Description
'An extraordinary book... This is not an obituary for the Bible, but a biography of a book that still lives, breathes and can preach the most essential of messages. Hugh MacDonald, Glasgow Herald
The Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world.
Translated into over two thousand languages, it is estimated that more than six billion copies have been sold in the last two hundred years alone. In this seminal account Karen Armstrong traces the story of the gestation of the Bible to reveal it as a complex and contradictory document created by scores of people over hundreds of years.
Karen Armstrong tells of the development of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, drawing on the disparate sources that formed these sacred texts. From the Jewish practice of Midrash and the Christian cult of Jesus to the influence of Paul's letters on the Reformation and the manipulation of the book of Revelations by Christian fundamentalists, Armstrong explores the different ways in which these sixty-six books have been understood and identifies the social needs that they answered. In the process she reveals the Bible as a fascinatingly unfamiliar and paradoxical work. The result will permanently alter our understanding of this most crucial of books. ISBN:9781843543978
