TIMOTHY BEAL is Florence Harkness Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University. He has published eleven books, including Biblical Literacy: The Essential Bible Stories Everyone Needs to Know and Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and one of Publishers Weekly's ten best religion books of 2005. He has published essays in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"This amazing book will make you see the Scriptures in a new light.
Beal shows us that the origins of the Bible are messy and shaped by
chance, but also that the Bible still can move us and needs to be
taken seriously . Thou shalt read Beal."
-A.J. Jacobs author of The Year of Living Biblically "Beal's
exciting book offers both fascinating history and a new and
insightful way to approach the 'sacred text'."
-John Shelby Spong, author of Eternal Life: A New Vision "The
Bible, an infallible book of answers to all life's questions?
Timothy Beal demolishes that claim using the texts themselves, and
offers the vision of a productive future in which the biblical
process of argumentation will thrive in the digital
environment."
-Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus"Partly autobiography, partly
social scientific research, partly shrewd discernment, and partly
theological interpretation, Tim Beal has written a zinger of a book
about the cultural history of the Bible. This welcome and important
book will cause a pause before we make glib claims for "the Word of
the Lord."
-Walter Brueggemann "A lot of us know just enough about the Bible
to make us dangerous. Tim Beal wants to take us deeper in our
understanding - not just about what the Bible says, but about what
it is, and how it came to us in its many current forms. Under
Beal's instruction, we will lose some of our naivete, but we'll
gain maturity of insight that will more than compensate. A needed
book from a talented writer."
- Brian D. McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christianity
"Remarkably accessible...Beal is more than just a debunker; in
fact, once evangelical, he still considers himself a Christian. He
exhorts readers to see the Bible not as a book of finite answers
but as a crucible of questions that provoke, inspire, and even
anger those who pick it up. The same might be said about his own
book."
- STARRED review, Booklist"Well-written and engaging...A laudable
look at the Good Book."
- Kirkus
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