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The Bible

A Biography: Books That Changed the World

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The Bible

By: Karen Armstrong
Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
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About this listen

 As the work at the heart of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world's most widely distributed book, having been translated into over 2,000 languages, as well as the world's best-selling book, year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history. Made up of 66 "books" written by various authors and divided into two testaments, its contents have changed over the centuries. The Bible has been transformed by translation and, through interpretation, has developed manifold meanings to various religions, denominations, and sects.

In this seminal account, acclaimed historian Karen Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, and life of history's most powerful book. Armstrong analyzes the social and political situation in which oral history turned into written scripture, how this all-pervasive scripture was collected into one work, and how it became accepted as Christianity's sacred text. She explores how scripture came to be read for information and how, in the 19th century, historical criticism of the Bible caused greater fear than Darwinism.

The Bible: A Biography is a brilliant, captivating book, crucial in an age of declining faith and rising fundamentalism.

Listen to more Books That Changed the World.©2007 Karen Armstrong (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc. Bible Study Bibles & Bible Study Christianity Middle East Middle Ages

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Critic reviews

"Who better [than Armstrong] to recount the history of the Bible?...Intriguing." ( Publishers Weekly)
"Groundbreaking....Armstrong shows a depth of insight and transparent understanding of complex theological issues....[She is] simply one of the best writers ever on religion." ( Library Journal)
All stars
Most relevant  
Extremely fascinating biography of the bible with so much interesting facts and events, told very well by the narrator.

Fantastic

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The book does is not a history of the Bible more of how the interpretation has developed .



The message preached is one of tolerance in an age of rising secularism and fundamentalism . Armstrong's words will resonate with those with an open mind . The narration is however very stilted .

Best Biblical Historian

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Very disappointed by this. It sounds like one of those automated news summaries generated by a voice synthesiser. The narrator is just rushing through the text with no interest or understanding of it.

Sounds like it’s narrated by a computer.

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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would certainly recommend it to a friend who was interested in Biblical studies, or who just enjoys reading the Bible.

Any additional comments?

I learned so much from this book about how the Bible was made. It shows it as clearly a man-made work, written over several hundred years, written many years - often hundreds of years - after the events they narrate, and containing a lot that is simply invention. A great eye-opener.

Clear and no-nonsense history.

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I don't often write reviews but had to for this one. Fantastic perspective on the origins of biblical scripture and interesting suggestions on how it may be approached. I love Karen!

Karen Armstrong is the best at what she does.

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I found the content of this book interesting, particularly discovering that over-literal interpretations of the Bible (inc' the creation stories) are a relatively recent development.

However, my enjoyment of the book was significantly spoilt by the appallingly robotic narration and strange, sometimes misleading, voice inflections. This made listening hard work. Consequently I've dropped at least one star from the rating I would otherwise have given.

Was the narration computer-synthesised from samples of Josephine Bailey's voice rather than the book being read normally? If so, I hope this isn't a general trend for Audible. (That said, I guess if it means we get access to certain books that would otherwise be unfeasible produce in audio form there's some benefit, but it's put me off a somewhat.)

Interesting book, spoiled by robotic narration

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I found this enlightening, although as with some other "dense" factual books it can be hard to keep up with new terms and ideas. She has an agenda, which is to recommend a less literal reading of the Bible, which makes sense as she explains the background.

Whether you agree or disagree, you'll find it thought provoking and informative.

I struggled with the narrator at first (I thought she sounded like Alexa) but warmed to her as the book went on.

Whistle stop tour with a message

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A better title for this book might have been \"Reading the Bible: A History\". Karen Armstrong spends comparatively little time discussing the Holy Book itself. And, to be fair, nobody will have any difficulty finding other books that do that. The real subject of Armstrong's is hermeneutics, the methods by which people have interpreted the Bible through the millennia. This book is a call for tolerance and open-mindedness in interpreting the Bible. Fundamentalism and Bible literalism, it explains, are very recent phenomena, ironically tied to the rise of science and rationalism. Previous generations have had no problem reading Scripture allegorically where they found the surface meaning to be incoherent or morally objectionable. I was surprised to learn that Augustine, so often portrayed as austere and fanatical, proclaimed that no Bible interpretation could be true if it violated the principle of charity or caused division between Christians.

A possible objection to Armstrong's approach is that it makes the Bible nothing but a cipher. If we are to interpret it according to some prior ethical system, why should we bother with Scripture at all? Is it simply a mirror for the philosophy of each era, a prism for our own personalities? But this need not be the case. Throughout the book, Armstrong shows how both Jews and Christians have often viewed the Bible (to use a modern term) as an \"interactive\" text. They have used it, not as a blueprint for living, but a living thing itself. Medieval monks were told to study the text until they felt an inward revelation, a mystical response. The rabbis who wrote the Mishnah (a commentary on the Old Testament or Torah) believed that the Bible's capacity to generate new meanings was infinite. Perhaps a less dogmatic to the Bible shows, not that we do not take it seriously, but that we take it very seriously indeed; that we have faith in its ever-fresh wisdom. This is a book well worth reading.

Are the Ten Commandments Written in Stone?

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I really wanted to like this having a great interest in the Bible and how the book came to be. however this really doesn't cover that in any great detail. it is more about complex processes of exegesis and leaps several hundred years at a time. the approval of different books of the bible and how it came to decide which to accept and reject is glossed over and a lot of time is spent on different sects and how they used the texts rather than what those texts actually are and who put them together in the first place.
the biggest problem however is the narrator. at no time is there a sense she is telling a story in which she is invested. it's as though she recorded it one sentence at a time with no sense of trying to convey an argument. sadly disappointed.

not an easy listen

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The book itself is ok but I give up, the narrator is absolutely awful: totally like a computer generated voice

Robotic narrator ruins the experience

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