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The Bible: The Biography (BOOKS THA..., Armstrong, Kare
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Part of series : Books That Changed the World
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The Bible: A Biography Paperback – 1 November 2008
by Karen Armstrong (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars (752)
Part of: Books That Changed the World (7 books)
As the single work at the heart of Christianity, the world's largest organized religion, 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 and its best-selling, with an estimated six billion copies sold in the last two hundred years. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history. Its contents have changed over the centuries, it 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, life, and afterlife 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, and how its interpretation changed over time. Armstrong's history of the Bible is a brilliant, captivating book, crucial in an age of declining faith and rising fundamentalism.
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Review
"A fascinating investigation." --Christian Advance
"For the Books That Changed the World series . . . 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? [Armstrong] 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. . . . This is one terrific little book." --Booklist
"Dispels any notion of religion as a rigidly fixed reading of sacred texts. Spanning millennia, from the scripture's origins in oral stories to the conflicting beliefs, ancient and modern, over its message, her book will discomfort fundamentalists who believe that the Bible means what it says and says what it means." --Rich Barlow, The Boston Globe
"One of the merits of Armstrong's book is that it points to the modern origin of literalist interpretations of Scripture, and then revisits the preceding centuries of Biblical scholarship to bring its considerable diversity to the notice of modern readers." --Edward Norman, Literary Review
"Vintage Armstrong: sweeping, bold, incisive, and insightful. In eight chapters it covers the history of the writing, canonizing, and reading of the Bible... Her choice of topics is impeccable ... and her brief, 23-page discussion on the rise of the Talmud is masterful." --P.L. Redditt, Choice
"A handy, erudite primer on the Holy Books." --The Jerusalem Report
"A whirlwind tour through biblical studies. . . Armstrong's analysis of the freedom previous generations (however far removed) felt with adapting, editing, redacting and re-writing the texts to suit contemporary purposes will undoubtedly remind savvy readers of all the current uses to which these same texts are being put." --Kel Munger, Sacramento News & Review
"[Armstrong] shows how the highly disparate writings that now compose the Jewish and Christian scriptures came together and examines the very different methods of interpretation used over the centuries. Her book's great strength is the way she unfolds the Jewish and Christian histories of formation and interpretation in parallel with one another." --Richard Harries, The Guardian
"A learned but accessible history of the Bible's origins and genesis. Armstrong goes behind the authorized versions preached by the churches to recreate the order - and the political and social circumstances - in which the books of the Old and New testaments were first written down, amended, and then endlessly reinterpreted and recast.... Armstrong's great achievement, however, is that, as well as leaving you with a clearer, more historically accurate picture as to what precisely the Bible is (and isn't), she also makes you want to go back and read it again with fresh eyes." --Peter Stanford, The Independent (UK)
"[Armstrong] has never written on such a broad scale, or with as much passion . . . [her] concern that religion should no longer be used to promote violence animates her measured, lucid prose and vivifies her summar of the development of the Bible and its interpretation."
--Bruce Chilton, New York Sun
"Karen Armstrong preaches the gospel truth in The Bible, explaining how the spiritual guide for one out of three people on the planet came into being and evolved over the centuries"
--Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
"[A] richly interwoven and often surprising history." --Michael Alec Rose, Bookpage
"While there are countless guides to reading the Bible, noted academic Karen Armstrong looks at the history of the book with a keen historian's eye. ... Armstrong condenses into a manageable volume the many ideas and traditions that influenced the creation of the Good Book." --Kirkus Reviews
"This is one terrific little book." --Booklist
"[A] spending series." --Bill Ward, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"[Armstrong] does an exceptional job of balancing and interweaving Jewish and Christian approaches to scripture." --Kirkus Reviews
"Of all the 'Books that Changed the World' surely the Bible is among the most important. And of all contemporary popularizes 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 and panoramic descriptions? Armstrong not only describes how, when and by whom the Bible was written, she also examines some 2,000 years of biblical interpretation." --Publishers Weekly
"Armstrong judiciously summarizes centuries of history and writes with remarkable insight."
--Christian Science Sentinel
"Armstrong is at her best when explaining how today's focus on the Bible as a literal, static text runs counter to a longstanding interpretative tradition that viewed study of the good book as 'an activity for attaining transcendence.'" --Andrea McQuillin, Shambhala Sun
Product details
Publisher : Grove Press
Publication date : 1 November 2008
Edition : Reprint
Language : English
Print length : 302 pages
Customer Reviews:
4.2
4.2 out of 5 stars (752)
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
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Karen Armstrong
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.
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Tham Chee Wah
5.0 out of 5 stars Unbiased researchReviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2020
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This is a very difficult book to read. For me, I’ve decided to read it two pages at a time, some days another two pages, depends on the intensity of the content.
I pulled through, nevertheless, after three months. But it is a thin book, about 10% of the last few pages dedicated to bibliography and appendixes. The research is thorough, making this book the authority on the subject the author expounds.
I begin to see the disparities in the thoughts the most read book in the world wish to present. Although it has changed in its context due to men’s egoistic meddling over the past centuries, it is now up to the present men to decide what they want to take home.
I’m still wondering, why aren’t women have a say in the text? No where in this book mentioned that women were involved in the discussion.
Now I wonder - why didn’t the men seek advice from the women? Perhaps we could have a more just and feminine aspect of the thoughts... then there will be balance.
Read more
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Mel Villarreal
5.0 out of 5 stars Very balanced view of the BibleReviewed in the United States on 7 January 2025
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This book was well worth my time reading it. The book ends with an appeal for "the principle of charity," which is much needed in this day and age.
Report
Pete Muileboom
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in Canada on 28 September 2015
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a must read if you want to understand how the bible was written and changed over 1500 years
Report
EA
3.0 out of 5 stars Low quality coverReviewed in Turkey on 13 June 2025
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The ink on the cover is washing away
Report
Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Intellectual, engaging and fluidly written. Recommended.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 October 2016
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A very interesting book. Quite complicated - I kept having to refer to the glossary to check the meaning of greek terminology - but engaging and well written. I found the first few chapters on who had written the various sections of the Bible most interesting. The rest of the book is mainly about interpretations of the Bible by various different ideologies, both Christian and Jewish. I've read a couple of Karen Armstrong's books and this is typical - intellectual, engaging and fluidly written. Recommended.
Report
See more reviews
"[Armstrong] has never written on such a broad scale, or with as much passion . . . [her] concern that religion should no longer be used to promote violence animates her measured, lucid prose and vivifies her summar of the development of the Bible and its interpretation."
--Bruce Chilton, New York Sun
"Karen Armstrong preaches the gospel truth in The Bible, explaining how the spiritual guide for one out of three people on the planet came into being and evolved over the centuries"
--Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
"[A] richly interwoven and often surprising history." --Michael Alec Rose, Bookpage
"While there are countless guides to reading the Bible, noted academic Karen Armstrong looks at the history of the book with a keen historian's eye. ... Armstrong condenses into a manageable volume the many ideas and traditions that influenced the creation of the Good Book." --Kirkus Reviews
"This is one terrific little book." --Booklist
"[A] spending series." --Bill Ward, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"[Armstrong] does an exceptional job of balancing and interweaving Jewish and Christian approaches to scripture." --Kirkus Reviews
"Of all the 'Books that Changed the World' surely the Bible is among the most important. And of all contemporary popularizes 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 and panoramic descriptions? Armstrong not only describes how, when and by whom the Bible was written, she also examines some 2,000 years of biblical interpretation." --Publishers Weekly
"Armstrong judiciously summarizes centuries of history and writes with remarkable insight."
--Christian Science Sentinel
"Armstrong is at her best when explaining how today's focus on the Bible as a literal, static text runs counter to a longstanding interpretative tradition that viewed study of the good book as 'an activity for attaining transcendence.'" --Andrea McQuillin, Shambhala Sun
Product details
Publisher : Grove Press
Publication date : 1 November 2008
Edition : Reprint
Language : English
Print length : 302 pages
Customer Reviews:
4.2
4.2 out of 5 stars (752)
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Follow
Karen Armstrong
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.
Read more about this author
Sponsored
Top reviews from Australia
Helpful
See more reviews
Top reviews from other countries
Tham Chee Wah
5.0 out of 5 stars Unbiased researchReviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2020
Verified Purchase
This is a very difficult book to read. For me, I’ve decided to read it two pages at a time, some days another two pages, depends on the intensity of the content.
I pulled through, nevertheless, after three months. But it is a thin book, about 10% of the last few pages dedicated to bibliography and appendixes. The research is thorough, making this book the authority on the subject the author expounds.
I begin to see the disparities in the thoughts the most read book in the world wish to present. Although it has changed in its context due to men’s egoistic meddling over the past centuries, it is now up to the present men to decide what they want to take home.
I’m still wondering, why aren’t women have a say in the text? No where in this book mentioned that women were involved in the discussion.
Now I wonder - why didn’t the men seek advice from the women? Perhaps we could have a more just and feminine aspect of the thoughts... then there will be balance.
Read more
Report
Mel Villarreal
5.0 out of 5 stars Very balanced view of the BibleReviewed in the United States on 7 January 2025
Verified Purchase
This book was well worth my time reading it. The book ends with an appeal for "the principle of charity," which is much needed in this day and age.
Report
Pete Muileboom
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in Canada on 28 September 2015
Verified Purchase
a must read if you want to understand how the bible was written and changed over 1500 years
Report
EA
3.0 out of 5 stars Low quality coverReviewed in Turkey on 13 June 2025
Verified Purchase
The ink on the cover is washing away
Report
Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Intellectual, engaging and fluidly written. Recommended.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 October 2016
Verified Purchase
A very interesting book. Quite complicated - I kept having to refer to the glossary to check the meaning of greek terminology - but engaging and well written. I found the first few chapters on who had written the various sections of the Bible most interesting. The rest of the book is mainly about interpretations of the Bible by various different ideologies, both Christian and Jewish. I've read a couple of Karen Armstrong's books and this is typical - intellectual, engaging and fluidly written. Recommended.
Report
See more reviews
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 388 reviews
Anne
4,672 reviews70.9k followers
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December 5, 2022
The readability is very high, but there just aren't many sources cited*.
None at all for the beginning of the book that dealt with ancient pre-written Jewish history, and that was actually what I found the most interesting. Who did ancient Jews think their God was and how did that connect to the other religions of the time? I'm not saying her information was wrong, but I'd like to at least have the opportunity to look up the sources for myself.
Edit: This is for the audiobook only.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 388 reviews
Anne
4,672 reviews70.9k followers
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December 5, 2022
The readability is very high, but there just aren't many sources cited*.
None at all for the beginning of the book that dealt with ancient pre-written Jewish history, and that was actually what I found the most interesting. Who did ancient Jews think their God was and how did that connect to the other religions of the time? I'm not saying her information was wrong, but I'd like to at least have the opportunity to look up the sources for myself.
Edit: This is for the audiobook only.
Apparently, all of the sources are listed in physical and digital copies. It would have been nice if that were mentioned in the audiobook version, as I do like to paw around and check other books out. I do think it would have been cool if (especially towards the beginning of the book she could have added things like and we know this because scholars/archaeologists found such-n-such to support this theory instead of just stating everything as a fact.
The tone of the book was very mellow, and that's not always easy while talking about a historical view of several religions. It had that non-judgemental just the facts, ma'am feel to it.
BUT!
If you're looking for an extremely short and simple explanation of the history of Judaism and its off-shoot Christianity, then this is a skinny version. It gives the basics of the different twists and turns the religions have taken, and some of the major sects and denominations that have popped up within them because of that.
I do like her concise writing style, so I'm definitely going to check out more of her books.
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Riku Sayuj
659 reviews7,625 followers
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May 7, 2014
On Reading The Holy Texts: A Plea
The basic historical account of Armstrong’s fits nicely with the Aslan take and also elaborates it for the reader, both into the pre-christian past dealing with the consolidation of the old testament and the post-‘christo’ development of the holy texts.
In addition, this account gives a less detailed, and yet more comprehensive picture of this whole undertaking - it shows that Aslan might have tried to wind up his popular-history too fast and slacked on the details towards the end of his book, and attributed most of the blame to Paul in the reinterpretation. Armstrong shows how this too was a much more collaborative and extensive project and not a one-shot wonder or a singular turning point as Aslan dramatically portrays. In fact, most of modern christianity seems to have crystallized much later according to Armstrong’s account.
One thing that stands out even more is that while Azlan focused, almost with zealous enthusiasm, on the fact that the early christians were reinterpreting the Jewish scriptures, he leaves out the fact that these Jewish scriptures were themselves the result of continuous reinterpretation across the centuries. The Christians were only carrying forward that tradition, as did the post-jerusalem jews, who developed it into the Torah culture. The continuing tension between those who wished to see a strict historical truth in the holy texts and those who sought some mystical meaning through allegory is the real story of the Bible, as of most religious texts. An exclusively literal interpretation of the Bible, as of other religious document is a recent, and quite anti-religious development, as most religious scholars of the past would attest.
Armstrong traces two parallel stories (one kickstarting only later, of course): the one of the Jews and the other of the Christians, swiveling around the two pivotal points of the destruction of the temple in the 6th century BCE and the even more devastating destruction of Herod's great temple in 70 CE. Both setting in motion the contrasting and inverted paths from meekness to militant apocalyptic worship and vice versa, told with fine dramatic flourish.
In the end the central message of Armstrong’s book is that both these religions, especially Christianity, has evolved by continuous reinterpretation of the texts. This is what has allowed them to survive and adapt so much. Armstrong says that almost all religions of the world ask us to see the holy text with the light of compassion and then use them to guide our lives, and to be truly religious that is what we should do, not stick to artificial ‘textual’ readings of a text that was never there to begin with.
So unlike many scholarly attacks on Christianity and the historicity of the Bible, Armstrong does the same but from a deeply religious vantage point - one of saying that love your Bibles but also trust your holy texts enough to let them be your companions instead of your masters. The Bible, she says, was always interpreted in this spirit of ‘allegoria’, one of mystical and spiritual interoperation, and Armstrong asks us to do the same instead of rejecting these holy texts or accepting them too literally. Only then we would be in the same path along with the greatest exegetes of the past like Philo, Jesus, etc.
In our dangerously polarized world, this spirit is even more important, especially when dealing with the ‘holy’ texts of other cultures. When you meet an alien culture and their holy texts, we should approach with the suspicion of truth, not of hostility. This is Armstrong’s plea to us. The book is not particularly remarkable, being neither engrossing nor greatly educational, but the message is a valid one.
The Bible, and the other holy texts are today in danger of becoming either dead letters or toxic arsenals. There is an urgent need for a compassionate hermeneutics in our approach to religions, eschewing both extremes of outright rejection and blind compliance. The solution might be to recapture the spirit of the early religious scholars and mystics.
epic-related history-civilizations history-europe
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Jonathan
690 reviews
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November 13, 2012
I really wanted to learn something from this book. But my problem is – how do I know what I've learned? Armstrong presents many controversial theories, but just states them as declared fact. Nowhere does she explain the evidence that led her to those theories or any alternative views. Primary sources are limited in several chapters and no academic research is cited. I'm not even aware whether she's done any of her own academic research, or whether she just repeating the popular material of the people she agrees with the most. Over and over she takes an issue for which we have limited facts and states her favorite theory about it as if it could be no other way. This is the kind of positivist view of history that was dismissed by serious historians decades ago, but still is fed to the general public by those who should know better.
I'm familiar with many of the theories because I've read them in other sources. Quite a few of them could be partially or entirely accurate. But if someone were to give me an alternative theory, how would I be able to judge it in comparison to Armstrong's? She doesn't give any examples of the facts, logic, or academic research her ideas are based on, and certainly doesn't express any humility or give consideration to alternative ideas. She just expects you to believe her. My recommendation would be – if you hear any alternative theories that contradict anything she says, and those theories provide the slightest bit of primary sources, interior logic, or academic research to back themselves up, then you'd have to prefer them over hers.
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Lawrence
649 reviews34 followers
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February 12, 2009
This book is a 120 mph speed race through . . . what? I guess how people have approached the Bible over the past couple of thousand years? I think it is a shallow book and poorly put together. To me, it feels as if the author simply shuffled her index cards, lined them up, and copied them. I felt I was reading a text that has all of the interest of an online computer manual.
This is a book that talks about the Bible and how it's been interpreted, but actually does not give one "real life" example about how a particular school might have done it. There are, amazingly, hardly any quotes --- if there are any at all --- from the Book itself. The whole thing is a vast abstraction, somewhat like a study guide that might be used to cram for an exam.
The author makes some interesting remarks, but then just drops them. For example, it would be interesting to know why or how the monk became the exemplar when there was no further opportunity for martyrdom (page 115). Or to know more about why the Fall of Rome means the West has a deep sense of Original Sin that apparently no one else does (page 126).
Then, there are things like Anselm of Bec becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 1189 when the previous line gives his dates as 1033-1109!!! (page 136) And Nicholas of "Lyre" as opposed to Nicholas of Lyra!!! (page 153)
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Thomas Stroemquist
1,634 reviews146 followers
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ReadAugust 8, 2018
DNF @ pg 170-something, which is way too late in this book where at least the last quarter is but references and glossary. It really started out interesting - or, maybe not interesting as much as bewildering.
This always happens to me when I try to read anything on the subject, I end up in a confused state over how so many have the ability to just turn off logic reasoning and just decide that "I'm going to believe this.". In this case, the discrepancy is of course the mutual exclusiveness of believing in god and believing what's in the collection of writings later known as "The Bible", through countless mutations due to translations, interpretations and will of men to be a true account of anything.
The beginning describes this nicely, we move through old stories and polytheistic religions evolving much through the writings through hundreds of years and later included in or discarded from what became the Bible. Somewhere in the middle, the author lost me though and when she tried to in some roundabout way act the apologetic from all that was in the first part and try to reason Jehova into existence again, I dropped this one. Twice, literally - first on account of rolling my eyes so hard I got dizzy and later when I fell asleep in my lounge chair.
I went in with no pre-knowledge, but after this turn of events, I did look the author up and Wikipedia tells that she was a nun, but converted to a more liberal and mythical christian faith. It is also stated that "Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule." Hm, I do wonder how come different religions, from different parts of the world do have certain things, such as these, in common? The fact that they are directly related to human decency and common frickin sense surely must be a too simple solution? Perhaps not. One thing I'm really sure about - if I had read the Wiki article first, it would have saved me some time that I could have used reading something else...
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Ed
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December 19, 2008
I bought this on a whim in the bookstore at O'Hare and read much of it on the plane. I thought it was a very good summary of the history of the Bible, from origins in oral tradition to contemporary phenomena such as a literal reading. It was particularly good on outlining the differences in approach in Jewish and Christian traditions. As in her other books, Armstrong strikes a nice balance between critical analysis and broad understanding of the non-rational aspects of religious thought and tradition. It also did a good job of discussing the widely diverse ways in which the Bible has been interpreted over time, based on the issues and dynamics of the time.
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Jamie Smith
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May 31, 2023
“When their sacred texts tell stories, people have generally believed them to be true, but until recently literal or historical accuracy has never been the point. The truth of scripture cannot be assessed unless it is – ritually or ethically – put into practice.”
Karen Armstrong’s The Bible: A Biography is a wide ranging history of The Book, a well researched and thoughtful examination of a number of important topics. For this review I am going to focus on just one of the areas she covers, because of the powerful and often destructive influence that it represents: the subject of biblical inerrancy.
Considering how deeply the concept of biblical literalism is embedded in contemporary evangelical Christianity, it is somewhat surprising to learn that it only became an issue in the late eighteen-hundreds. “[A]n exclusively literal interpretation of the Bible is a recent development. Until the nineteenth century, very few people imagined that the first chapter of Genesis was a factual account of the origins of life.” Until then only the lunatic fringe asserted that the Bible was literally true in all things for all time. Although the author does not use the term, there is a word for the belief that the Bible is the literal word of god: bibliolotry: the worship of a book rather than the book’s message.
The stories which became the Bible were originally just that – stories, whose purpose was to explain and illuminate, and intended to be metaphorically rather than literally true. In fact, “From the very beginning, people feared that a written scripture encouraged inflexibility and unrealistic, strident certainty.”
The Bible as we know it today was codified by St. Jerome around 400 CE, including the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the New. Jerome was unconcerned that the gospels differed significantly from one another not only in their facts but in their interpretation of who Jesus was, his views on salvation, and when and how the world would end. “When the editors fixed the canons of both the Jewish and Christian testaments, they included competing visions and placed them, without comment, side by side. From the first, biblical authors felt free to revise the texts they had inherited and give them entirely different meaning.”
It has been known since the earliest times that words are finite because people are finite, and thus can illuminate but not express the infinite, the unbounded, the omnipotent.
God had revealed some of his names to us in scripture, which tells us that God is ‘good’, ‘compassionate’, and ‘just’, but these attributes were ‘sacred veils’ that hid the divine mystery which lies beyond such words. When Christians listen to scripture, they must continually remind themselves that these human terms were too limited to apply to God. So God was ‘good’ and ‘not-good’; ‘just’ and ‘not-just’. This paradoxical reading would bring them ‘into that darkness which is beyond intellect’.
Because of this, “Bitter, angry disputes about the meaning of scripture were, therefore, ridiculous. The Bible expressed a truth that was infinite and beyond the comprehension of every single person, so nobody could have the last word.” Instead of engaging in tendentious arguments about what the Bible ‘really’ means and whose interpretation is correct, a spirit of understanding should guide faith, along with a humble acknowledgment that by admitting our limited capacity and by listening to one another we might find shared insights more illuminating than anything we could have come up with on our own.
For Saint Augustine, faith was not a doctrine but the embodiment of the spirit of love. He understood that the original stories of the Bible had been modified for many reasons, both inadvertently through transcription errors and intentionally as different interpretations fought for supremacy. Augustine believed that “Whatever the author had originally intended, a biblical passage that was not conducive to love must be interpreted figuratively, because charity was the beginning and end of the Bible,” and any interpretation that spread hate or dissension must be illegitimate.
Until Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) the Bible had always stood apart as holy writ. Spinoza looked beyond the little stories to a belief that did not need miracles or revealed truths, that developed a moral and ethical system distinct from religion, which in any case he dismissed as “a tissue of meaningless mysteries.” Following him, European scholars began examining the Bible not as a sacred text, but as human one, with all the distortions and contradictions of any human text, with the German Tübingen School taking the lead in what came to be known as Higher Criticism.
The idea that the Bible should be treated as a human book frightened and offended some Christians, who closed ranks and began to assert that everything in it was literally true, always and forever, and thus Christian fundamentalism was born. “There was...a growing sense that the truths of religion must be factual and a deep fear that the Higher Criticism would leave a dangerous void. Discount one miracle and consistency demanded that you reject them all. If Jonah did not spend three days in the whale’s belly, asked a Lutheran pastor, did Jesus really rise from the tomb?”
By the start of the twentieth century fundamentalist beliefs had taken root and become widespread in certain Christian sects. Since the Book of Revelation had described a detailed sequence of events that would lead to the Second Coming, Christians began interpreting world events as signs of the impending end times.
During the First World War, an element of terror entered conservative Protestantism in the United States: the unprecedented slaughter was on such a scale that, they reasoned, these must be the battles foretold in Revelation. Because conservatives now believed that every word of the Bible was literally true, they began to view current events as the fulfillment of precise biblical predictions.
Every world event was fair game for biblical exegesis so long as it could be twisted into support for their interpretation. It did not matter that the only consistent thing about every one their end times predictions is that they all turned out to be wrong, and to this day they continue to sees signs and prophecies everywhere.
When they read the Bible, Christian fundamentalists saw – and still see – themselves on the frontline against satanic forces that will shortly destroy the world. The wild tales of German atrocities circulating during and after the war seemed to prove the corrosive effects of the Higher Criticism on the nation that had spawned it.
All of this might seem quixotic, even amusing to an outside observer, like obsessing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but it has serious real-world consequences that threaten democratic societies. By picking and choosing parts of different books of the Bible and combining them they created new exegesis, which often led to shocking distortions of the gospel, and to pernicious effects on secular institutions such as education.
When fundamentalist movements are attacked they usually become more extreme. Before [the 1925 Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’] the conservatives were wary of evolution, but very few had espoused ‘creation science’, which maintained that the first chapter of Genesis was factually true in every detail. After Scopes, however, they became more vehemently literal in their interpretation of scripture, and creation science became the flagship of their movement.
A common interpretation of Revelation is that the Antichrist would slaughter two-thirds of the Jews living in Palestine during the end times, so fundamentalists look forward to the massacre of millions of Israelis. Some fundamentalists wish to overthrow the government entirely, to bring about their own ‘godly’ theocratic state.
Reconstructionists are thus planning the Christian commonwealth in which the modern heresy of democracy will be abolished and every single law of the Bible implemented literally: slavery will be re-established, contraception prohibited, adulterers, homosexuals, blasphemers and astrologers will be executed, and persistently disobedient children stoned to death.
Furthermore “God is not on the side of the poor: indeed...there is a ‘tight relationship between wickedness and poverty’. Taxes must not be used for welfare, since ‘subsidizing sluggards is the same as subsidizing evil”.
The Bible today is in danger of becoming a dead letter, though it contains magnificent stories of faith, courage, and compassion which are worth knowing and sharing. These stories have inspired some people to acts of greatness at the same time they have inspired others to cruelty and murder. The good things that are in the Bible are in danger of being swept away if educated people associate it with kooky fundamentalism and decide it has nothing that is worth their attention.
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Jon Stout
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March 3, 2011
Like everything that Karen Armstrong touches, this work is exhaustive and erudite and wonderful. It does not summarize what is in the Bible, but rather is a broad scope history of how the Bible was written and how it has been interpreted unto the present day. The treatment supports Armstrong’s general theme that world religions do not offer a body of beliefs to be factually evaluated, but rather a way of life, a spiritual discipline including rites and rituals, which can only be evaluated by being lived out.
The history of how the Tanakh (or “Old Testament”) was written had some surprises for me. For example, I knew that in Genesis, scholars had discerned (at least) two distinct authors, the Yahwist and the Elohimist (based on the names “Yahway” and “Elohim” used for God). The Yahwist famously portrayed God in highly personal terms, as walking in the Garden of Eden with Adam, and as being a guest in the tents of Abraham, while the Elohimist portrayed God in more transcendent terms. What I didn’t know was that these two “authors” probably comprised the respective literatures of the ancient Hebrew kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The points of view were collated into one after the Assyrian defeat of Israel in 722 B.C.E., when the refugees fled to Judah.
Equal attention is given to early Christianity and to Pharisaical Judaism, the two largest competing branches of Judaism at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Judaism and Christianity needed very different survival techniques, and took very different forms, in order to cope with the power of the Roman Empire.
The history continues with a discussion of how the Bible was interpreted by both Jewish and Christian traditions in the last two millennia. There is far too much information to summarize, but one consequence of the discussion is to show that the contemporary reflex, to evaluate the Bible as either factually true or factually false, leaves out a lot of possibilities for how the Bible has actually been regarded and used.
Talmudic scholars sometimes regarded the inspirational experience derived from interpretation as more important than the original meaning. Christian writers and interpreters of the New Testament often took the Tanakh to be referencing the yet-to-be-born Jesus. More commonly, scholars have regarded the Bible as the history of a faith community, whose general conclusions are relative to a particular time and place. And many commentators, both Jewish and Christian, have argued that an interpretation should be judged in terms of whether it increases compassion in the world.
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John Martindale
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October 16, 2017
Karan Armstrong not only quickly did an overview of the development of bible from a highly skeptical secular perspective, but also touched on Christian and Jewish history. The most interesting part to me was the brief overview of Jewish and Christian interpretations of scriptures through history. As I listened, I did notice some straight up errors (if what I've learned elsewhere is to be believed), and the book seemed very biased. Again and again she would share what was in reality an extremely speculative interpretation, theory or hypothesis and present it as solid fact, I don't recall her ever using the words; “possibly”, “It seems” or “some have argued” or “maybe it was”, or even hinting that some of what she presented as fact is even seen as problematic by other liberal and anti-theistic scholars. What she shared was astronomically one sided, and the suppressed evidence was truly immense. If there was interpretation of the data that had tons of evidence for it, but then another interpretation that had very little or no evidence to support it, and yet put the bible and Christians in a worse light, the latter interpretation was of course the one presented as absolute undisputed fact.
I suppose that due to the brevity and scope of the book that there wasn't the time to give a more fair and balanced telling, yet still the extreme dogmatism could have been tempered somewhat, especially that which was based upon scholarship of convenience as Bart Ehrman calls it. Or as I like to call it Procrustean Scholarship, where they confidently date material so it fits their previously held schema, and claim the individual verses that still don't fit with their preconceived theories are interpolations, and then dream up motivations and read anything they want between the line, in order to force things line up a little too perfectly.
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Beckie
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February 7, 2008
Karen Armstrong is among my top five religion scholars, and also probably my top five former nuns. She does a good job of making complicated history and theory comprehensible. At least one chapter of "The Bible: a Biography" pretty well summed up a semester-long class I had, and the book sweeps through history from ancient Israel through the present.
It's also worth noting that Armstrong traces the Jewish perspective on the Bible throughout that whole period, where many authors focus exclusively on Christian ideas once we hit the early church. This is to her credit, and the reader's benefit.
My main complaint is that the author's trademark simplification comes at a price. While Armstrong is very critical of much accepted wisdom about the Bible (particularly the idea of taking it literally) and of events as portrayed in the biblical texts, she takes some theories for granted. For example, the idea of the 'Q' text behind the synoptic gospels is presented as a fact. It's a well-respected theory, but how much stock can you put in a hypothetical text we don't have? There are also some historical stories she accepts at face value, and I cannot tell how she makes that call sometimes. This does the reader a disservice.
Toward the end, Armstrong tips her hand a bit, showing a clear desire to salvage the Bible (and other religious texts) from the damage inflicted by fundamentalists (in her view) and find value in it for modern readers. Which is fine and all, I personally do think opinions should be allowed in scholarship, but it's just not the purported purpose of this book.
It's still worth reading: a scholarly book for a general audience.
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