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The thought of a 24-volume encyclopedia of biblical knowledge might be enough to make most people's eyes glaze over.

Nonetheless, in Israel, the world's largest scholarly, scientific analysis of the Hebrew Bible — a mega-resource entitled "World of the Bible" — is selling like hotcakes.

This popularity may be due to the volumes' unusual slant. While most Bible guides examine the stories and characters found in the ancient text, "World of the Bible" aims its gaze at the historical and anthropological contexts of biblical tales.

"We are not selling God. We are not selling religion," said Yehuda Atai, founder of Davidson-Atai, the Tel Aviv company that publishes the massive encyclopedia. He visited the Bay Area last week to drum up support for an English-language version of "World of the Bible," his company's biggest project to date.

"Most people in the world approach the Bible from a religious point of view," he said. "We just bring the facts out."

Those facts include descriptions of burial practices that were current when Abraham and Sarah were interred, descriptions of clothing worn in biblical lands thousands of years ago and etymologies of difficult or obscure words that can render a biblical verse incomprehensible.

The 24 richly illustrated hardcover volumes average 220 pages each.

Included with commentaries on Bible verses are summaries of background research, full-color photos of ancient objects, illustrations from the Ancient East, maps and diagrams of events from the biblical period and even examples of flora and fauna from biblical countries.

The idea for "World of the Bible" first arose in 1982, when Israeli President Yitzhak Navon and famed biblical archaeologist Yigael Yadin conceived of explaining the Bible from a scientific standpoint.

They contacted a publisher and assembled a team of prominent international professors — some of them Orthodox Jews — from more than 20 fields.

Experts in fields ranging from geography, astronomy and law to botany and zoology, the team of scholars pored over the Bible's text and sought to present a succinct, well-founded explanation for the stories that have influenced thousands of years of Western civilization.

"They explain verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book," said Atai, a former professor of finance and cybernetics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who now chairs the "World of the Bible" project. Former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, who died in April, served as a past chair.

The encyclopedia's two dozen volumes have been published and sold as they are completed over the past several years. The final volume was completed just months ago; now 500 complete sets are selling every month to schools, libraries and individuals.

Most buyers are, unsurprisingly, nonobservant.

Now Atai wants to translate the complete project into English, and eventually into CD-ROM and other electronic media. He predicts that within 10 years, consumers will see a fully interactive version of the encyclopedia, including parts of the Christian Bible.

Joe Esposito, former chief executive officer of Encyclopedia Britannica, recently met with Atai and sees potential success for "World of the Bible" in the American market.

Now an independent publishing consultant specializing in electronic media, Esposito points out that the United States is the most religious of all developed countries, at least insofar as the number of people who identify themselves as members of a religious group.

While he has seen some line-by-line analysis of the Bible in other places, Esposito said, "I am not aware of someone who has tried to do that in a comprehensive manner [and who has] packaged it to make it of value and interest to the mass consumer market."

"I was very impressed" by the product, Esposito said. "It's sophisticated and highly analytical. It's scholarly."