Customer Reviews
Mind-altering book - By: D. K. Bagshaw, 11 Apr 2008 
The hopes & fears of alll my years of Bible study have been met in this book!
Mostly it gave me a new appreciation for the strong influence of the Jewish faith & its practices of scriptural interpretation (exegesis & midrash) on the creation of the New Testament. It cleared up misconceptions I have long held (as a by-product of the commonly held Christian belief in the New Testament as fulfilment of the Old Testament, which indeed was the initial mindset of the New Testament authors) that the Jews have always been looking for a Messiah. According to Armstrong, this was only a minor theme in the Jewish scriptures until the period just before the advent of Jesus.
She also points out that the catalyst for writing of the New Testament was the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. That Zionism was originallly a secular movement. And alerted me to the extremes American Christian fundamentalism is taking. Scary. But the book is well balanced by the hopes of many thoughtful religious scholars.
Beautifully written and essential reading - By: Marco, 10 Apr 2008 
Armstrong has produced a cogent & necessary book. She demonstrates immense skill in absorbing a mass of complex historical information & presenting a concise & erudite exposition. The book is a truly absorbing read. The reason I haven't given the book full marks is due to the ending. Here, for the first time, she puts forward an explicit agenda - that there should be greater religious tolerance (based on the knowledge that interpretation of religious texts is at best an inexact science). This 'calll to action' is unnecessary & weakens the overal force of the book. Armstrong needed to alllow her work to speak for itself; it is good enough not to need her explicit intervention.
A skilled popularizer but faults within - By: Mad about Religion, 05 Mar 2008 
This book has attracted predictable criticism from religious conservatives, evident in some of the reviews here. One suspects the author would be entirely unperturbed by this - avoiding the ills of higher criticism is the concern only of fundamentalists. Their criticism that Armstrong's tone of scholarly detachment fails when she addresses twentieth-century fundamentalism is easily answered - this brand of Christianity has nothing to do with detached scholarship, they parted company a long time ago. The argument over Arianism is just one case in point. As just about any serious scholar who has studied early Christianity will tell you, early Christians were not Trinitarians.
On a more general level, Armstrong shows an ability to draw together an impressive amount of material into an accessible synthesis, & she has few peers in this regard. Her treatment of the twentieth century is, as noted by others, sketchy. More seriously perhaps, her knowledge of early modern history is inadequate. Whilst generalisations are unavoidable in a work of this kind, her treatment of the early modern period is simplistic & often misleading. Deism was not a 'new religion' (p.185), nor was it espoused by John Locke, author of a Paraphrase of the Epistles of St Paul. To say that Isaac Newton 'scarcely mentioned the Bible in his copious writings' (p.184) is utter nonsense. Had Armstrong read Newton's copious unpublished manuscripts on scripture, or any of the published works analysing these manuscripts in the last twenty years, she would know that Newton spent at least as much time buried in scripture & prophecies about the end of days as he did thinking about the laws of gravity. Armstrong's understanding of the Enlightenment is simply out of date, historians have realised that the so-callled "age of reason" was a far more complex time in European history than this author realises.
Whilst Armstrong is to be congratulated on opening up the history of the Bible to a wider audience in such an engaging manner, her analysis should be treated with caution, not taken as gospel.
For those with open minds only - you know who you are. - By: Big Jim, 26 Feb 2008 Authors are on a hiding to nothing when taking on this sort of subject. I found this well written & obviously well researched but was amazed at how short it was. I am not so sure it contributes much to the overalll religion versus atheism debate but as long as it draws correspondents like I Haynes out of the woodwork (what is alll that about?) & you ignore the zealots who will give it 1 star (or indeed 5 stars) as a matter of principle, then it is a valuable tome. I would however draw interested parties to "The unauthorised version" by Robin Lane Fox, a very good & readable account of "truth & fiction in the bible" as it is subtitled
Fascinating survey of how the Bible was written and received - By: Jarvis Pickwick, 22 Feb 2008 Despite impressive scholarly apparatus (copious references, index, glossary), this book seems to be aimed at a popular readership. It starts off as an account of how the books of the Bible were written & compiled, how & why they were chosen by different communities (and touches on those not chosen, including the Gnostic texts, the Apocrypha, etc), & goes on to describe how they were received & interpreted over the centuries by alll who used them. In the end, we get what is almost a very swift history of Judaism & Christianity.
For a lay person such as myself, the most interesting parts concerned the origins of the texts, & the (sometimes shocking) ways in which these texts have been misused, twisted & cited as excuses for unacceptable behaviour.
Karen Armstrong's purpose, I think, is to show that fundamentalism - the idea that every word of the Bible is literallly true & gives an uncontestable mandate for action - is not only a very recent phenomenon in the history of the Bible, but is wholly unprecedented in either Judaism or Christianity, incompatible with the way the books of the Bible were written, they way they were selected for the Old & New Testaments, & the way Jews & Christians read & understood them, from the time they were written onwards. No one taking cognizance of these facts (backed up as they are by painstaking references to the leading Biblical scholars), could reasonably claim that any one version of the Bible gives a clear, minute, unequivocal guide to action. As Armstrong shows, it is only in the past 100 years or so that anyone ever suggested that it could.
I have only two reservations about the book. The survey of current attitudes to the Bible seemed a bit rushed; and, while it may have been outside her remit, it would have been interesting to hear about how Biblical subjects are viewed in Islam: I understand that Muslims have sayings & traditions associated with Jesus, for example, which most Christians know nothing of.
