Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

***On The New Yorker's list of The Best Books We've Read in 2023 
 

***One of the five books on religion selected by Publishers Weekly's for their list of The Best Books of 2023***

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

"A revelation, even to those who have read the Bible for a lifetime!

"We witness how in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat and devastation, the biblical authors fashioned a new form of political community--one in which a shared body of texts provided common ground for deeply divided communities and the marginalized in their communities. At the heart of the Hebrew Bible is, as Wright shows, not a creed but a question: What does it mean to be a people? In our time of deepening divisions, both this question and the ways in which these ancient writers addressed it deserve renewed, and serious, attention."

-- Robert M. Franklin, President Emeritus, Morehouse College 
 

Why did no other ancient society produce something like the Bible? That a tiny, out of the way community could have created a literary corpus so determinative for peoples across the globe seems improbable.

For Jacob Wright, the Bible is not only a testimony of survival, but also an unparalleled achievement in human history. Forged after Babylon's devastation of Jerusalem, it makes not victory but total humiliation the foundation of a new idea of belonging. Lamenting the destruction of their homeland, scribes who composed the Bible imagined a promise-filled past while reflecting deeply on abject failure. More than just religious scripture, the Bible began as a trailblazing blueprint for a new form of political community. Its response to catastrophe offers a powerful message of hope and restoration that is unique in the Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds.

Wright's Bible is thus a social, political, and even economic roadmap - one that enabled a small and obscure community located on the periphery of leading civilizations and empires not just to come back from the brink, but ultimately to shape the world's destiny. The Bible speaks ultimately of being a united yet diverse people, and its pages present a manual of pragmatic survival strategies for communities confronting societal collapse.
 
"A fascinating look at the Bible and its origins — not necessarily who, what, when, and where, though those are all discussed, but above all, why? Why was it created? Why did it originate where it did? Why did it survive and resonate so much down through the ages? Armed with a scholar's acumen and a writer's dexterity with prose, Jacob Wright addresses these questions and offers us an intriguing alternative look at the origins of the Hebrew Bible and why it mattered both back then and still today.

"Sure to elicit much discussion and debate, this is a must read by one of the most interesting and provocative scholars working today."

-- Eric Cline, archeologist, historian, and author of the best-selling 1177 BCE: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

Prof. Jacob L. Wright teaches Hebrew Bible at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. His first book, Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and its Earliest Readers (de Gruyter, 2004), won the 2008 Templeton prize for a first book in the field of religion. He is also the author of David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which won The Nancy Lapp Popular Book Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research, and most recently, War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2020).