Non­fic­tion

How the Bible Became Holy

  • From the Publisher
May 22, 2014

Who read the Bible in antiq­ui­ty, and what kind of author­i­ty did they give it? This sweep­ing nar­ra­tive traces how, from tenth cen­tu­ry B.C.E. Israel to the time of the ear­ly rab­bis in the third cen­tu­ry C.E., the texts that would become bib­li­cal (and those that would­n’t) grad­u­al­ly and halt­ing­ly gained author­i­ty. Told as a chrono­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive, How the Bible Became Holy argues that dif­fer­ent groups of Jews and Chris­tians gave these texts very dif­fer­ent kinds of author­i­ty, and cre­at­ed a ten­sion between the author­i­ty of text and of lived tra­di­tion that remains impor­tant to Jews and Chris­tians today.

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