| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in The Bible: The Biography for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
"'The best sort of popularizing: there is no sacrifice of integrity and no dumbing down.' Edward Norman, Literary Review 'A remarkable history... fascinating and highly readable... profoundly relevant.' Julie Wheelwright, Independent 'This book deserves nothing but praise.' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times"
Product Description
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 gestation of the Bible to reveal a complex and contradictory document created by scores of people over hundreds of years.Karen Armstrong begins her analysis with the origins of the very earliest books of the "Hebrew Bible", in which God was called both 'Yahweh' and 'Elohim'. She then traces the development of both the "Hebrew Bible" and the "New Testament" to reveal the disparate influences that helped to form 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 Revelations by Christian fundamentalism, Armstrong explores the contexts in which these sixty-six books were understood and explains the social needs they answered. In the process she reveals an unfamiliar and paradoxical work that will permanently alter our understanding of the Bible.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In many ways this is an abridged version of Armstrong's "A history of God". In that book monotheism was discussed through the evolution of the writings and practises of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It was an amazing book, with more information in 1 edition than 10 lesser tomes. That was also its weakness. It was intimidatingly dense and wrapped up in Karen Armstrong's insistence for rather dry writing.
So what we have here is the Jewish and Christian story slightly pared down and without the further complexities of the Islamic narrative. This actually makes the whole story more absorbable and reader friendly. Once again the plethora of research areas are huge and the voice of the book is authoritative and as always it is a statement of the facts in that are no way spiced by bias or opinion.
So here it is a historical story highlighting the context of one of the most important books ever written, free of bias and fable- in short a must read.
So what we have here is the Jewish and Christian story slightly pared down and without the further complexities of the Islamic narrative. This actually makes the whole story more absorbable and reader friendly. Once again the plethora of research areas are huge and the voice of the book is authoritative and as always it is a statement of the facts in that are no way spiced by bias or opinion.
So here it is a historical story highlighting the context of one of the most important books ever written, free of bias and fable- in short a must read.
73 of 79 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book has attracted predictable criticism from religious conservatives, evident in some of the reviews here. One suspects the author would be entirely unperturbed by this - avoiding the ills of higher criticism is the concern only of fundamentalists. Their criticism that Armstrong's tone of scholarly detachment fails when she addresses twentieth-century fundamentalism is easily answered - this brand of Christianity has nothing to do with detached scholarship, they parted company a long time ago. The argument over Arianism is just one case in point. As just about any serious scholar who has studied early Christianity will tell you, early Christians were not Trinitarians.
On a more general level, Armstrong shows an ability to draw together an impressive amount of material into an accessible synthesis, and she has few peers in this regard. Her treatment of the twentieth century is, as noted by others, sketchy. More seriously perhaps, her knowledge of early modern history is inadequate. Whilst generalisations are unavoidable in a work of this kind, her treatment of the early modern period is simplistic and often misleading. Deism was not a 'new religion' (p.185), nor was it espoused by John Locke, author of a Paraphrase of the Epistles of St Paul. To say that Isaac Newton 'scarcely mentioned the Bible in his copious writings' (p.184) is utter nonsense. Had Armstrong read Newton's copious unpublished manuscripts on scripture, or any of the published works analysing these manuscripts in the last twenty years, she would know that Newton spent at least as much time buried in scripture and prophecies about the end of days as he did thinking about the laws of gravity. Armstrong's understanding of the Enlightenment is simply out of date, historians have realised that the so-called "age of reason" was a far more complex time in European history than this author realises.
Whilst Armstrong is to be congratulated on opening up the history of the Bible to a wider audience in such an engaging manner, her analysis should be treated with caution, not taken as gospel.
On a more general level, Armstrong shows an ability to draw together an impressive amount of material into an accessible synthesis, and she has few peers in this regard. Her treatment of the twentieth century is, as noted by others, sketchy. More seriously perhaps, her knowledge of early modern history is inadequate. Whilst generalisations are unavoidable in a work of this kind, her treatment of the early modern period is simplistic and often misleading. Deism was not a 'new religion' (p.185), nor was it espoused by John Locke, author of a Paraphrase of the Epistles of St Paul. To say that Isaac Newton 'scarcely mentioned the Bible in his copious writings' (p.184) is utter nonsense. Had Armstrong read Newton's copious unpublished manuscripts on scripture, or any of the published works analysing these manuscripts in the last twenty years, she would know that Newton spent at least as much time buried in scripture and prophecies about the end of days as he did thinking about the laws of gravity. Armstrong's understanding of the Enlightenment is simply out of date, historians have realised that the so-called "age of reason" was a far more complex time in European history than this author realises.
Whilst Armstrong is to be congratulated on opening up the history of the Bible to a wider audience in such an engaging manner, her analysis should be treated with caution, not taken as gospel.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Karen Armstrong's 'biography' of the Bible is part of the 'Books that Shook the World' series. The Bible, of course, is not simply one book, but many books gathered together in a canon, or rather canons, since the Jewish tradition obviously excludes the New Testament, and even within Christianity there is disagreement about the status of the so-called Apocryphal books of the Old Testament. Then again, the story of the Bible is not complete without consideration of the books that didn't make it into the canon, such as the various 'gnostic' gospels that proliferated in the first and second centuries CE.
Armstrong expertly navigates this complex history in a lively and authoritative manner, simplifying for a non-academic readership the broad consensus of modern Biblical scholarship without dumbing down. The book could function as a primer for anyone who wants to get into more serious Scripture study, or as an eye opener for the general reader who may not be aware of the labyrinthine story of how we came to have the Bible in its established form, and, just as importantly, how we have developed our understanding of what it has to say to us. In this latter regard, Armstrong very deftly demonstrates that questions of interpretation have by no means remained static down the centuries, and that controversies about how various texts are to be understood are nothing new. Giving equal consideration to both Judaism and Christianity, Armstrong explains how Scripture has been interpreted and applied in both traditions, and how that process has always been informed by internal dialogue between believers and external dialogue with the wider culture.
This entertaining but informative book also packs a punch, as Armstrong strongly critiques literalist fundamentalist interpretations of Biblical texts that distort centuries' old understandings of the richer allegorical, mythical and spiritual dimensions of Scripture. She argues that religious fundamentalism seems to replicate our misguided contemporary faith in science as the only template for discovering 'truth', with the concomitant loss of any apprehension of ontological truths that cannot be expressed in the form of empirically verifiable facts. For Armstrong, both Biblical and secular, scientistic fundamentalisms are inherently misguided about the true nature of religion and its texts. She argues instead, and with Augustine, for a rule of interpretation grounded in charity. The 'golden rule' must anchor our attempts to understand and apply the Scriptures in our own lives, even if this leads to the creation of a 'canon within the canon' where certain Biblical books come to be privileged over others, which in effect has been the case from the beginning anyway. This seems both a sound and an urgent plea that demands to be heard, and I cannot recommend this little book highly enough.
Armstrong expertly navigates this complex history in a lively and authoritative manner, simplifying for a non-academic readership the broad consensus of modern Biblical scholarship without dumbing down. The book could function as a primer for anyone who wants to get into more serious Scripture study, or as an eye opener for the general reader who may not be aware of the labyrinthine story of how we came to have the Bible in its established form, and, just as importantly, how we have developed our understanding of what it has to say to us. In this latter regard, Armstrong very deftly demonstrates that questions of interpretation have by no means remained static down the centuries, and that controversies about how various texts are to be understood are nothing new. Giving equal consideration to both Judaism and Christianity, Armstrong explains how Scripture has been interpreted and applied in both traditions, and how that process has always been informed by internal dialogue between believers and external dialogue with the wider culture.
This entertaining but informative book also packs a punch, as Armstrong strongly critiques literalist fundamentalist interpretations of Biblical texts that distort centuries' old understandings of the richer allegorical, mythical and spiritual dimensions of Scripture. She argues that religious fundamentalism seems to replicate our misguided contemporary faith in science as the only template for discovering 'truth', with the concomitant loss of any apprehension of ontological truths that cannot be expressed in the form of empirically verifiable facts. For Armstrong, both Biblical and secular, scientistic fundamentalisms are inherently misguided about the true nature of religion and its texts. She argues instead, and with Augustine, for a rule of interpretation grounded in charity. The 'golden rule' must anchor our attempts to understand and apply the Scriptures in our own lives, even if this leads to the creation of a 'canon within the canon' where certain Biblical books come to be privileged over others, which in effect has been the case from the beginning anyway. This seems both a sound and an urgent plea that demands to be heard, and I cannot recommend this little book highly enough.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Thorough and scholarly, but not without minor faults
Karen Armstrong's work styles itself "a biography" that attempts to examine the views and agendas of those who have contributed to both the actual text of the Bible, and to our... Read more
Published 12 months ago by stever
A brilliant deception
Karen Armstrong is variously described by her admirers as 'brilliant' and 'a genius' and this short book reveals why. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mark McCormick
learnt a lot
Most interesting. I don't know anything about the history of the bible, I am not a churchgoer, and I found out loads of amazing things about the ancient world and the characters... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Terryandhelen
A great read, but with some scholarly problems
I am a great fan of much of Karen Armstrong's writings, and despite many reservations about this book in particular, I would still encourage readers to read as much of her work as... Read more
Published 21 months ago by JPJP
A strong start and a weak finish
This book has an excellent contents, index, endnotes, sciptural references and glossary of key terms which make it accessible pretty much to anyone and a great writing style and... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Lark
Research Material
I bought this book as a research source. I do not know how useful my review will be as I am a atheist who believes in giving careful consideration to both sides of a disagreement,... Read more
Published on 22 Mar 2010 by C. M. Weatherley
Straightforward Bible background
I really enjoyed Jack Miles' books God a biography and Christ a biography, so I thought I'd try this one. It's not hard to read, in fact it could be an 'A' level textbook. Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2010 by William Cohen
Excellent
I am anti-religion, anti-church and possibly not the target market for this book, but I loved it.
Armstrong's narrative history of one of the world's most important books is... Read more
Armstrong's narrative history of one of the world's most important books is... Read more
Published on 18 Sep 2009 by M. Roberts
An unconvincing apologist
For many years I was a fan of Karen Armstrong. She appeared to have an understanding of the mindset of the religious fundamentalist,as well as a nature essentially humane. Read more
Published on 1 Sep 2009 by Rowland Nelken
Armstrong At Her Best
To avoid any misunderstanding, this is not a biography of characters within the Bible but rather a history of how the Bible was compiled and the role that it has played in the... Read more
Published on 31 Jan 2009 by Ukhuman1st
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
