Find your feet in Scripture again, one moon at a time.
Moon & Marginalia is a monthly deep Bible study, paced by the moon. One passage per lunar month, four written lessons, and the scholarship and the wonder both left in.
$5 a month or $50 a year · Cancel anytime
You still want to love this book.
Maybe you did once. Maybe you remember when the Bible felt like a place you could walk into and find God waiting.
You want that again. You want to take Scripture seriously, which means reading it with the history, the language and the literature it came from. And you want it to form you. Head, heart and gut, all three at the table.
That's a good thing to want. It's also possible.
"I stop myself before I even open it.".
If your relationship with Scripture is… complicated right now, you're in good company.
It's been used against you, or against people you love. The reading plans you tried left you with a streak to protect and guilt when you broke it. The studies that promised depth gave you fill-in-the-blanks and a single approved answer. And the scholarship that could help is locked in journals and academic commentaries you don't have time (or library access) to read.
So you drift. You read a verse here and there. You mean to go deeper. It feels like a lot.
What if the problem was never you? What if it was the pace?
Most Bible reading is built for speed. A chapter a day. The whole thing in a year. Keep up, catch up, don't fall behind.
But the Bible wasn't written to be skimmed, and Israel didn't keep time that way. The Hebrew word for month, chodesh, means new moon. Every month began when the thin crescent came back. Festivals, sabbaths and holy days were set by the moon, and Genesis 1 says the lights were made for mo'adim, appointed times.
You were never behind. You were reading too fast.
Depth takes time with one passage. Enough time to meet it, to see the world it came from, to sit with its words, and to let it change something in you. That's what Moon & Marginalia gives you.
One passage. One moon. Four ways of looking.
Every new moon, we start a new passage and work through one book of the Bible at a time. Each phase of the moon brings a new written lesson to your inbox, and each lesson looks at the same passage from a different side.
New Moon 🌑 Encounter
Meet the passage before anyone tells you what it means. A slow, lectio-style sequence (Listen, Turn, Answer, Rest, Make, Commit) that lets you hear the text for yourself first. You'll end the week with a question to carry, not a conclusion to defend.
Waxing Moon 🌓 Widen
See the world the passage came from. Who wrote it, when, and for whom. The literary style, the book's big themes, the echoes from the rest of the Hebrew Bible, a handful of Hebrew or Greek words to know, and where the New Testament picks the passage back up. When scholars disagree, I'll show you where and why.
Full Moon 🌕 Deepen
Go into the words themselves. This is where we slow all the way down: the language, the grammar that changes the meaning, and the voices of scholars from different places, centuries and traditions. You'll leave with more ways to read the passage than you came in with.
Waning Moon 🌗 Embody
Carry it into your life. Reflection prompts, a practice, and sometimes a prayer. Formation happens through the reading, so this is where the month's study becomes something you live with.
Every lesson is written, so there's nothing to attend and no video to sit through. Read on the day it arrives or a week later. Go as quickly or as slowly as you want.
What you can't Google
Look up a hard passage and you'll find plenty. Study Bible notes, church websites, popular commentaries, whatever ranks first.
Notice what almost all of it has in common. It skews evangelical.
Nobody's hiding the rest. That's who has been publishing for a general audience, and who has the budget to be found.
The work that would change your reading lives in journals and academic commentaries. Paywalled, expensive, written for specialists.
So the church runs roughly two decades behind the academy.
When every free or easy-to-buy resource says the same thing, it feels like consensus. It's really just the part that trickled down.
I run into this constantly. Writing the David book, I fell in love with David's first wife, Michal. She's got moxie and strong words, and she prophetically puts David in his place (though he doesn't see it that way).
I wondered if I was the only one. Then I found Robert Polzin, Walter Brueggemann, Robert Alter and Cheryl Exum, who've been reading her far more sympathetically for decades. In most sermons, though, she's still the scorned wife who insulted the king.
That's the gap Moon & Marginalia closes. I have a library card and the training to read what's behind it, and every moon I bring it back to you in plain English.
"Kate's studies have allowed me to return to it."
Before Moon & Marginalia, I wrote shorter Bible studies called Threaded. Here's what a few of those readers said:
"After putting my Bible aside due to church trauma, Kate's studies have allowed me to return to it. Her gentle demeanor, compassion for others, and love for the Bible is evident in every study." Andrea, Threaded reader
"Kate provided thoughtful, well-rounded commentary on the passages that we considered. Her commentary felt in-depth without being overwhelming." Lauren, Threaded reader
"These studies are great if you are in the 'messy middle' as you can learn and ponder on some new concepts and process them." Lynnea, Threaded reader
The entire Isaiah 40 cycle is open. Four lessons, start to finish, no paywall.
Is this for you?
Moon & Marginalia is for you if:
You love God and want to know the text, not skim it
You've outgrown answers that only work if you don't ask questions
You want current scholarship and more than one point of view
A monthly rhythm sounds like relief
You're open to a little wonder next to the footnotes
It probably isn't for you if:
You want a daily devotional or a short, sentimental reading each morning
You're looking for a quick fix for a specific feeling
You want live classes or a cohort that meets on a schedule
You want information and nothing else (you'll get a lot of it, but it's in service of formation)
A library card, a moon, and a lot of love for this book
Hi, I'm Kate Boyd.
I grew up evangelical, and as I deconstructed, I realized that so much of what I'd learned about the Bible had been built on out-of-context verses and American cultural ideas. What brought the Bible back for me was context: history, language, literature, and a whole lot of people who'd been reading these texts carefully for a very long time.
I hold a master's from Perkins School of Theology, which mostly means I have a library card and the training to read what's behind it. I read Hebrew and Greek, and I wrote An Untidy Faith (Herald Press). My next book, on David and empire, is coming from Brazos Press in fall 2027.
Popular Bible teaching tends to run about twenty years behind what scholars are saying. My work is to close that gap and carry what's in the library out to you, in plain language, with room for questions.
Nothing to keep up with. Nothing to lose.
The no-streak promise: Moon & Marginalia runs on the moon, and the moon always comes back. Miss a week, miss a month, and you start again at the next new moon.
Try it first. A full sample cycle is free to read from start to finish. Read it here.
Stay as long as it's good for you. Cancel anytime from your Substack account, no emails or explanations needed.
$5 a month or $50 a year
FAQs
"Isn't organizing a Bible study around the moon a little… witchy?"
"Do I need to know Hebrew or Greek?"
"What if I fall behind?"
"Bible study has hurt me before. How is this different?"
"How is this different from The Wide Margin?"
"Monthly or yearly?"
"What happens after I subscribe?"
I get why that question comes up, especially if you grew up hearing that anything celestial was suspect. The moon belonged to Israel's worship long before anyone called it witchy. Genesis 1 strips it of any godhood and calls it a lamp. Israel's calendar ran on new moons, and the prophets pictured worship "from new moon to new moon" (Isaiah 66:23). Moon & Marginalia borrows that rhythm and adds some candlelight. The moon keeps our time. God is the one we're reading about.
Not at all. If you've been told serious study requires seminary, that's the gatekeeping talking. I bring a few words at a time into each lesson and show you why they matter, and they stick because you meet them inside a passage you care about.
Then you pick up at the next new moon. There's no streak to break and nothing to catch up on, because the lessons wait for you in your inbox and in the archive. The moon doesn't guilt you. It just comes back.
That's a real concern, and I take it seriously. Every lesson gives you more than one reading, names where scholars disagree, and never asks you to switch off your conscience to stay. As Andrea put it, "After putting my Bible aside due to church trauma, Kate's studies have allowed me to return to it."
The Wide Margin is my free newsletter: shorter pieces, "did you know?" moments, and the other things I'm working on. Moon & Marginalia is the deep study. One passage, a whole month, four lessons, one book at a time.
Either works. Monthly is $5, and yearly is $50 (two months free). Most members choose yearly. You can cancel anytime from your Substack account.
You'll get access to the lessons already in the current cycle and the archive, and the next lesson arrives with the next phase of the moon. Pour something warm, find a window if you can, and start with Encounter.
There are other faithful options
You were told there were two: the version you were handed, or nothing.
That was never true.
There's a long tradition of people reading this book carefully, honestly, and with their whole brain engaged, and almost none of them were on the shelf at your church.
Let me introduce you.
I built Moon & Marginalia for the version of you who still wants this book but got tired of rushing through it.
You don't need a better plan or more discipline. You need time with one passage and someone to bring the library to the table. That's what I want to give you, one moon at a time.
A new passage begins at the next new moon. I'd love to read it with you.