In this revelatory exploration of one of our most revered icons,
a critically acclaimed author and professor takes us back to early
Christianity to ask how a box of handwritten scrolls became the
Bible, and forward to see how the multibillion-dollar business that
has brought us Biblezines and Manga Bibles is selling down the
Bible's sacred capital. Showing us how a single official text was
created from the proliferation of different scripts, Beal traces
its path as it became embraced as the word of God and Book of
books. Among his surprising insights:
* Christianity thrived for centuries without any Bible--there was
no official canon of scriptures, much less a book big enough to
hold them all. Congregations used various collections of scrolls
and codices.
* There is no "original" Bible, no single source text behind the
thousands of different Bibles on the market today. The farther we
go back in the Bible's history, the more versions we find.
* The idea of the Bible as the literal Word of God is relatively
new--only about a century old.
Beal's is an inspiring new take on the Bible. In calling for a
fresh understanding of the ways scriptures were used in the past,
he offers the chance to rediscover a Bible, and a faith, that is
truer to its own history--not a book of answers but a library of
questions.
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