The Bible

 

The Bible – Karen Armstrong

First, I have to confess that this book was not what I thought it was going to be, so I was somewhat disappointed.  My experience, though, really shouldn’t taint the quality of the book nor the reading experience necessarily.  I was hoping that this book would be a deep dive into the Bible.  How did it get written? How was it compiled?  How was it decided what should and should not be included?  What were the inner workings and debates of the Council of Nicea in the 4^th century?  How did Martin Luther decide which books to remove after he changed it?

I really didn’t find answers to most of these questions.  If they were answered, they were done so in not as much detail as I would have liked.  What this book seems to be, is a history of the Judaism-Christian faith from its earliest days up to the present.  That in itself is not without rewards. After all, the Bible IS the cornerstone in which all the Judeo-Christian faith is based. But I was wanting more specifics on the Bible and less of the history of the faiths.

Part of my discouragement is that I recently completed another work by Karen Armstrong, “A History of God” and at many times, I felt like I was reading that book all over again.  That particular book also focused on Islam along with Judaism and Christianity, so “The Bible” at least is somewhat shorter and more concise since Islam is rarely mentioned here.  Still, though, I can’t help but feel like I was reading the same things over again with this one.

She does introduce some controversial subjects that many mainstream Christians probably don’t agree.  She claims, for example, that the Pentateuch was not entirely written by Moses and was, in fact, written by (at least) 3 authors who scholars refer to as “J”, “E”, and “P”.  This is an interesting (and not new) assertion.  She does go into some detail as to why many scholars believe this, and she makes good points.  Yet I found myself wanting more.  I really felt like to do this book justice, she needed to spend more time on her topics.  She’s written masses of books, though, on similar subjects, so she may have this ground covered in some of her other works.

Some good things within the pages, I just wanted more focus on the ins and outs of how the actual “Bible” was brought to light as opposed to a history of the nations and people that hold it in high regard.