A review by iteechesinglish
A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths by John Barton

informative medium-paced

5.0

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. 🤯