A ground-breaking explanation of the single most influential text of all time by the world's foremost religious historian.
The Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world. Translated into over 2,000 languages, it is estimated that more than six billion copies have been sold in the last 200 years alone. A work made up of 66 'books' and divided into two Testaments, this complex and communal work has been transformed by its various translations into a single work at the heart of the world's largest and most powerful organised religions: Christianity.
In this seminal account Karen Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, life and afterlife of this collection of 'books', analyses how this all-pervasive scripture was collected into one work, how it became accepted as Christianity's sacred text and how it continues to exercise a profound political and philosophical influence as well as a religious control on the world around us.
