A History of the Bible

Cerebral entertainment of the highest class. This is an absolutely fascinating book, a staggeringly learned exploration of the origins of all those Bible stories

Cerebral entertainment of the highest class. This is an absolutely fascinating book, a staggeringly learned exploration of the origins of all those Bible stories

A superb overview ... Barton wears his erudition lightly, but even for those deeply familiar with the Bible there is much here to be learnt

As eminently readable as the best of travelogues, it floods with light a subject too often regarded by many as a closed book. ... An extraordinary tour de force

John Barton's magisterial history brings the Good Book splendidly back to life ... It is an exhilarating achievement

Rare is the common assumption about the Bible that Barton fails to render problematic

Vital, hugely informative

A work of exceptional merit ... a joy to read

Compelling and endlessly intriguing, it courageously looks at the problems of variants, apocrypha, questions of translation and very much more. It should be in the armoury of anyone, whether a believer or not

Hugely important, very readable and judicious

The learning Barton brings to bear for this large undertaking is prodigious as well as judiciously deployed, and everything is conveyed in lucid, precise prose. If A History of the Bible is academic popularization, it may well be the finest example I have ever encountered

John Barton was the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1991 to 2014 and since 1973 has been a serving priest in the Church of England. He is the author of numerous books on the Bible, co-editor of The Oxford Bible Commentary and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation . He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007 and is a Corresponding Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.