The Book. a History of the Bible

by Christopher de Hamel

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0714837741
• ISBN13: 9780714837741
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 3.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 8.8" x 10.0"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

What a wonderful book at a wonderful price !

The other reviewers have done well their job and, acknowledging thet, I don't have to repeat what has already been better said. Don't be fooled by its all-picture mass consumer appearance. Of course, there are a lot of wonderful high-quality color images of "every" conceivable Bible, whether manuscript or printed, and so it may be something of a "presentation" book. But it is, above all, a truly scholarly -yet acessible- work. First and foremost, one could say that the most important part of the book is its printed text! De Hamel is a world leading authority on medieval manuscripts (especially illuminated ones) and, though this book's subject widely outspans his area of specialized knowledge, he does a magnificent job of synthesizing the best sources and research materials in other fields (also recurring to the large web of friends and colleagues of his). All this to tell a most compelling and accurate story of the capital Book that Mankind (and Deity) have ever produced. Of course, it's not a devotional reading, nor a theological treatise, nor a survey or comment on the Book of books. It's a passionate history of the Bible as a book, as an artifact passed down through succeeding generations and centuries. It tells us, at length, of the cultural, economic and political factors that marked the spread and influence of the Bible (and the other way round, too). It tells us, at length, about the battles (bloody or otherwise)... the almost untold story of stupid and utterly blasphemous battles we all fought (and lost!) around (of all things!) this God-given Book of love and forgivemess. Mankind is made of sinners ("the crooked timber of Humanity" as Isaiah Berlin put it, in an updating of Jeremiah's psychanalytic avant-la-lettre sentence "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jer 17,9 KJV (see also REB and NAB to make my point clearer)). Please get this book. Please get, at all means, the HARDCOVER edition (it pays the price). And, if you are intent on a first-hand, much more scholarly account of this subject ("The Bible as Book"), then don't miss the four volumes with this very title at Oak Knoll (or the British Library). If your interests look more like a good, full history of the "Bible in English language", then (setting aside the excellent and elementary books by METZGER, BRUCE and others), perhaps you can do no worse than get the large volume by DANIELL, avowedly passionate and more combative than compassionate -anti-Popish if you would tell it so-, "The Bible in English". David Daniell is a top-notch bona fide scholar -I can bear witness to that, as well as does his work on Tyndale's Bible-, although some Americans regard him, perhaps a little rightly so, as a provincial and rather self-conceited British Oxbridge don.

The Book: A History of the Bible

The Book : A History of the Bible This is a fabulous book! Beautifully written, illustrated, and packed with countless details to make it a surprisingly exciting read. This is best Bible history I have seen.

Answered My Questions, Where Our Bible Came From

This is a beautiful book to look at,but what I really loved,was how it answered my question "how did we get our Bible"? It has strengthened my faith even more to learn that manuscripts,cunniforms,and even the wrapping on an Egyptian mummy,some items dating from as early as the 2nd century BC coincide(have stories with only slight differences) with the Bible as we know it today! It is so awesome,that this is true,despite the age or location where the artifacts were found. The author also lists where these artifacts now reside,which museums,libraries,the Vatican,private holdings,ect.Wonderful work.

Why the Bible?

The Bible is the most important book ever published. On the same note, it is also the most controversial, the most revered, and the most hated book ever published. The author does not take a position either way, but presents the Bible as the most central book to influence the history of Western Civilization, or civilization as a whole, for that matter. Important point that the author makes: if you go up to anybody, be it a total stranger, your mother, your best friend, anyone, and strike up a conversation about the Bible...just watch them. Their whole demeanor will change. That is the power that this-the most important of all books that man possesses-has over mankind. "The Book" includes dozens of beautifully rendered photographs of Bibles that have been produced over the past 1500+ years.

A new perspective on an old book

Two thousand years after the birth of Jesus, and four thousand after the birth of Abraham, is there anything that hasn't been written about the Bible? As it turns out, quite a lot. Christopher De Hamel, formerly the manuscripts curator for Sotheby's and currently on the faculty at Cambridge, has given us in "The Book: A History of the Bible" what we didn't have before: a book about the Bible as a book. His narrative begins with St. Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin, and proceeds through the centuries to describe how it has been copied, illustratied, translated, and printed, in both its Jewish and Christian forms. De Hamel's prose style is lively and engaging, and the illustrations are copious and beautiful high-resolution photographs of stunning examples of the Bible-maker's art. The book is filled with small gems. Did you know, for example, that more Bibles survive from the thirteenth century than any other artifact, save possibly buildings? This book should reach a wide and diverse audience, from those who revere the Bible as the Word of God to those who want to gain a better understanding of its historical and literary importance.