Reddit reviews Oxford Bible Atlas

The Society of Biblical Literature (the main learned society for the field) launched an educational site this year called Bible Odyssey, featuring the complete contents of the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary and a lot of original content. Have a look through the "Bible Basics" section. Before the site was launched, it was announced that it would include the great, scholarly articles from the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, and let us all hope that this will eventually be accomplished.

In buying a Bible, remember that it is a collection of literature written thousands of years ago in exotic foreign cultures; such a journey is not to be undertaken without a guide. You need an annotated edition. The HarperCollins Study Bible and the New Oxford Annotated Bible are both excellent references. Those Bibles have maps in the back, but the Oxford Bible Atlas may be a useful supplement. If you're not looking to spend a lot, the New American Bible is a great translation with lighter, but still very illuminating notes.

For background on the societies in which the Bible and Christianity were formed, The Ancient Mediterranean World: From the Stone Age to A.D. 600. For studies on what can be known about Jesus from historical evidence, The Historical Figure of Jesus by E. P. Sanders and Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by Bart Ehrman. (Ehrman has a blog which is worth the subscription; you can also learn a lot from his lectures and interviews on YouTube.)

For the perspective of modern Christians and not just information about the religion's history, Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton and Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis are two books that are considered classics by many Christians today, across denominational lines. There's a sort of intellectual line running through the two, since Lewis was converted from atheism by reading Orthodoxy (although he did not become a Catholic like Chesterton, as his friend J. R. R. Tolkien had hoped).

Have fun!