Paperback with 302 pages in good condition. Tape marks in front and tear. Koki and ink markings on first 3 chapters by a previous reader.

As the single work at the heart of Christianity, the worlds largest organized religion, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the worlds most widely distributed book and its best-selling, with an estimated six billion copies sold in the last two hundred years. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history. Its contents have changed over the centuries, it 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, life, and afterlife of historys 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 Christianitys sacred text, and how its interpretation changed over time. Armstrongs history of the Bible is a brilliant, captivating book, crucial in an age of declining faith and rising fundamentalism.