The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture Spiral-Bound |

Konrad Schmid, Jens Schröter, Peter Lewis (Translated by)

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The Making of the Bible is invaluable for anyone interested in Scripture and in the intertwined histories of Judaism and Christianity.”
—John Barton, author of A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths


The authoritative new account of the Bible’s origins, illuminating the 1,600-year tradition that shaped the Christian and Jewish holy books as millions know them today.

The Bible as we know it today is best understood as a process, one that begins in the tenth century BCE. In this revelatory account, a world-renowned scholar of Hebrew scripture joins a foremost authority on the New Testament to write a new biography of the Book of Books, reconstructing Jewish and Christian scriptural histories, as well as the underappreciated contest between them, from which the Bible arose.

Recent scholarship has overturned popular assumptions about Israel’s past, suggesting, for instance, that the five books of the Torah were written not by Moses but during the reign of Josiah centuries later. The sources of the Gospels are also under scrutiny. Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter reveal the long, transformative journeys of these and other texts en route to inclusion in the holy books. The New Testament, the authors show, did not develop in the wake of an Old Testament set in stone. Rather the two evolved in parallel, in conversation with each other, ensuring a continuing mutual influence of Jewish and Christian traditions. Indeed, Schmid and Schröter argue that Judaism might not have survived had it not been reshaped in competition with early Christianity.

A remarkable synthesis of the latest Old and New Testament scholarship, The Making of the Bible is the most comprehensive history yet told of the world’s best-known literature, revealing its buried lessons and secrets.

Publisher: Harvard University Press
Original Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 448 pages
ISBN-10: 0674248384
Item Weight: 2.2 lbs
Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.34 x 9.3 inches
A landmark…This is a rich book treating the historical traditions that lie within the texts, the oral traditions that transmitted them down the generations, the processes by which texts were formed and collected within scribal culture, and the way in which this gradually led to the formation of various canons…If you have time to read only one book on the Bible this year, make sure that it is this one. -Katherine J. Dell / Church Times
Konrad Schmid is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism at the University of Zurich and President of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament. He is the author, most recently, of A Historical Theology of the Hebrew Bible.