Recently in my Mennonite congregation, the pastors called forward 12-year-old children and presented each with a Bible. “These stories are our stories,” the pastors said.

As I observed the children, images of 12-year-old Jesus in the temple with the elders (Luke 2) flitted through my mind and then bumped into memories of my nephew’s bar mitzvah at his synagogue.

In communities of faith, pastors, Sunday school teachers and study group leaders work hard to connect biblical stories with our lives today.

Teaching Bible to college undergraduates for over 20 years, though, I discovered how few Bible stories my students knew — whether they grew up in congregations like mine or had only been in church once or twice.

Giving people Bibles is only the first step. Finding ways to encourage reading the Bible is the next.

The pastors at my church didn’t say the Bible is God’s story, although I am sure they assumed that concept for this special event.

For many of us, the phrase “the Bible is God’s Word” has shaped our understanding of the Bible. But many wonder how that equation works.

Learning what it means to know the Bible as God’s Word is a lifelong task for people of faith.

As a university instructor, I started with this basic explanation of the Bible as God’s Word: The Bible contains the one great story of God’s steadfast love for humanity and for all creation. And that saving love was fully revealed to us in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I hoped such a foundation could be a springboard for the more complex task of learning the Bible’s story and applying it to our world.

But I discovered that delving into God’s love story was not all that was needed. As my students explored biblical accounts, they frequently had questions.

From Word to Book picks up some of those questions. Each chapter begins with a question. Taken together, they trace the journey my students and I have taken, both into the biblical text and into what surrounds it.

Perhaps the 12-year-olds who received those Bibles, or any Bible readers, find themselves asking: Wait, what? Who recorded Moses talking to God? Or:

Do we have any artifacts from King Solomon’s temple?

Why did Isaiah think King Cyrus of Persia was a messiah?

If Jesus never wrote anything, how do we know what he said and did?

Who copied and distributed Paul’s letters?

How did all that ancient writing get into English, or Spanish or Chinese?

Such questions are important, yet some readers wonder whether asking them detracts from taking the Bible seriously as God’s Word.

The story that surrounds the Bible is a very human story, spreading across global history and geography and involving complex political, economic and cultural interactions.

For some scholars, the humanity of these stories diminishes or even destroys claims of divine activity within scripture. Yet, I think that learning about the work of storytellers, scribes, translators and commentators offers a rich account of human efforts inspired and shaped by God’s wisdom and presence.

As New Testament scholar Dennis Edwards puts it, “The Bible is the supreme example of divine-human collaboration.”

This is a faith claim: God has always used humans to share God’s love story.

I begin with an essential question 21st-century readers must consider: What does it mean to encounter the Bible in our own languages, and how did it get to words we understand from the ancient tongues in which it was first heard? Then I deal with some of the most difficult questions in the Bible’s history:

How did ancient stories become Hebrew scrolls?

How do archaeological findings enhance the Bible’s backstory?

How did the scattering of the people of Israel and Judah shape the story?

How did Jesus and his community enter the story?

The search for answers depends on scholarly theories that may draw on physical evidence but are not always certain. Since the texts of the Bible are not nearly as old as the stories the Bible tells, it is important to understand those theories and the evidence.

Next, I delve into what is known about how biblical texts were copied, edited, selected and distributed. Finally, I consider questions about how modern readers have described God’s Spirit at work shaping human writing and transmitting God’s story.

I write as a Christian, yet much of this story also belongs to Jews, with whom Christians share a large portion of the Bible. While I am an outsider to the Jewish faith, I believe that failing to note our shared heritage seriously limits the story.

My own journey with the Bible goes back to childhood, when my mother helped me memorize scripture. Over the years I sometimes backed away from the Bible, finding it confining or even insulting to me and my world. But decades of reading, study and praying scripture have drawn me back to loving the Bible.

I am grateful that the communities to which I belong and my personal commitments are sustained with this confident message: “The unfolding of your words gives light” (Psalm 119:130).

Nancy R. Heisey is professor emerita of biblical studies at Eastern Mennonite University. She grew up among the Navajo people in New Mexico and lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burkina Faso. Now living in Philadelphia, she has served with Mennonite Central Committee and Mennonite World Conference. This article is adapted from her new book, From Word to Book: Ten Questions About How We Got the Bible (Wipf and Stock). Used with permission from Wipf and Stock Publishers, wipfandstock.com.