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The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed the World)
 
 
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The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed the World) [Hardcover]

Karen Armstrong (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)


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Book Description

Books That Changed the World November 10, 2007
As the work at the heart of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world’s most widely distributed book, translated into over two thousand languages, and the world’s best selling book, year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history. Made up of sixty-six “books” written by various authors and divided into two testaments, its contents have changed over the centuries. The Bible has been transformed by translation and, through interpretation, has developed manifold meanings to various religions, denominations, and sects. In this seminal account, acclaimed historian Karen Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, and life of history’s most powerful book. Armstrong analyzes the social and political situation in which oral history turned into written scripture, how this all-pervasive scripture was collected into one work, and how it became accepted as Christianity’s sacred text. She explores how scripture came to be read for information, and how, in the nineteenth century, historical criticism of the Bible caused greater fear than Darwinism. This is a brilliant, captivating book, crucial in an age of declining faith and rising fundamentalism.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Of all the Books That Changed the World-the recently launched series to which this book belongs-surely the Bible is among the most important. And of all contemporary popularizers of religious history, surely Armstrong is among the bestselling. Who better, then, to recount the history of the Bible in eight short chapters than this former nun and literature professor who relishes huge topics (The History of God) and panoramic descriptions (The Great Transformation)? Armstrong not only describes how, when and by whom the Bible was written, she also examines some 2,000 years of biblical interpretation by bishops and rabbis, scholars and mystics, pietists and critics, thus opening up a myriad of exegetical approaches and dispelling any fundamentalist notion that only one view can be correct. Readers unfamiliar with ecclesiastical history may feel overwhelmed by dense chapters that read more like annotated lists than narrative-a hazard of trying to cover so much in so little space. (A glossary helps to anchor the bewildered.) At her best when she pauses long enough to expand on a topic, Armstrong offers intriguing insights on, for example, the allegorical method developed by Origen in the third century and the mystical midrash of the Kabbalists in medieval Spain and Provence. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

For the Books That Changed the World series of brief "biographies" of momentous books, Armstrong accepted the arguably most daunting assignment. What other book has as long a history of influence as the Bible, or has affected more people and societies? The author of the sweeping histories of religion The Great Transformation (2006) and A History of God (1993) is, of course, up to the task and provides an excellent précis of the writing and compiling of the Bible and the ensuing centuries of biblical interpretation. Armstrong traces the Bible's transformation from a miscellany of texts into scripture, to which the Jesus movement added the Gospel and the other New Testament texts pretty much in tandem with the development of midrash and the Talmud by non-Christian Jews after the 70 CE destruction of the third temple in Jerusalem. She shows both Christian and rabbinic traditions of interpretation subsequently converging upon charity or love as the essence of God. The subjects of the last three chapters—the medieval monastic practice of reading the Bible called lectio divina, Martin Luther's doctrine of sola scriptura, and intellectual modernity—are each considered for the ways they gave rise to interpretive movements that affected Christianity directly and spurred reactions in Judaism. This is one terrific little book. Olson, Ray

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (November 10, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0871139693
  • ISBN-13: 978-0871139696
  • Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #427,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs-including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation-and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and is currently working with TED on a major international project to launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to be signed in the fall of 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders. She lives in London.

 

Customer Reviews

55 Reviews
5 star:
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 (17)
3 star:
 (7)
2 star:
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1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (55 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

192 of 201 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great overview, October 14, 2007
By 
Otagosh (Tuakau, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed the World) (Hardcover)
Karen Armstrong's book is (despite a poorly selected cover on the American edition) the most straight-forward, lucid explanation of how the Bible originated that I've seen. In only 230 pages the reader is taken on a tour of the current scholarly consensus about what we now know about the Bible's beginnings and development, not what the Sunday morning popularizers would like us to think. This book is written for non-specialists (something the previous reviewer doesn't seem to appreciate), which means you get a general account without footnotes, and that makes it highly readable. If you recoil from the literalism of the proof-texting preachers, here is a measure of both liberation and exhilaration. Even the short introduction is a tour de force of common sense all by itself. Brilliant!
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67 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Got (and kept) my attention., November 17, 2007
By 
W. Tuohy (Bay Area, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed the World) (Hardcover)
Since leaving compulsory Sunday school (50 years ago), I have coexisted with religions: they go their way(s), I go on my different path. This is not to say that I don't read the occasional book on religion (in society, not for scripture or sacred literature). Until now, however, I had not been able to finish any book on what the Bible is, where it came from, etc.

Re Karen Armstrong's book: A positive reviewer (on Amazon) calls this a "straight-forward, lucid explanation of how the Bible originated." A cricic says, "Everything comes across as an established fact rather than as a theory or reconstuction."

I agree with both points. The book is highly readable for the non-specialist, and not offensive to someone who refuses to wade through intensive academic studies or through propaganda from one religion or another. Of the critic I ask: can it be anything other than simplified? I am unwilling to immerse myself in arguments about evidence, theory, etc. - leave that for the divinity schools and their ilk.

In sum, the fact that Karen Armstrong does not definitively answer the fundamental questions is not relevant to my appreciation of the material.
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48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Armstrong delivers what can not be found anywhere else, February 13, 2009
What other reviewers miss in their assessments of this book is the single most important fact about this book. Karen Armstrong presents the reader in a straight forward chronological timeline the historical evolution of the Bible. As she has written many books in this area some may feel it is a rehash but I disagree. She never walked the reader from early Hebrew history all the way to today and then overlays the Christian additions and movements to the most read book in the West. She does all of this in her succinct but deeply passionate style which conveys how important the evolution of this book has been and remains to be in our current culture and society.

With other books one can get pieces of this perspective but only in highly related and academically correlated subject areas. This means that for instance one can find books from a leading scholar on the Dead Sea Scrolls from the esteemed Dr. Lawrence Schiffman but one can't find a book where Dr. Schiffman addresses the entirety of what is known relative to the Bible and related ancient writings. This is what is unique about Karen Armstrong. I wrote Dr. Schiffman and asked him where to find a book like this and he referred me to the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary. In those reference books scholars have annotated what is commonly agreed to in terms of biblical scholarship. The problem with that approach is that it is not a complete linear overview. It comes in pieces and does not address the end to end to approach that Armstrong delivers with this book. What Armstrong is doing in her works, and this book in particular, will be understood later in history as having been on the same footing as what Guttenberg did with the printing press for the bible or what Martin Luther did when he translated the good book into his native language for all of his countryman to read. The importance of making this historical information available to all of us, the common everyday people can not possibly be under rated.

Armstrong writes so powerfully and with such care and precision that one also wonders whether or not she is creating new insight for the many which might someday either be incorporated or by itself seen as having the majesty of the Vedas, Psalms, Koran and several other seminal spiritual texts. Given the current state of spirituality in the world this may seem far fetched but from the perspective of where new spirituality is headed it is conceivable, more so than one might initially suspect.

The scope of this book is so large that Armstrong can not go into the level of detail equally for each subject area. However what she does for us this time is to leave markers with individual names and dates so that one could delve further into an area which further interests them. I personally am such a fan that I could read 10,000 page offering from Armstrong on this subject and still be left wanting for more. I am hopeful that she may construct future writings in such a way where we will be able to bolt them together for the production of detailed grand view of agricultural eras contributions in spirituality to our world. On a personal note, I would dearly love to see and read Armstrong take on the all of it. From the hunter-gatherer era, through the agricultural era up into the current industrial era. She has touched on the inherited structures from the hunter-gatherer world views in previous works spanning the Fareast and Near East. She also touched on the industrial eras main focus for the leading edge thinkers when she briefly discusses Kant, Hegel and Feuerbach in this book (the rise of social governmental systems). Therefore I have no doubt that she clearly sees the direction that all of this is headed from a future facing perspective. The implications in understanding the direction for humanities evolving world views requires no further qualification on import for us today. However even without such a book, Armstrong's legacy is in helping us construct an understanding for the trajectory of humanities spirituality. We hope she continues her work well into the future!!!!!
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