piloting his production through a church sponsored bible study: "Back to the Bible with Dr. Bob." The success of that study spoke convincingly to the efficacy of publishing the materials for purposes of reaching a wider audience. Thus, Dr. Bob's vision becomes a reality in the publication of Understanding the Bible: Head and Heart. Fittingly, his first publication as a professor is an article in College English (1965) entitled "The Moment of Grace in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor."