some questions from a new christian hi i am new to this newsgroup and also fairly new to christianity i was raised as a unitarian and have spent the better part of my life as an agnostic but recently i have developed the firm conviction that the christian message is correct and i have accepted jesus into my life i am happy but i realize i am very ignorant about much of the bible and quite possibly about what christians should hold as true this i am trying to rectify by reading the bible of course but it would be helpful to also read a good interpretation commentary on the bible or other relevant aspects of the christian faith one of my questions i would like to ask is can anyone recommend a good reading list of theological works intended for a lay person i have another question i would like to ask i am not yet affiliated with any one congregation aside from matters of taste what criteria should one use in choosing a church i don t really know the difference between the various protestant denominations thanks for reading my post sincerely steve hoskins aside from a commentary you might also want to consider an introduction these are books intended for use in undergraduate bible courses they give historical background discussion of literary styles etc and generally they have good bibligraphies for further reading i typically recommend kee froehlich and young s nt introduction there are also some good one volume commentaries they often have background articles that are helpful probably the best recommendation these days would be harper s bible commentary i think there may be a couple of books with this title this is a fairly recent one like about done in cooperation with the society for biblical criticism if you are committed to inerrancy you will probably prefer something more conservative i don t read a lot of conservative books but a commentary i looked at by donald guthrie looked rather good he has a nt introduction and he s also editor of eerdman s bible commentary clh
