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The Bible is the most successful book ever written. For
well over 1,000 years it has been the most widely circulated
of all written works, and it has affected the culture, language
and art of more people than any other book has done. In turn,
every age has adapted and used the Bible for its own purposes,
influencing its shape, appearance and language. This is a
narrative of the Bible as an artefact - an account of how it has
changed, evolved and survived during its extraordinary
journey through history.
The story begins in the age of illuminated manuscripts.
It starts with Saint Jerome, whose Latin translation - the
Vulgate - first gave the Bible the definitive form it has
retained ever since. Chapter 2 follows the separate history
of the Bible in its original languages of Hebrew and Greek.
Then the narrative returns to document the gradual
triumph of the Latin Vulgate through the Dark Ages of
Western Europe, and continues with the magnificent giant
Bibles of the early Middle Ages, the Bible with its monastic
commentaries (which tell us how it was used), and the
crucial turning point of the thirteenth century when the
Bible assumed its modern form. The account of the Middle
Ages ends with magnificent picture Bibles, some of them
the most beautiful books ever made, and the famous and
dangerous English Wycliffite Bibles, whose owners could be
burnt at the stake.
The invention of printing changed the history of books. A
whole chapter is devoted to Gutenberg and the first printed
book - the celebrated 42-line Bible. The story then leads on
to the Reformation, Martin Luther's German Bible, the
Protestant-led wave of translations of the Bible into other
European languages, the development of a Bible publishing
industry, and the extraordinary efforts of missionary
societies to translate the Bible into every known language
in the World. The last chapter is set in modern times. It
chronicles the discoveries - including the Dead Sea Scrolls
and papyrus fragments found in the Egyptian desert - that
take the story right back to the beginning and bring us close
to the origins of both Old and New Testaments.
Christopher de Hamel writes with the storytelling gift
of the good historian. He is also a scrupulous scholar.
Without being either evangelical or polemical, his precise,
lucid and highly informative narrative is solidly based on
documentary evidence. Original and authoritative, The
Book. A History of the Bible presents a clear-sighted,
thought-provoking and utterly gripping account of the
world's most remarkable book.
