The Story of the Bible (English-Chinese Edition): Van Loon’s Classic Retelling of the Old & New Testaments

You’ve heard the stories a hundred times — Noah‘s ark, David and Goliath, the Last Supper. But every time you try to read the actual Bible, you get lost in the endless genealogies, the archaic language, the sheer size of it.

Van Loon had the same problem. He was one of the great popular historians of the 20th century — his books were translated into dozens of languages and sold in the millions. In 1923, he set out to write a version of the Bible that an ordinary person could actually sit down and read. The result is The Story of the Bible: no preaching, no dense theology, just the essential characters and events of the Bible told in the voice of someone who genuinely enjoys telling stories.

This edition adds something extra for international readers: it‘s fully bilingual, English and Chinese on facing or sequential pages. You can use it as an English reader — Van Loon’s original prose is clear, conversational, and genuinely enjoyable to read, not textbook-stiff. Or you can use it as a cultural primer, letting the Chinese translation anchor your understanding as you go.

It also includes dozens of the author‘s own black-and-white illustrations — loose, witty line drawings that feel like sketches from a friend’s notebook. They make the book a pleasure to flip through even when you‘re not reading it cover to cover.

Published by Jincheng Publishing House (2012 edition). 364 pages. A comfortable size to hold. Easy to pick up for ten minutes on a commute or before bed.

If you’re learning English, curious about Western culture, or have always meant to figure out what the Bible actually says but never found a way in — this is the book.