The Making Of The Bible

The authoritative new account of the BibleÕs origins illuminating the 1600year 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 worldrenowned 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 IsraelÕs 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 Schr?ter 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 Schr?ter argue that Judaism may 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 worldÕs bestknown literature revealing its buried lessons and secrets.