About BibleProject
Open the Bible to Genesis and you encounter a garden, a serpent, a forbidden tree, and humanity sent into exile.
Keep reading.
There are genealogies. Covenants. Priests. Sacrifices. Kings. Prophets. Poems. Visions. Gospels. Letters.
By the time someone reaches Revelation—with its dragons, beasts, lampstands, and a garden-city descending from heaven—the Bible can feel less like one story and more like an enormous library that happens to share the same cover.
BibleProject wants to help readers see what connects it all.
Its videos are colorful and approachable. Its illustrations move across the screen as ideas unfold. But beneath the animation is serious biblical scholarship and a conviction that the Bible rewards careful reading.
Look closely enough and patterns begin appearing.
Themes introduced in Genesis develop through the prophets.
Images disappear and return hundreds of pages later.
Old Testament stories prepare readers for Jesus.
The ending echoes the beginning.
The pieces belong together.
It Started With a Whiteboard
BibleProject began with two friends in Portland, Oregon.
Tim Mackie and Jon Collins had known each other since their days as roommates at Multnomah University.
Their abilities complemented each other unusually well.
Tim had spent years studying theology, biblical languages, and the Hebrew Bible. He eventually earned a Ph.D. and worked as both a professor and pastor.
Jon was drawn toward communication and visual storytelling.
Together they began experimenting with a question:
Could deep biblical scholarship be communicated visually without making it shallow?
In 2014, they created their first videos and released them online for free.
A whiteboard, biblical scholarship, and visual storytelling became the beginnings of BibleProject.
Before Reading a Book, See How It's Designed
Some of BibleProject's most recognizable resources are its book overview videos.
Instead of merely summarizing what happens in a biblical book, the videos help readers see how the book has been constructed.
Literary structure becomes important.
Repeated words matter.
Poetry works differently from narrative.
A biblical author may introduce an idea early and deliberately return to it later.
Understanding that design can transform the reading experience.
Leviticus stops being merely a difficult collection of ancient laws.
Isaiah becomes more than disconnected prophetic sayings.
Revelation becomes less tempting to treat as a puzzle book where every symbol must correspond to a modern headline.
You begin asking what the biblical authors were communicating to their original audiences and how each work participates in the larger biblical story.
Follow a Theme From Genesis to Revelation
Other BibleProject resources step back from individual books and follow themes across Scripture.
Think about the temple.
Or sacrifice.
The image of God.
The Day of the Lord.
Heaven and earth.
The Messiah.
Biblical themes rarely remain confined to a single chapter.
They develop.
An idea introduced early in Scripture may gather additional meaning as later biblical authors reuse it. Eventually, themes begin converging around Jesus and continue through the New Testament toward the Bible's vision of renewed creation.
BibleProject calls attention to those connections.
Instead of extracting a verse and immediately asking what it means for your life, you're encouraged to first see where that verse sits within the literary and theological world of Scripture.
The Bible gets bigger before it becomes personal.
Ancient Context Can Make Familiar Passages Feel New
The Bible was written for us.
It wasn't originally written to us.
BibleProject takes that distinction seriously.
Its resources regularly explore ancient Near Eastern culture, Second Temple Judaism, Hebrew and Greek words, literary conventions, geography, and historical context.
Those details aren't there to make ordinary Christians dependent on scholars.
They're intended to help modern readers cross the distance between their world and the biblical world.
When you understand how biblical narrative works, you notice things differently.
When you recognize Hebrew literary patterns, repeated words stop looking accidental.
When you understand the cultural setting of Jesus' teachings, familiar sayings can regain some of their original force.
Scholarship becomes a tool for better reading.
Go From Ten Minutes to Ten Hours
Someone's first encounter with BibleProject might be a short animated video.
That doesn't have to be where the learning ends.
The ministry's podcast lets listeners hear extended conversations behind many of the ideas that eventually become videos and other resources.
Articles and study notes allow readers to investigate further.
BibleProject Classroom goes considerably deeper, offering long-form courses taught by biblical scholars.
A person curious about Jonah, for example, can move far beyond the familiar story of a prophet and a giant fish and spend hours studying the book's literary structure, Hebrew Bible context, intertextual connections, and theological message.
The doorway is intentionally approachable.
The room behind it can become surprisingly deep.
Give the Entire Library Away
BibleProject's financial model is an important part of its identity.
Its resources are available without a subscription.
Videos are free.
Podcasts are free.
Classes are free.
Study resources are free.
The app is free.
Rather than putting deeper material behind a traditional paywall, BibleProject relies on people who believe in the mission to fund resources for everyone else.
One person gives.
Another person studies.
They may never meet.
BibleProject describes itself as crowdfunded, and that model has been present since its beginning.
The generosity of patrons turns biblical education into something a student can access regardless of whether they can afford a theological library or seminary tuition.
Let the Artwork Speak Another Language
Making a video available internationally requires more than adding subtitles.
BibleProject works with translators, voice actors, language advisors, designers, and other specialists to localize resources for different languages and cultures.
Words embedded inside animations may need to be redesigned.
Phrases need to communicate naturally rather than merely being translated literally.
Voiceovers need to sound as though the teaching belongs in that language.
The result is a growing library reaching people far beyond the English-speaking audience for which the earliest videos were created.
The visual style remains recognizable.
The voice becomes local.
The Animation Is Trying to Send You Somewhere
It's possible to watch a beautifully animated BibleProject video and never open the Bible.
But that misses the point.
The animation isn't intended to replace Scripture.
It's trying to send you back to it.
A video about Exodus should make Exodus more interesting to read.
A theme study should help you recognize connections when you encounter them yourself.
A podcast conversation should sharpen the questions you bring to the text.
A Classroom course should develop skills that remain useful after the course ends.
BibleProject ultimately wants to form lifelong students of Scripture.
That means success isn't measured only by whether someone understands a video.
Something deeper happens when they close the video, open the Bible, and begin noticing things they couldn't see before.
At the heart of BibleProject is the conviction that the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus—and that learning to see that story can transform the way people read Scripture. By bringing rigorous biblical scholarship together with animation, podcasts, classes, articles, reading plans, and beautifully designed study resources, BibleProject makes deep Bible education approachable without making it shallow. The videos may introduce the journey, but the destination has always been the same: helping people become lifelong students of the Bible itself.
