How the Bible Became the Bible

What This Book Covers

1. Prologue
2. Chapter One - In the Beginning
3. Chapter Two - Prophets, Kings, and Scribes
4. Chapter Three - The Scroll Shelf Grows
5. Chapter Four - From Hebrew to Greek
6. Chapter Five - Enter: Jesus
7. Chapter Six - Paul’s Inbox Explodes
8. Chapter Seven - Revelation and the Rough Draft
9. Chapter Eight - Rome Gets Involved
10. Chapter Nine - Latin Only, Please
11. Chapter Ten - Here Comes the Hammer: Martin Luther
12. Chapter Eleven - The King’s English
13. Chapter Twelve - A Thousand Versions Bloom
14. Chapter Thirteen - Still the Bestseller

Excerpt

PROLOGUE IF YOU GREW up around the Bible, you probably thought of it as one book — leather-bound, gold-edged, sitting on the coffee table or stashed in a pew. But technically? That’s not quite right. The Bible isn’t a book. It’s a library — a whole shelf’s worth of ancient writings, composed by dozens of authors, across a span of more than a thousand years. It’s poetry, law code, personal letters, prophecy, songs, parables, family trees, battle reports, and apocalypse visions. And somehow… it all ended up bound together with one title on the spine. The word “Bible” itself comes from the Greek biblia — meaning “books.” Plural. As in: “a bunch of them.” So how did that happen? That’s what...