The Bible
A Global History
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
'Wonderful' JOHN BARTON
'A stupendous intellectual achievement' ANDREW PETTEGREE
'A stunning love song to the Bible . . . this will be a classic' CHINE MCDONALD
The remarkable story of the most influential book in human history.
The Bible is the world's best-known text. Yet, it is a book that never was - its original form does not exist and probably never did. What we have is the inheritance of generation after generation of Christians who have sought to hear God speak. Available in over three thousand languages and taking innumerable forms, each version is a revelation, evolving as a reflection of its own culture and moment.
Bruce Gordon traces the Bible's astounding journey from its emergence as a codex in the second century, to the Reformation, to the spectacular growth of Christianity in the Global South today. For centuries a source of inspiration, it has also been a tool for violence and oppression, weaponised in the name of colonialism, and it has expressed hopes for freedom in the struggle for liberation. Found in desert monasteries and Chinese house churches, in Byzantine cathedrals and Guatemalan villages, it has been a book in motion from its very beginnings, a product of more than two thousand years of wandering, restlessness and change.
Breathtakingly global in scope, The Bible is a sweeping history of this sacred book told through the stories of its diverse human encounters in search of the divine - revealing not a static text but a living, dynamic cultural force.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yale Divinity School history professor Gordon (Calvin) delivers an ambitious study of how a collection of prophecies, poems, and letters became a sacred text that has shaped cultures. Styling the Bible as a migrant, he describes how diverse writings—the rabbinic Bible, the four Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles—coalesced into canon through "worship, reading, and devotional practices," then were spread by "merchants and colonizers" to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. There, local communities adapted the "alien" book through a mix of cultural blending, reinterpretation, and even rebellion. For example, theologians in 20th-century China drew comparisons between Confucianism and biblical texts, Native Americans centered themselves in biblical stories (a group of 18th-century Mohican converts renamed themselves Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, declaring themselves "patriarchs of a new nation of believers"), and a charismatic 20th-century Baptist catchetist in the Democratic Republic of Congo formed the "Kimbanguist" movement, which rejected "the God of the missionaries" but revered Christ. Smoothly capturing a sprawling and complex history, Gordon frames the Bible as a cultural artifact and a dynamic site where identity is negotiated; a force that binds communities; and an arena where foreign influences are contested. The result is a fascinating look at how the "most influential book in the world" came to be.
