Il libro dei libri: Una storia della Bibbia

by John Barton

A uniquely ambitious study of the Bible's creation: how it came to be written, how its contents were selected - and how it really relates to the religions that endorse it

The Bible is the central book in Western culture, yet extraordinarily there is no proper history of it. This exceptional work, by one of the world's leading Biblical scholars, provides a full account of how the different parts of the Bible came to be
written; how some writings which were regarded as holy became canonical and were included in the Bible, and others were not; what the relationship is of the different parts of the Bible to each other; and how, once it became a stable text, the Bible has been disseminated and interpreted around the world. It gives full weight to discussion of the importance of the Tanakh (Old Testament) in Judaism as in Christianity. It also demonstrates the degree to which, contrary to widespread belief, both Judaism and Christianity are not faiths drawn from the Bible texts but from other sources and traditions. It shows that if we are to regard the Bible as 'authoritative' it cannot be as believers have so often done in the past.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology, Christian, Philosophy

862 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2019

About the author

John Barton is Oriel & Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford. His publications include The Theology of the Book of Amos (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile (2007).

For the Canadian poet, see John Barton.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR FUNDAMENTALISTS

There is not, and can never be, a text of “the New Testament” as it left the hands of Paul, Luke or John: we have only variants. The implications of this for theories of the inspiration and authority of the New Testament have scarcely begun to be worked out. Where the words of Jesus are concerned, for example, we often know only roughly what he is supposed to have said (and whether he really said it is of course yet a further question).

No, this was not written by a New Atheist, but by a church of England priest (since 1973) who was also Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture (a great title, you will agree) at Oxford University for 13 years.

John Barton is a great calm steady hand on the tiller as he guides you through the vast torrents of thinking within and without that bizarre wondrous collection of ancient texts we call the Bible. Like the World’s Strongest Man dragging a tractor across a field with his teeth, he shifts mountains of congealed thought aside with each paragraph. He has the breathtaking intellectual confidence to summarise the Bible into four handy bullet points.

THE CHRISTIAN MEANING OF THE BIBLE

The Christians came along and hotrodded the existing Bible, which was the Old Testament, of course, but it wasn’t thought of as Old (although it was old) because at that point there wasn’t a New. I should say that hotrodded is my word, not Professor Barton’s, but that’s essentially what happened. The Jews considered their scriptures to be all about them and their exclusive deal with God, but the Christians said no, no, and with the hi-torque retooled engine of Jesus and the rocket fuel of the Holy Spirit they said this thing is not just for the Jews, this is for the whole world, and the story so far can be summarized like this :


1. Creation
2. The fall into sin (Adam’s disobedience)
3. Individual salvation from sin through Christ (the second Adam’s obedience)
4. End of the world and final judgement (date TBC)

The Jewish meaning is completely different – there was no disaster and rescue, no fall, Adam is marginal, Abraham is central, and there is no individual “salvation” – the Jews would have been mystified by the concept. Instead of all that, the Bible is “about how to live a faithful life in the ups and downs of the ongoing history of the people of Israel”. That’s all, and that was enough. So, the Hebrew scriptures may be shared between the two religions, but the interpretation is completely different.

I would like to expatiate on the way that St Paul came along and re-programmed the tiny little Jewish sect that was the Christians after the death of Jesus and changed it completely from being about what Jesus said and did (he was a moral revolutionary) to being about what he was (the mystical Son of God, the Saviour). And also to mention how long it took to assemble the Christian part of the Bible (and quote John Barton about how Da Vinci Code type conspiracies were always just what they seemed, mildly entertaining fantasies). But that would make this review too long even for me to get to the end of.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t often read much nonfiction so I always look forward to following the Wolfson History Prize each year for guidance of what biographical or historical books I should catch up on. Last year I read Matthew Sturgis’ excellent biography of Oscar Wilde but this year I thought I’d challenge myself a bit more by reading priest and Oxford scholar John Barton’s much-acclaimed “A History of the Bible”. Firstly, I must declare that although I was raised with regular Sunday trips to a Lutheran church I am an atheist so my interest in the Bible comes from a purely secular point of view. To be honest, I’ve never had much interest in reading the Bible or thought deeply about its origins. However, its historical, social and cultural significance is of such magnitude that it feels like I should learn more about it. Barton’s intricately researched and well balanced account embraces the enormous challenge of tracing the history and many permutations of the text which makes up the Bible as used in the Judaic and Christian faiths. It was absolutely fascinating learning about its complex and lengthy history.

Read my full review of A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths by John Barton on LonesomeReader

[Ionia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely fascinating book for anyone who has an interest in the Bible, regardless of whether you are specifically religious or not. This is a longer book with a lot of information in it, so I suggest reading it in smaller chunks, so you can truly appreciate all of the nuances.

The Bible, as most people are no doubt already aware, has been through many changes over the years, being adapted and translated for different languages and cultures and updated by various scribes either accidentally or with a specific theological angle in mind. This book really captures that and explains how and why these changes occurred. One of the things I found striking about this book is, how it shows the many transformations the New Testament has been through before and after the Reformation, but how little the Torah has actually changed through the centuries. The author also points out that we do not possess a text of the New Testament as it was in the days of Paul, Luke or John, because only variants are extant.

This was an intriguing and helpful book for me since I am currently learning to be a textual analyst with a focus on scripture. Even if you are not currently pursuing a scholastic endeavour though, this book is still one that you don't want to miss.

I was thoroughly impressed with the depth of the author's knowledge and his presentation of the facts. He did not come across as overly biased or in favour of one theological idea over another. He based his research on historical fact and spectator evidence, as all good non-fiction authors should make a habit of doing.

Overall, this was one of the best books I have read in the last few years and I can't recommend it enough.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. Growing up in a fundamentalist church, Biblical criticism was totally frowned upon. I was taught to believe the literal 7-day creation, that everything in the Bible was historic fact, and my understanding of "divine inspiration" was some guy in a room transcribing as God narrated. Over time, I grew to have a more nuanced understanding of Christianity, but nobody ever clearly explained to me where we got the Bible from, what we actually know about it, or even what languages it was originally written in (I totally get the Greek/Aramaic thing now!). As someone who is college educated, that's pretty embarrassing to admit. It's uncommon in many churches for pastors to discuss things like authorship, genre, or historical context, so for me learning about all these debates was fascinating. And I finally understand the apocrypha. It makes sense that pastors would avoid these topics as some of them are controversial, so I think this is a valuable resource for those of us who are interested in these things but don't have theology degrees. The book is a bit dry in places, I kept imagining the author narrating it in a stuffy British accent, but overall it was a really good overview and introduction to Biblical criticism. Mind blown. 🤯

[Nick Imrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One might expect a book about the history of a book to be a bit dry and academic, but Barton has done an excellent job of making a fascinatingly readable narrative, and there were many pleasurable little moments where I learnt something new and unexpected. Making a few thousand years of facts into a narrative entails leaving a lot out, this was done well enough that by the end I was both satisfied and still interested in following up on the rest (yes, for those of you who find this sort of thing fun, there is an excellent bibliography at the end). A good example of this might be Barton summarising the academic research on who wrote the Pentateuch, without going into too much detail about how and why they deduced that this part was from P (the priestly source) or J (the one that calls God Jahwe) or E (the one that calls god Elohim) or D (because Deuteronomy just seems very different).

The tone is moderate and erudite, as befits an Anglican, which was naturally a huge disappointment to the conspiracy theorist in me. Barton gently dismisses the wilder theories about early Christians, Gnostics, and patriarchs compiling biblical books for their own political ends. The books that make up the New Testament are largely the ones that the Christian community had been using for generations and there's little evidence that the excluded books were widly used or highly regarded. Likewise, he is very tactful around the Christian tradition of supersessionism: the idea that Christianity is an improvement on Judaism, and I learnt a lot about how the bible is viewed and used from a Jewish perspective.

Perhaps less pleasingly to Christians and Jews, he is ready to acknowledge how archaeology undermines much of the bible, like the narrative of Exodus with the slavery in Egypt and the conquering of the Canaanites, but even then he approaches it sympathetically:

So all Israel later celebrated the Passover and rejoiced in the deliverance from Egypt that Passover commemorates, even though many were the offspring of people who had never actually been there. Nation-building often involves the extension to all of folk-memories that originally affected only a few - much as Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, even though the majority are not the descendants of those who first did so, and indeed the historical background of most Americans follows a different trajectory.

It's a fairly large book, too large for this review to do justice to everything that I learnt from in, but some parts that have stuck with me:

Reading the bible in English one knows that the translation may not be perfect, but it had never really hit me that Jesus taught in Aramaic, yet all the gospels are in Greek, so we actually have no sources of what he said precisely, everything we have is a translation.
The early Christians treated the gospels much more like historical documents than holy texts - they were eyewitness accounts written by men, kept in codices not scrolls - so I feel very affirmed in my prejudice against people who try to end all disputes with single line bible quotes.

I was mildly amused to read of the early Christians going to such lengths to show that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament to justify their faith to a largely Jewish audience - a few centuries later they were using very similar arguments to justify the Old Testament to a largely Christian audience.

I have a much better understanding of the divergence between the ways that Christians and Jews read the bible. The Christian narrative is one of fall and redemption, with Adam and Eve and Jesus being important characters, while the Jewish narratie is one 'the ups and downs' of the people of Israel with Abraham and Moses playing far larger roles. Likewise, both Christians and Jews try to interpret in line with their current beliefs, even when they are not very well supported by the text, with Christians inclining to read things as allegories or prophecies (even when it seems like they're stretching it) and Jews tending to draw parallels between individual passages that share verbal similarity, regardless of any other lack of connection, treating it almost like a cryptic crossword waiting to be deciphered.

Many thanks to netgalley for this book - I had signed up to netgalley hoping for free reads, but this is such an interesting and informative book that I suspect I'll probably be buying a hard copy for my next reread!

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reviews for this book have been uniformly, firmly, positive, which is a shame, in some ways, because my expectations were far higher than the book met and now I have to try to work out whether that is the book fault or mine. In the positive column, the History of the Bible is very readable, broad in scope with thorough coverage of all periods, and careful to canvass a wide range of points of view, while having a distinct and stated point-of-view of its own. On the critical side, it's approachability is a undermined by the length (Amazon's expected reading time is 17 hours, high for 600 pages), some key things are covered scantly and/or later than would be useful, and there is a high ratio of negative (Debunking) arguments to positive (this is what might have happened), which is always, if worthy, a little less interesting to read.
The latter two issues have left me wanting to know more, and I did use the excellent biographical section at the end to add several books to my wishlist. Stimulating appetite is definitely part of the point of a generalist book on a topic. However, I did still find it frustrating that the issues around the construction of the Septuagint - to what extent it innovated and why - were not covered in detail until the final substantive chapter of the book, and then still as an afterthought. Barton is at his most influential in explaining how analyses had led to conclusions around when each section of our current Bible was written, and how the part might have been transmitted. He is weaker, however, when looking at how narratives were edited and compiled into the canon. For example, given that Barton regards the Septuagint as representative of Jewish canon "When the Septuagint diverges seriously from the Hebrew we know, it is, therefore, a reasonable hypothesis that a Hebrew text existed that corresponded to the Greek….", some earlier discussion about some of the challenges to that view would have enriched the early part of the book, allowing for a better understanding of the myriad of possibilities for how the Tanakh developed, and how exile affected it. Similarly while Barton points out that most alternate gospels are, well, gnostic, written later than the synoptic gospels, and weren't necessarily widely circulating, he doesn't really articulate a vision for how come three gospels, designed to be standalone, came to be centralised and were the only three that lasted and became authoritative. I will freely point out I have no expertise in this space (and no horse in the race either), but I came away confused on lots of elements of this process.
The book is very Anglican*, which is to be expected really, and many of its strengths and weaknesses are also those of the CoE (great scholarship, extreme inclusivity, and a tendency towards the longwinded). It reminded me that there are intellectual ways of reconciling things I find irreconcilable. Barton summarises his way of reconciling the history with faith in recent tenets with:

"I want to suggest a metaphor that can help to illuminate the relation between the Bible and what Christians believe and do. We could conceive of the Christian faith and the Bible as two intersecting circles. There are matters in the Bible that scarcely bear on Christian faith at all, and which make trouble if Christians assume they must do so: the curses in the Psalms, Joshua’s battles with the Canaanites, Paul’s more intemperate outbursts against his converts and against Judaism as he knew it, the vindictive prophecies in Revelation, many of the laws in Leviticus. Similarly, there are matters in Christian faith that are only very faintly, or even not at all, represented in the Bible: the doctrine of the Trinity, the way the Church is to be organized, the creation of the world out of nothing, the meaning of Christ’s death, the idea that after his death he descended to the underworld."

As an atheist raised in the Anglican church, with many Anglican friends, I found it a reminder of how much the Church has to give. I still want to read something else, though.

*No I don't mean Episcopalian. There is an Englishness in the mix here.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship]

Two issues with this one. First, it is very dry: scholarly and in the weeds in a way that does not produce fun facts, and often repetitive, with lots of pages spent on trying to date the books of the Old Testament, for instance. I wound up skipping a couple of chapters to get to the New Testament bit, and the 65-page section about how those books came to be was by far the most interesting part of the book for me.

The second issue came when I hit Part Three, which is purportedly about how the Jewish and Christian Bibles came to contain the books that they do, which Barton presents as a fait accompli, that the entire religion had coalesced organically around the successful books without need for discussion, by reading and citing them regularly, while the unsuccessful ones were of marginal importance. So apparently the selection of the canon just happened on its own with no debate, no politics, no actual choices made by any actual people. No church councils, theological debates, or controversies are discussed or even, to my recollection, mentioned. He states that many of the books not chosen were considered heretical, but without getting into how the groups that supported them wound up branded heretics and their opponents orthodox. And he admits that some books that made it (namely Revelation) were considered sketchy in the early centuries, but does not address how they nonetheless gained canonical status.

Anyway, at that point I no longer trusted him, which was the nail in the coffin for an already long, dull book. Perhaps this is to be expected from an author who is a current Anglican priest, but to be fair he also points out things like (paraphrased) “the Gospels were written down decades after Jesus’s death in a language he didn’t speak, and in the early years were considered fair game for editing by scribes based on the issues of their own day, so don’t try to parse Jesus’s exact words like some statute book” and the fact that Christianity as practiced is not quite based on the Bible, ignoring some parts while also adding things not in the text. These seem to me like much bolder statements than admitting to the politics of the early church. But perhaps that is another political issue I am not going to learn from this book.

Read through page 307 out of 489 (excepting chapters 4 and 5). Sadly, my nonfiction slump continues.

[Tajei · Rating 5 out of 5]

If ever you have interacted with a theologically motivated argument in support of a certain position, you will probably have come across a biblical citation as evidence for the claim. One thing you might notice in that is how oblique these biblical references tend to be. For instance, the entire institution of the papacy and the overwhelming power it wields are based on the single following line:

"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)

The Catholic interpretation is that the church and papacy are the "rock" Jesus describes, hence legitimating its power in the practice of Christian believers. While this is a possible allegorical interpretation of the passage, it does not really strike us as the most likely meaning of the text nor its intended message. This is the phenomenon that this book seeks to explain, by way of detour through the entirety of biblical history and interpretation.

The first problem the author accounts for is the problem of genre. The Bible, despite being seen as a set of instructions on Jewish and Christian practice, is not a list of laws. Most of it is narrative, concerning the travails of Israel and the prophets (Old Testament) or Jesus (New). In the best cases, it is hard to extract concrete prescriptions from narrative text, and this problem is compounded in the Bible's multiplicity of narratives. The NT presents particular problems in this regard. It is easy to forget that the NT is kind of a frame narrative: one level are the recorded sayings of Jesus, and another is the prose description of the events given by the author. There is evidence, the author argues, that early Christians viewed only the former as important, and would quote the sayings of Jesus in the NT but not the text of the NT itself (sort of like a History SBQ where the author of an interview is the person being quoted not the one who conducted the interview). The modern churches, however, have canonised both of these narrative levels, which is an interesting departure from early Christian practice.

The second problem is that the Bible is not an entirely rigorously self-consistent text. The most famous example of this is in the question of how a believer is saved: whether through faith alone (Luther and subsequent Protestants) or through faith and good works (Catholics). The book of James in the OT seems to endorse the Catholic position, whereas Paul's letters to the Romans in the NT argue for the Protestant stand. Similarly, the various letters of Paul seem to offer different views on the question of the trinity which is now central to Christian belief: in contrast to the orthodox trinitarian position, some letters show a subordationist tendency, which holds that Christ the Son is subordinate to God the Father, while others express an adoptionist view, which suggests that Jesus of Nazareth did not become the son of God until the point of crucifixion. The clearest example of this incongruity is the four canonic gospels accepted by all Christian denominations. The gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John all claim to be authoritative accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus, but differ in clear and important ways (John, for instance, claims that Jesus made multiple trips to Jerusalem where the prior three account for only one).

These two problems lead the author to claim that Christianity is not exclusively a scriptural religion. There are many key church doctrines that cannot be found anywhere in the Bible, or are found in such a tangential way as to seem suspect. The doctrine of the trinity, for instance — which holds that God is one entity in three co-equal persons: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — receives only two mentions in the entire NT (in Matthew and John), and both are widely agreed to be subsequent additions by medieval authors not present in the original text.

The author's argument on non-scripturality, however, is importantly not an indictment of Christianity (or Judaism). Plenty of religions are non-scriptural, finding basis for their faiths in tradition and custom, rather than (solely) in holy texts. The author merely argues that Christianity needs to recognise itself as such. In fact, at the time of the writing of the NT (c. 2nd century AD), non-scripturality was seen as a strength, and it was believed that Jesus' sayings were more important than the writings of the OT precisely because they were not captured in those books. Fundamentalist claims to practise Christianity sola scriptura (according to scripture alone) are thus untenable and problematic.

One other section of the book I found interesting discussed the differences between Jewish and Christian approaches to the OT. Often, it is thought that the two faiths agree on the OT, with Christianity simply "adding on" the NT, but this view is highly misleading. For one, Jews tend to see the OT as a historical record, which documents the life and times of the Israelite kingdoms and prophets, thus forming the national literature of Israel. In contrast, Christians tend to strongly allegorise the OT. One particularly striking example is from the Book of Psalms:

"Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." (Psalms 137:8-9)

This, quite clearly, is a denunciation of Babylon by the Israelites (between whom there was strong enmity because of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem) and Judaism regards it as such. Christian writers, however, have never quite been comfortable with the implication of infanticide the Psalm suggests, and thus read it in an allegoric mode. To Christians, Babylon represents the Devil, and its infants, the seeds of sin, which must be dashed against the rock (Jesus) before they grow in evil. This highly metaphorical reading of the OT is carried through several other places, replacing the rather more literal Jewish interpretation.

Jews and Christians also differ on the overall meaning of the OT and which parts they emphasise. Some key Christian stories, such as that of Adam and Eve, are present in the Jewish Hebrew Bible, but not given nearly the same level of importance (hence why Judaism does not preach the doctrine of original sin which Christianity derives from this story). Similarly, Christians tend to see the OT as a prediction of the coming of Jesus which the NT fulfils, while Jews see the messianic prophecies as remaining unfulfilled. Christians likewise see the OT as having an overall thematic message — of sin, hope and redemption — while Jews do not read any overall meaning from the text. Finally, while Judaism sees the books of the OT as being part of a clear hierarchy, with the Torah (the first five books) as primary, the books known as the Prophets as secondary, and the Writings as tertiary, Christians make no such distinctions and see the whole of the OT as equally important. Functionally, then, the Hebrew Bible and Christian OT might as well be seen as separate works in the way they are interpreted.

If that very long and slightly meandering review sort of obscured the point, this is a very good book which I would highly recommend.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was definitely one of the more complicated books I’ve read. The author has a lot to share and never really lets up while presenting a highly sophisticated complex history of an incredibly interesting topic.

It’s so easy to understand why so many people fall into the formulaic tautology of just saying that the Bible is the literal word of God and leaving it at that, never realizing even within that formulation there will come ambiguities that still would lead to paradoxes that just get sublimated by the hermeneutics the believer brings with them.

The Bible itself is not easy to digest unless one simplifies their belief into a simplistic jingoistic mantra. Reverend Jerry Falwell said, for example, his belief is simple, ‘the Bible is the word of God and fundamental Christians believe what the Bible says’. As pointed out in this book, for example, the Trinity is not directly in the Bible except for possibly in one spot and that comes with a lot of caveats. Falwell believes in the Trinity, but, yet, biblically he is on very shaky ground. It would have behooved him to have read a book like this one, but his desire to hate homosexuals would preclude that.

One’s faith shapes how one reads the Bible, and the Bible shapes one’s faith in how it is interpreted. There is always a confounding between the person and of the world such that original basic contribution of the elements that constitute the whole system is impossible to separate completely.

Jesus’s proclamations for Christians show the truth of the Old Testament prophets when read through the divine nature assumption of Jesus thus establishing the proclaimer more important than the proclamations. It takes a process to make an event.

The author will make note of the fact that one can not derive what it is to be Jewish or one of the 10000 or so Christian sects if the only source one had was the Bible because each sect brings something into the Bible that shapes how they see the Bible and their own peculiar religion.

This book has that theme of the confounding nature of understanding running through out. History becomes relevant when the history we write about is relevant to us or when we make it relevant by making it so. The Bible and its meaning get shaped by us just as the history we think we thought we believed does too. Today, the Civil War was about slavery, 10 years ago the predominant viewpoint was that states-rights was the reason for the war.

There’s no easy way to understand a topic as complex as the Bible unless you make the mistake of saying it is simple because you say it is. The world has nuances enshrined within subtleties inside contexts that make for understanding beyond simplistic jingoistic mantras.

Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake both understand another main theme within this book, that a great book can be looked at on four levels: literal, allegorical, moral, and what we should do in life (the author actually used the word anagogical and it can mean how can we get salvation, but I prefer to just say ‘how should we live’).

Certainly, this was one of the more complicated books that I’ve read. The author knows that understanding comes through knowing the sum of the parts and that the whole provides insights into the parts and that the merging of the two is no small feat.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short review for a long book...

I appreciated the secular approach that gives appropriate historical and cultural background information. On occasion, author did go into more detail than I'd wanted when focusing on specific passages or themes. This was trickier to deal with in an audiobook, but Ralph Lister was a very good narrator fit for the material.

[Mafi Zis Amețita Aka Cristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5⭐ în primul rând titlul cărții te duce în eroare, nu-i o istorie a Bibliei ci mai degrabă o istorie a criticii bibliei,o analiza pe cele 4 evanghelii care nu semăna una cu altă dar fac parte din Noul Testament din motive destul de vage🙄
Cartea asta mi-am dorit-o extrem de mult însă categoric idea mea despre ce credeam că găsesc aici cu ceea ce am găsit defapt nu are nici o legătură,am ajuns în punctul să sar peste zeci de pagini doar din motive subiective pur și simplu nu mă interesau acele analize pe text ce a spus Pavel în epistola x sau cine a copiat pe cine dintre Marcu,Matei, Luca și Ioan ,eu fix istoria Bibliei o vroiam să-i înțeleg fenomenului și ce anume a făcut din această carte ceea ce este.
Raționalismul lui Spinoza a fost singura parte a cărții pe care am savurat-o cuvânt cu cuvânt ❤️

Dacă sunteți familiarizați cu studiul Bibliei ,nu e suficient să fi citit doar Biblia deși e posibil să vă ajute puțin (eu nici pe ea n-am citit-o)cred că publicul pt acest titlu e unul mai special nu-i o carte ușoară iar stilul de scriere e academic așa că ori cu DEX-ul pe genunchi ori cu facultatea de teologie cel puțin la activ.

Am reținut câteva idei totuși însă repetiția argumentelor m-a plictisit teribil încă astept o carte despre Biblie vs credință care să-mi lumineze nelămuririle🤪

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The "Bible", depending on how we might define it, has been around for 2500 years, give or take the odd century. How a "history" of the Bible is written in a single volume will depend very much upon who is writing it and what their area of expertise is. A historian, a cultural commentator and a theologian will inevitably emphasise different aspects of the book's history. Inevitably much will be left out.

John Barton is a noted and distinguished Old Testament Scholar and it therefore comes as no surprise that a third of the book focuses on the specific writing of the Scriptures and how the canon was developed. Post-Reformation developments, by contrast, are whipped through and there really is very little about how the Bible has been received and used through the centuries. If there was this would be a multi-volume work.

John Barton is also a priest (although he has never been in parish ministry) and was president of Modern Church "An international society promoting liberal Christian theology." There is a perspective that this book is coming from which no more invalidates it than any other informed view, but colours it nonetheless.

For anyone approaching the Bible with a Koran-like view that the words were dictated from on high into a complete and polished book, Barton's critique will contain numerous and salutary (shocking?) corrections. Moses certainly didn't write the Pentateuch and quite possibly never existed (or at least there is no extra-Biblical evidence to say that he did). The Old Testament writings were written and gathered together over a very long period of time, only reaching anything like their final form in the years following the Exile. Possibly they were only written at that late a time. Daniel and Esther were certainly written much later. The New Testament contains much pseudepigrapha (or forgeries as Barton, quoting Ehrman, frequently calls them). Jesus spoke in Aramaic so the words recorded in the gospels are at best translations, if not later fabrications. Some of the books barely got in the canon whilst others perhaps should have been admitted but were left out (although Barton has no truck with fashionable attempts to admit the gospels of Thomas and Judas into respectability).

Much of what Barton writes is well established Biblical criticism and is taught in most seminaries (and I enjoyed his quote of Harnack's that he had bleached his students white with criticism but in ministry they became discoloured) but it comes very much from one side of the argument. Liberal, and indeed atheist, writers are quoted frequently; conservatives less so, if at all. He ruefully notes that those engaging in the modern Historical Jesus Quest are all Christians (and therefore, the implication is, too skewed in their views to be objective). Bart Ehrman is referred to in the text more, I think, than any other contemporary writer but his atheism presumably frees him from any charge of bias.

I have two main concerns with Barton's approach. The first is his lack of reference to Biblical scholars on the other side of the debate. A glance in the bibliography refers to one major work each by Bauckham, Wright and Dunn and none whatsoever by that most prolific of Old Testament scholars, Brueggemann. Reading this book you could be forgiven for missing that N.T. Wright's multi-volume Christian Origins and the Question of God, Dunn's three volume Christianity in the Making or Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses had been published over the past twenty years. Does this matter? Well yes it does when a supposedly even-handed treatment of the origins of the New Testament ignores a huge corpus of scholarly work that takes a more conservative approach to dating and reliability that Barton's own position. Craig Keener's vast commentary on Acts is also omitted which is a pity given that it adopts a more traditional view that Luke and Acts were written by the same author, and probably before the end of the First Century. This is not to say that these writers are correct and that Barton is way off beam with his dating, but it does tilt the argument of the book in one clear direction. Similarly with the Psalms, Barton argues that there is little or no order to the psalter, declaring it to be similar to a poetry anthology (which assumes that poetry anthologies have no order). But by doing so he ignores Brueggemann's work on the Psalms which does see an order of orientation-disorientation-reorientation, which I find quite convincing.

My second concern is the way that Barton sets up opposing positions and forces us to choose, when alternatives may be available. For instance we are asked either to accept that the epistle of James and the epistles of Paul are contradictory in their view of faith and works, or that Paul and James "really mean" what the other is saying. The latter view is presented as untenable and so we are shepherded into the contradiction. And yet a third view is that both James and Paul are talking about very different things: James is talking about works of kindness and mercy, without which faith is dead whilst Paul is talking about the boundary works of the law - circumcision, sabbath-keeping, food laws (covenantal nomism) which he believes have been rendered obsolete by the coming of the Spirit. This third view seems to me the more obvious one, and is supported by the New Perspective on Paul, so why is not given as an option? Similarly with the gospel birth narratives we are asked to choose between the gospel writers being faithful eyewitnesses who believed that they were recording accurate history, or simple story tellers fabricating something they knew to be untrue. The option that they did believe what they were writing, based on other sources (which may, or may not, be reliable) is not presented to us. All this makes it a frustrating read, and it troubles me that having been written by a Christian priest, this book may be seen as the "official" view of educated Christians, when it is only one view.

Those arguments aside the book is an impressive read and clearly contains within it a lifetime of scholarship. I would have liked to have seen something of how Barton's own faith reconciles itself with a book that he clearly sees as unInspired (if not uninspiring) with little to say to modern questions of faith and ethics.

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Missed Opportunity

I had high hopes for this book. Barton is an authority on scripture and its interpretation. I had looked forward to him detailing the history of the Bible. This history, I believed, would be about its formation, its preservation in the face of persecution, its transmission from a corner of the middle east to the entire globe from one language to many. Barton did not take the reader on this journey; in fact, it is unclear on which journey the reader was taken. On page 476, he notes that "my main purpose has been to explain how the Bible came into existence and how it has been understood through the ages, and how we might think about its elements today". It appears that he wrote, not the history of the Bible, but the History of the Interpretation of the Bible. These are two very different subjects.

The history that Barton outlines seems to focus primarily on things we do not know. For example, why Biblical scholars believe the book of Mark was the first of the gospels, and that Luke and Matthew may have used Mark (and/or a hypothetical alternative source named ‘Q’) to form their own accounts. Although interesting, much of this is speculation and may never be known.

A far more compelling read would be one which outlined what is known about the Bible’s history: the council of Nicaea, the council of Trent, the council of Chalcedon, the Christianisation of the West through the conversion of Constantine (this occupies a mere paragraph in the entire book), the Christianisation of the world through European empires and missionaries, its translation. This is the Bible that has shaped the world. Barton should have traced the Bible’s journey as a book rather than how people interpret it. Instead, he focuses on the minutiae and nuances of the interpretations of ancient scholars and interpretive schools through time.

He is an eloquent speaker and writer but does not use these attributes to create a clearer understanding in the reader. His writing style is very ‘university’. When Barton does mention the above councils and history of the Bible as a book, it is written as assumed knowledge. He presumes you are intimately acquainted with the council of Trent or Nicaea. It may be argued that this encourages the reader to want to learn more. This would be true if Barton wrote with a reader in mind. Rather than draw the reader in by telling them a story, setting the scene, and providing context of an individual or council decision, Barton simply provides their date of birth-death or date of event. References are made to scholars without sufficient context; it is therefore unclear whether I should care or respect their conclusions. Diagrams can be a fantastic way of communicating information and can penetrate the mind more deeply than words alone. Yet there were very few graphs, maps or timelines used. This can certainly be alienating for a wider audience.
One small pet peeve was Barton glossing over the chaptering and versing of the Bible. There is no adequate explanation of why this might have been done (pp.362-363). He does not elaborate beyond who. This would have been an interesting opportunity to outline what logic there was behind the numbering of verses, how this effects the reader (e.g. the tendency to extract individual verses away from their context).

Unfortunately, this book can feel like an essay where the student misunderstands the question and answers what they believe the question to be. The History of the Bible discusses:
- Contents
- Formation
- Interpretation
- Translation

It should have outlined:
- Formation (how the books came to be in the Bible, not how they may have been written)
- Preservation (in the face of persecution)
- Transmission (how the Bible spread to the world)
- Conclusion (perhaps hypothesising the future of the Bible as a book)

If anyone knows of a book that discusses the subjects I wish this book had discussed, please let me know.

[Noelle]

I have NOT read the book, but I have read a review of it, and assuming that the reviewer has accurately represented the book’s arguments in their review, I believe that the points of refutation I am offering will be relevant as a response to Barton’s claims (and/or the reviewer’s arguments).

Firstly, the Bible is not, as claimed, “a set of instructions on Jewish and Christian practice”, which seems to be a strawman argument put up by the author for the convenience of tearing it down. Anyone with a decent amount of Bible knowledge would know that the Bible is not just a list of dos and don'ts - whoever holds this view does not know the Bible very well. The Bible covers multiple genres, including 1) History / Narratives, 2) Instruction / Commands, 3) Christian teachings (eg. the nature of Christ, the Holy Spirit, judgement and salvation etc), 4) Prophecy, 5) Wisdom Literature and 6) Apocalyptic Literature. Many times, these genres overlap, in the same chapter/verse or in succession. So, does the Bible contain instructions on Christian practice? Does it have commands and laws? Absolutely. But is that all there is to it ie. as the author seems to imply, can the Bible be simply reduced to this one exclusive genre? Obviously not. The author also makes the inaccurate and uninformed claim that “most of it is narrative”. I don’t have the space to break down all the books in the Bible by theme (available upon request), but if we do the simple Math we see that 17 out of 39 books (43.6%) in the OT and only 5 out of 27 books (18.5%) in the NT are Historical / Narrative. Is it then fair to say that “most of it is narrative”?

In literature and fables, we have no problems identifying the “moral of the story” or our takeaways from it (many examples can be found on this very platform, for instance?) and even take the extra step of applying it to our lives. But suddenly, when it comes to the Bible, “it is hard to extract concrete prescriptions from narrative text”. Hang on, is this a problem with the Bible or the reader’s ability and/or willingness to interpret the text? Could it be an issue of spiritual blindness (2 Corinthians 4:4)? In 1 Corinthians 10:1-11, Paul describes historical narratives that happened and were recorded in the Torah and then goes on to say that “now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition”. The implication is that we should be able to learn things and draw lessons from historical narratives in the Bible!

Next, is it true that “early Christians viewed only the former as important, and would quote the sayings of Jesus in the NT but not the text of the NT itself”? An early church father, Irenaeus, in the year 180 refuted those who claim there are more than 4 gospels, while another church father, Origen, in the year 228, called the gospels “these four”, showing that early Christians viewed the gospels as a whole and not in their constituent parts. More on this later. Meanwhile, I will digress a little to Progressive Christianity, which I believe that Barton is an adherent of. The first characteristic of PC is a lowered view of the Scripture, which is not viewed as God-inspired, inerrant and authoritative. This contradicts 2 Timothy 3:16-17, and if God really means what He says since He cannot lie (Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2 and Hebrews 6:18), it is a fallacy to divide the gospels into “the sayings of Jesus” and “other narratives”.

Another characteristic is pitting the Bible against itself, by saying that “the sayings of Jesus” are more important than other portions, or pointing out supposed contradictions within the text. Firstly, a minor correction in the statement “the book of James in the OT” - James is in the NT. That aside, I would like to point out that now we have a satisfactory, logical, deeply exegetical and consistent understanding of the Bible. Two points:

1) Having difficulty reconciling “contradictory” portions of Scripture does not make the Scripture inconsistent. There is the possibility (which the author seems to have overlooked) that the reader may be missing some crucial facts or have a misunderstanding of existing known facts. To quote theologian Wayne Grudem, in every one of those ‘problem texts’, “upon close inspection of the text a plausible solution has become evident” and “all of them have reasonable solutions that are readily available in the academic commentaries”. There are also ministries which have come up with reasonable and satisfactory explanations for these ‘problems’: https://defendinginerrancy.com/bible-.... Thus could it be that Barton (or the reviewer) has not made the requisite effort to truly understand what the Scripture is saying and how the contradictions could be reconciled? It’s certainly a lot easier to dismiss supposed contradictions as contradictions.

2) Having different viewpoints with other people on the same portion of Scripture does not mean that the Scripture is therefore errant. As students of Literature, we know that the author’s intention can easily be misinterpreted. Likewise, the intention of the Bible’s author is also subject to misinterpretation. So what is the correct interpretation? While interpretations are subjective, truth is objective. The correct interpretation is the one closest to the truth, which can be evaluated by evidence - contextual evidence in the rest of the text.

Therefore everything must be understood in context. Subordination does not necessitate inferiority or inequality, for instance. As a general Bible interpretation principle, “obscure” texts should be interpreted with our understanding of clear texts. There are texts that are explicit about the Goodhood of Christ the Son eg. John 1. Marring clear texts with obscure ones is poor hermeneutic (in fact, if done with intent, could even be malicious).

As for the supposed incongruity of the gospels about the number of trips Jesus made to Jerusalem - could this be a non-problem? Could it be that the mentions of the other trips were simply excluded from the other gospels? Note that his trips to Jerusalem were specified for their purpose eg. to celebrate one of the Jewish annual holy days. May I also point out that accusations of the inconsistency of the gospels are not new - they have been present since the 2nd century. Yet, Clement of Alexandria, an early church father, asserted that “although the expressions may vary slightly in each Gospel, they all show identical agreement in meaning”, showing that the early church did seriously consider and reconcile the differences between the gospels (I will expound more on this below)

The argument about the doctrine of the trinity receiving “only two mentions in the entire NT” is also a poor one. It is fallacious to look just for the specific word “trinity” or just exclusive instance where the trinity is mentioned and conclude based on that whether the trinity is a Biblical doctrine or not. There are many other references that affirm the eternal Godhood of Christ the Son, the Holy Spirit and the oneness of God, which may not be neatly packaged as a “trinity” doctrine. This requires the hard work of meticulously reading and studying the Scriptures and piecing them together. A resource dealing with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0cLK....

Another troubling claim is that non-scipturality is “not an indictment of Christianity”. The view that Barton is trying to propagate is highly problematic because it suggests that God is a liar when He says that His Word is true (Revelation 21:5 and 22:6) and truth (John 17:17). How could this reasonably be a non-indictment of Christianity? Another minor factual error: “at the time of the writing of the NT c. 2nd century AD” - the NT was written and completed in the 1st century. And in response to the claim that “non-scripturality was seen as a strength”, 2 Peter 3:16-18 denounces this in strong terms: “the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction” and it being “the error of lawless people”. It also points to studying, understanding and obeying the Scriptures as the way to “grow in the grace and knowledge” of Jesus. In Romans 16:17 Paul references “divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned”. It is reasonable to conclude that based on the very same principles of Christianity that Barton purports to adhere to, deviating from canonical doctrine ie. what is written in Scripture, is undesirable and thus non-scripturality is NOT a strength.

The argument that early Christians supposedly had the belief that “Jesus’s sayings” were more important than “other writings” is also flawed. This is evident in Origen’s rejection of “the gospel according to the Hebrews”, an early work purporting to contain sayings of Jesus not recorded in the four Gospels. Adding on the 2 quotes above that assert how there are ONLY 4 gospels, we see that the early church fathers were critical thinkers who did not believe that Jesus’s sayings were more important than the writings of the OT - otherwise they would have been susceptible to apocryphal books such as the aforementioned one precisely because Jesus’s sayings were not captured in those books. In fact they were so confident of the consistency of the Scriptures that they could use it as a litmus test to determine whether “lost texts” should be part of the canon (FYI, none of them made it). Liberal claims to reject Scripture as inspired, inerrant, infallible, and authoritative are thus untenable and problematic.

“Christians tend to strongly allegorise the OT” - is this a fair representation of most Christians? It appears that the author of the book (or the reviewer?) is not above making sweeping statements. May I suggest a modified hypothesis: Christians who do not practice proper exegesis tend to strongly allegorise the OT. Using the very same example of the book of Psalms, there are commentaries that practise responsible Scripture reading and proper hermeneutics. Simply doing a quick search of commentaries on Psalms 137:8-9, in particular, will yield multiple commentaries that talk about the literal Babylon and its judgement (so I am actually quite curious about what kind of commentaries Barton is delving into that talk about Babylon = devil, its infants = seeds of sin, the rock = Jesus). Of course, bearing in mind that the Bible does use symbolism - so it's important to know when to read the text literally and/or allegorically.

I thus conclude my review of the book’s review - if anything is clear, it’s that Barton is not, as he purports, a “Christian”. The book, if I were to take the review as a faithful representation of it, contains fallacious logic and beliefs that are not Christian. Though of course this isn’t new - there have been attacks on the Word ever since the serpent in Eden said to Eve, “Did God really say that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other reviewers have noted that this book is not for Biblical fundamentalists, but it should also be noted that it's not for people who dismiss the Bible entirely, either. Barton, an Anglican priest and theologian, strives for a classically Anglican "via media" interpretation of the Bible, in which he concludes that the most plausible way to treat the Bible as a believer is to "accept [it] . . . as a crucial yet not infallible document of the Christian faith" (489). I frankly couldn't agree more, as the Bible seems to often become hijacked by people who either purport its inerrancy or those who dismiss religion altogether.

But don't get the idea from my review that this book is a 500-page promotion of Anglican scriptural exegesis—not at all. The most valuable aspect of Barton's book is his careful tracing of the history of the Bible. Other volumes that do so tend to focus only on the composition and production of the Bible over millennia; this one does so as well, but also provides a history of the ways the Bible has been read and interpreted. Barton gives a fair analysis of all hermeneutics, both Jewish and Christian, and readily acknowledges that the way societies and religions perceive the Bible is as much informed by their own context as the original writers were.

However, the most satisfying conclusions for me in the book were indeed the ones where he outlines the problems of relying on a fundamentalist interpretation of the text. This comes principally in the introduction and conclusion, both of which I'll be referring to frequently in the future. "[P]roblems arise when people insist that the Bible and the faith [they belong to] are simply coterminous," he writes (487), and adds significantly that any religion that sees its organization represented explicitly in the Bible is doing so from "forced interpretation" (486). The Bible is important for all religions that subscribe to it by providing "a control and check (485), "[f]reeing" it "from the control of religious authorities," while also upholding it as a standard of faith. Again, this is a typically Anglican approach, but one that seems to strike the right balance between infallibility and dismissal.

I come from a high-demand religious background that values scripture only as it is interpreted by current ecclesiastical authorities. Whatever past authorities have said becomes irrelevant as soon as a new pronouncement by a current authority is made. This has engendered an environment of confusion and mistrust, as today's dogma is tomorrow's heresy and vice-versa. While I'm no opponent of updating church practices to better accord with a changing world (within reason), this practice has allowed the church of my youth to become subject to the whims of whomever happens to be at the helm. In his conclusion, Barton is particularly adamant against this viewpoint, as it tends to base a religion on what the group "happen[s] to believe or do at the moment," removing "any criterion against which to measure their beliefs" (485). Thus seeing the Bible along with tradition and reason—an Anglican maxim which Barton nonchalantly throws out at one point (487)—helps prevent the Bible in some degree from being pirated in favor of a "totalitarian delusion" (488).

This book took me almost exactly two years to read (shy by a single day if I account for Leap Year 2020), so it's not something that most people can digest in a few days. I marked and highlighted this book more than any other book I ever have except the Bible itself (my tradition emphasizes marking scripture for deeper study), and I have come away with more insight about the history of the Bible than I have reading any other written on a similar subject. I highly recommend it for anyone who has both the interest in the subject as well as the patience for reading in the long-haul.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Barton entrega uma história da Bíblia que consegue ser simultaneamente rica em informação, balanceada nos juízos históricos, e surpreendentemente fácil e agradável de ler. Sua história cobre a Bíblia Hebraica/Antigo Testamento e o Novo Testamento, sempre atento a aspectos materiais, culturais e sociais relacionados à composição e ao agrupamento destes livros como Escritura e como cânon (tanto pro judaísmo quanto pro cristianismo).
Barton é em geral cauteloso em restringir suas conclusões ao que permite a evidência, e vai além de questões históricas, não temendo em adentrar nas possíveis implicações teológicas do que ele apresenta. Impressionante é sua discussão de métodos exegéticos judaicos e cristãos da antiguidade até a contemporaneidade, indo de Qumran e o Novo Testamento a Robert Alter e Paul Ricoeur, passando pela Idade Média. Como se poderia esperar, ele não diz tudo o que se tem a dizer, e é notável que não tenha ultrapassado as 500p. para cobrir tanto terreno e ainda assim palmilhar todas as principais questões pertinentes à história da Bíblia e sua relação com a fé cristã e judaica.
Definitivamente, a perspectiva teológica não é a que se poderia chamar de conservadora da perspectiva evangélica ou mesmo católica romana, mas também não é o que se chamaria liberal e muito menos ingênua em termos de pressupostos. É simplesmente complicada de mapear, mas repleta de nuance próprio para um livro tão rico e variado quanto a Bíblia.

[Nicolaus Braun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very werk and very slay. Title is apt, but it definitely focuses more on Christian readings (makes sense with Barton’s Anglican affiliation), although Jewish relationships to the Bible are by no means neglected.

This work allowed me to regain some respect for a book that I have fallen out of love with. It emphatically makes the point that the Bible is a richer text if read in its context and with an understanding that a human touch is immanent. It doesn’t reduce its authority or relevance, and in fact enhanced it for me.

Fascinating read

[Sherry Sharpnack · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Barton, an Oxford theologian and ordained Anglican priest, wrote this new, EXHAUSTIVE “History of the Bible.” I learned SO MUCH about the history of the authorship of various Biblical books and that most were not written by the authors traditionally credited, nor even in the time periods that are traditionally assigned.

HOW were the books in the Bible chosen for inclusion? Mostly—they weren’t. They just became accepted as scripture. OK then, why were some writings left out (eg the “Apocrypha”)? There was apparently far more discussions about inclusion/exclusion for the New Testament than the Old. Mostly, it came down to what books had been quoted by authors who referred to certain books in their own writings.

I enjoyed some chapters more than others: the Introduction and Conclusion, and the chapters on Reformation and the Enlightenment. I have always been attached to the beauty of the poetry and prose of the King James Version; I grew up w/ it (obviously as a Protestant, as that is THE Protestant Bible), and no other version reads the same for me, so the discussion of the origins of that version were highly interesting. Sometimes, I was simply in the weeds, b/c I simply couldn’t keep straight all the schools of thought re approaches to the Bible, eg Gnosticism, Marcionism, etc. I would knock off some fractions of a star for Prof. Barton being TOO exhaustive, so 4.7 stars, which rounds up to 5, b/c I admire his scholarship SO much.

If you have the time and the curiosity about what many consider the inspired Word of God and how it guides two major world religions, read “A History of the Bible.”

[Isa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book went above and beyond what I was expecting, not only covering issues pertaining to the New Testament but also covering the Old Testament, apocryphal works and the thoughts of scholars throughout the past 2 millennium.
If you only wanted one book on the bible from a critical viewpoint, it’s this book.

[John Funk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exhaustive look is epic in scope. The best thing about it was that it was interesting and fun , rather than informative but dull. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a broad understanding of the Bible.
John Barton knows his stuff. Looking forward to the Oxford commentary !!

[Ady ZYN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended!

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive overview of modern Bible scholarship, as well as a look at how Christians and Jews have engaged with the text throughout history. John Barton handles various potentially contentious issues with care and is careful to note when his own view may differ from what is a current majority view among biblical scholars. Manuscripts, questions of authorship, types of style & narrative and the history of translation are all discussed.

I do think a second edition is in order, as there were a few errors and some outdated info. One error I became aware of is his claim that Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, whereas as I understand it it was Theodosius who was responsible for that. As for outdated info, during the chapter on Bible translations Barton says there haven't been any English translations that have attempted to capture the individual authors voices in the various books in the Bible. At the time of writing that may have been true, however around the same time this book was published David Bentley Hart put out his New Testament translation which attempts to do just that. Though to my knowledge Barton is still correct on the Hebrew Bible still not having an English translation of that sort.

My complaints are few and in my view admittedly rather minor, and overall this is a fantastic and very informative book. Very readable and you will learn a lot, and perhaps you'll find new ways of looking at what is probably a familiar text. My rating would be four and a half stars, but as there are no half stars I'm comfortable rounding it up to a five.

[Christina Dongowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich habe eine sehr ordentliche evangelische Sozialisation und ziemlich gute religiöse Bildung, habe aber hier noch ein Menge gelernt. Aber genau dafür habe ich das auch gelesen: Wenn man ein bisschen in der Bibel herumliest, merkt man einfach, dass das niemals als einheitliches Buch gedacht war. Dazu kommen die zahllosen Geschichten und Aussagen, die sich oder den Dingen widersprechen, die man so als Inhalte des christlichen Glaubens so kennt. Wenn man solche oder ähnliche Fragen in Bezug auf die Bibel hat, dann ist das ein wirklich gutes Buch, um sich einen Überblick über den Stand der Forschung zu verschaffen und über die Fragen, die da gestellt werden. Besonders positiv hervorheben will ich, dass die Geschichte der jüdischen Bibel immer mit betrachtet wird, zumindest bis zur Aufklärung, konkret bis zu Spinozas Tractatus theologico-politicus. (Das sind ca. 2/3 des Buches). Danach, finde ich, lässt es deutlich nach, was auch damit zu tun hat, dass es dann eigentlich nicht mehr um Kanonisierungsprozesse und biblische Philologie geht (wo Barton super ist und gerade auch für Lai*en gut erklärt, was da abläuft), sondern darum, was mit der Bibel passiert, wenn Hochstilisierung zum Heiligen Text, Massenverbreitung und historisch-kritische De-Mythologisierung aufeinandertreffen. Da zieht sich Barton dann auf eine, wie ich finde, sehr unkritische liberale Tradition und Haltung zurück, wo er doch vorher so detailliert gezeigt und argumentiert hat, dass erst der intensive Gebrauch das Heilige Buch macht und dass es sich mit dem Gebrauch immer wieder ändert. Aber davon sollte man sich nicht abhalten lassen, das Buch zu lesen: Ich denke, man bekommt so eine kondensierten Überblick über 3.000 Jahre Geschichte der Bibel, der wissenschaftlich seriös und sehr gut lesbar ist, nirgends sonst.

[Lauren Hiebner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a massive undertaking by Barton. He talks about the Bible’s remote beginnings in folklore and myths, about how it was received and interpreted through modern times. He points out that the Bible does not directly transition into faith and practice for either Jews and Christians. So his history is the story of the interplay between religion and the Bible. Barton does say that fundamentalists who idolize the Bible largely misunderstand it. Barton analyzes nearly every book in the Bible giving it’s origin, it’s religious meaning, it’s historical context, it’s literary styles, and how the various books have changed through time. Barton compares the development and organization of the Hebrew Old Testament with the Christian version. He further, explains how the New Testament started as stories about Jesus and his times and became Holy Scripture. The book compares how Christians and Jews read, interpreted, and used the Bible with different purposes. Christians stress the role of Christ as an avenue to salvation while Jews see the Bible as a faith journey of obedience. Barton looks at how history treated the Bible from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment with Reformers introducing a new idea of interpreting the Bible and criticizing the Church’s teachings. Thus a gap emerged between the Bible and the Church. The last part of Barton’s book covers translations of the Bible where Barton points out that not only were translations done but words and phrases were changed to fit the theology of those doing the translating. A good read.

[Dinesh Krithivasan]

Picked this up because it was shortlisted for the Wolfson prize and boy, was I in for a tough time. I don't see how this is anything close to popular history for the lay reader unless the average (western) audience knows far more about the Bible than I had hitherto imagined. The title claims that it is a book about the history of the Book and that is exactly what the book is - it is a condensation of what I would imagine a graduate in Bible studies would be concerned with. Even seminal characters in Church history (St. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, even Martin Luther) are dealt with in only whatever specific capacity they interacted with the Bible. There is no discussion of the larger picture of the evolution of Christendom over the millennia (which the reader is anyway assumed to be familiar with). Instead, there are lengthy discussions on niche topics such as why early Christians preferred to use codices instead of scrolls to set themselves apart from the Jews.

This was a major slog to finish but I will desist from rating it since my expectations going in were quite incorrect.

[Alisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating. Will 100% be reading this again and I may need to buy a hard copy.

This is a thorough history of how the Bible came to exist in its current form. It explains the history of the existence of each book of the Bible (far more interesting than you might suppose). It also gets into big picture differences between Jewish and Christian interpretations and some of the finer details about how seemingly opposite sectarian interpretations of the same text can exist. The final part of the book is devoted to the history of the various translations of the Bible, and theories/concerns that translators need to take into account. The most interesting thing for me was learning about the differences between what the Bible literally says (like, what is actually present in the text) and what Christian/Jewish doctrine teaches. There are some...gaps.

It is written by an Anglican scholar, but it is not necessarily written for Bible believers. It is for anyone who has a curiosity about the Bible’s place in history and culture.

[Andrew Pratley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have long wanted to read a book on the History of the Bible. I'm glad I waited, until now, since John Barton's excellent book was only published earlier this year. I possess a simple almost childlike faith. For that reason I have not sought to read many religious books or even works like this which are for those who do or do not possess a faith & are simply interested in the history of arguably the world's most influential book.

This History of the Bible is full of fascinating facts & insights & I have come away after having finished reading it a much more informed person on the subject. I have also become more confident about my faith & want to now explore the subject more. I am therefore going to spend some time studying St Thomas Aquinas who by all accounts in this book as well as elsewhere is just the person to spend some time with if you get my meaning.

[David Orvek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book that I need to think a lot more about. Definitely a cultural shock for someone like myself raised in a very conservative Christian denomination. I'm glad to have read it and I think there's information here that Christians ought to wrestle with, but it's certainly not a comfy read. I'll need to read more on this topic from different perspectives before I can decide what I think about all this.

Since I'm not a biblical scholar I don't have a strong sense for how representative his summary of the field of biblical scholarship really is. He certainly makes claims about consensus in the field on certain matters, but I would venture to guess that there would be many who would disagree with his claims. This history also has a clear agenda from the beginning. And that's fine. He certainly doesn't hide it. And that agenda is to show that the Bible and Christian (and Jewish) beliefs do not overlap completely. That is, there are things in the Bible that most Christians don't believe and there are things that Christians believe that aren't clearly stated in the Bible. He settles on what he says is an Anglican belief that the Bible contains everything necessary for salvation, but not that everything in the Bible is necessary, nor that one can only believe things clearly stated in the Bible. I think I basically agree with this. But I often felt throughout the book that he was overstating the sense of mismatch between the Bible and Christian belief. I often had the impression throughout the book that he thought Christian belief and the Bible were totally separate. But I don't think that's really what he was arguing for. On that point, he often used the doctrine of the Trinity and ideas about denominational organization as examples of ways that the Bible and Christian belief don't overlap. And while that may be true, he seemed to then extrapolate from there and just say generally that "the Bible and Christian belief are separate" or something to that effect. That just seems a bit of an extreme statement if those are your main examples. Maybe it's just a phrasing thing. And perhaps part of the reason for this is that this book doesn't assume the reader believes in God.

So while I think sometimes he presents a particular perspective as essentially a fact—or at least a scholarly consensus—that may or may not actually be so, I do think there's a ton of really important information here that anyone interested in the Bible for whatever reason ought to know about.

[Shem Doupé · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Wow wow wow. The history is so insanely complicated and long. So much longer and more complicated than I could have imagined which makes sense but dang!

Should you read this? Depends. Do you believe that every word of the bible as you've read it today is the perfect literal truth? Then no. Unless you're open to that not being true. Otherwise this book is probably going to just ruin your day.

If you're interested in the insane, complicated history of the Bible then this is the perfect book to dive into that. I personally would recommend it for everybody.

[Cameron Burkholder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I'd recommend to anyone curious about the Bible from an academic perspective. It touches on nearly all aspects of biblical scholarship, tracing their development throughout history - and it does so in a balanced fashion that feels neither polemical nor apologetic.