In his long career of lecturing on the Bible, Father Raymond Brown may have appeared before a thousand different audiences, and in the question-and-answer periods that followed he may have responded to ten thousand queries. Over a period of time he noticed how the same questions repeated themselves. For this book he has chosen 101 of the most commonly-asked questions on the Bible. The questions cover a wide range of subjects: various translations of the Bible, reasons for reading the Bible, the inspiration and historicity of the Bible, miracles, the resurrection of Jesus, the vir- ginal conception, what Jesus knew, the founding of the church, evidence for the sacraments, the structure of the early church, the role of Peter, and more. All people who have read or reflected on the Bible will find ques- tions here they have wanted to ask, along with the con- cise responses of a noted biblical scholar.

Raymond E. Brown, S.S., born in 1928 and ordained in 1953, has been recognized by universities in the U.S.A. and Europe by some twenty honorary doctoral degrees. He was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the Roman Pon- tifical Biblical Commission, and with church approval he has served for many years on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches: Time magazine once described him as "probably the premier Catholic scripture scholar in the U.S.," and he is the only person to have served as president of all three of these distinguished societies: the Catholic Biblical As- sociation, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Society of New Testament Studies.