Download The Bible: A Biography: Books That Changed the World AudioBook Free

As the task in the centre of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world’s most widely distributed book, translated into over two thousand languages, and the world’s top selling book, year after year. However the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history. Made up of sixty-six “books” compiled by various authors and divided into two testaments, its contents have changed on the centuries. The Bible has been transformed by translation and, through interpretation, is rolling out manifold meanings to various religions, denominations, and sects. In this particular seminal account, acclaimed historian Karen Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, and life of history’s most effective book. Armstrong analyzes the social and political situation where oral history turned into written scripture, how this all-pervasive scripture was collected into one work, and exactly how it became accepted as Christianity’s sacred text. She explores how scripture had become read for information, and exactly how, in the nineteenth century, historical criticism of the Bible caused greater fear than Darwinism. That is a brilliant, captivating book, crucial in a day and time of declining faith and rising fundamentalism.