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A review by archytas
A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths by John Barton
3.0
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:
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.
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.