Description
Most of the main reference sources for this book come from the pages of four books. Two of the books are Bibles, and the rest are also religious.
1. The "Standard" Edition of The Holy Bible: Containing the King James and the Revised Versions of the Old and New Testaments Arranged in Parallel Columns, commonly referred to as the Parallel Bible of 1884. More is explained about this on the following pages.
2. The other bible is a contemporary King James version of The Holy Bible from 1801 described as follows: "Translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised. The text conformable to that of the edition of 1611, commonly known as the Authorized or King James Version."
3. The third book is the Life of Christ by John Fleetwood, D.D., from 1866.
4. The fourth book is The Search for the Twelve Apostles by William Steuart McBirnie.
In this work, these four books are coordinated with various other historical and apocryphal sources. This information is noted as it appears in the end notes. The many ponderous, scholarly facts are edited into a more reader-friendly format for our time.
Many of the facts cited and the illustrations are from the Parallel Bible of 1884. An excerpt from its preface follows this introduction that explains how the work originated and the many sources of information used.
From this valuable Parallel Bible, edited biographies of each Apostle are presented. Also included are many facts from The Search for the Twelve Apostles. For some of the Apostles, commentaries are also included that were gleaned from the Life of Christ about any New Testament text that is written by that particular Apostle.
Since James the Just organized the first and chief Church, a list of interesting information about the Church in Jerusalem is included in his biography. For John's book of Revelation, in addition to the commentary, a chart is also included that simplifies and links the seven seals of the earth's events to their specific chapters and verses.