Bruce Gordon, The Bible: A Global History (Basic Books 2024)
The book goes through how the Bible became a book and how early Christian writers were inspired to proselytise. We see how the Gospels portrayed the person of the Christ, an aspect of early Christianity which remains shrouded in myth.
Then it works chronologically through the history of the Christian Bible, from the middle ages to Renaissance and Reformation, taking on the science versus religion argument. We follow the book as it champions the switch from scroll to codex format. The project of translating the Bible drove the invention of the Armenian (4th C) and Cyrillic (9th C) scripts. The book made its way to the New World, making its way to Africa and China. It has been translated into 698 languages.
Although it treats the Christian Bible (New Testament) only, it does touch upon Christian interpretations of Jewish Scriptures. I missed discussion of the Jewish history, and found discussion of the formation of canon a bit wanting. The dating of the gospels is a fascinating story, and I wish the book had gone into that a bit more. There are some colour photographs of famous Bibles throughout history, but a big book like this could have used more illustrations.
This is a prodigious work of scholarship extensive in scope.
I was given this book for Christmas.
Susie Helme 
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