The Bible Story

by Guy Daniel

The Rev. Guy Daniel re-tells The Bible Story in the light of modern knowledge about mankind's gradual development of a religious sense.

192 pages, Hardcover

Reviews

[Patrick Moody · Rating 3 out of 5]

The three stars is for the first half, that part of the book involved with the world of the Old Testament. This is not a book of ‘Bible stories’ as such but a book about the origins of the religion of the main characters in that book. It traces the slow evolution of an idea which starts off as just another god attached to a locality and becomes eventually a deity that is believed to be powerful across vast distances and who is at first superior to other gods and then eventually the only god. The story is related in an objective way with miracles and magic explained as natural phenomena or superstitions of those who proclaimed them. There is no sense given that this god or the people that worship it is in any way more real or morally superior to any of the other gods that abound in the world. This objectiveness all stops when the New Testament is related. The ‘God’ portrayed as an idea or a figment by the first half of the book suddenly becomes a real character, and a man acting as his mouthpiece is regarded as not a philosopher or prophet, as his mouthpieces are in the first half, but as an actual avatar of this god. The fact that the god was made up and developed over hundreds of years and had gone through several different versions tailored to suit the conditions surrounding its people is seemingly just forgotten. The god is real simply because it has been an idea for so long and the latest version of the idea has finally won the author of The Bible Story as a fanboy. But the end of the book it exists as a reality as does its son and it claims jurisdiction over all people and all the world if one is to believe the author