The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture

Schmid (A Historical Theology of the Hebrew Bible), professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Zurich, and Schröter (Jesus of Nazareth), professor of New Testament at Humboldt University in Berlin, pool their expertise in this comprehensive look at how the Bible was made. Prior to the invention of the printing press, they contend, there wasn’t one book of either the entire Jewish or Christian Bible, but rather “a great diversity of forms of the Bible” beginning with the recording of individual texts on papyrus. The texts’ evolution over time, they argue, allowed for a “multifaceted nature of the Bible... a compilation that varies in extent and configuration.” The authors discuss the choices to canonize (or not) books of both the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles—possibly based on the extent to which they harmonized with fundamental theological beliefs. They then explore how the Hebrew Bible was “created within an environment where no appreciable religious function was assigned to texts,” and how those texts began as literature rather than holy scripture. The end result is a remarkable deep dive into foundational books whose origins are often taken for granted. (Oct.)