The Bible is the most successful book ever written. For

well over 1,000 years it has been the most widely circulated

of all written works, and it has affected the culture, language

and art of more people than any other book has done. In turn,

every age has adapted and used the Bible for its own purposes,

influencing its shape, appearance and language. This is a

narrative of the Bible as an artefact - an account of how it has

changed, evolved and survived during its extraordinary

journey through history.

The story begins in the age of illuminated manuscripts.

It starts with Saint Jerome, whose Latin translation - the

Vulgate - first gave the Bible the definitive form it has

retained ever since. Chapter 2 follows the separate history

of the Bible in its original languages of Hebrew and Greek.

Then the narrative returns to document the gradual

triumph of the Latin Vulgate through the Dark Ages of

Western Europe, and continues with the magnificent giant

Bibles of the early Middle Ages, the Bible with its monastic

commentaries (which tell us how it was used), and the

crucial turning point of the thirteenth century when the

Bible assumed its modern form. The account of the Middle

Ages ends with magnificent picture Bibles, some of them

the most beautiful books ever made, and the famous and

dangerous English Wycliffite Bibles, whose owners could be

burnt at the stake.

The invention of printing changed the history of books. A

whole chapter is devoted to Gutenberg and the first printed

book - the celebrated 42-line Bible. The story then leads on

to the Reformation, Martin Luther's German Bible, the

Protestant-led wave of translations of the Bible into other

European languages, the development of a Bible publishing

industry, and the extraordinary efforts of missionary

societies to translate the Bible into every known language

in the World. The last chapter is set in modern times. It

chronicles the discoveries - including the Dead Sea Scrolls

and papyrus fragments found in the Egyptian desert - that

take the story right back to the beginning and bring us close

to the origins of both Old and New Testaments.

Christopher de Hamel writes with the storytelling gift

of the good historian. He is also a scrupulous scholar.

Without being either evangelical or polemical, his precise,

lucid and highly informative narrative is solidly based on

documentary evidence. Original and authoritative, The

Book. A History of the Bible presents a clear-sighted,

thought-provoking and utterly gripping account of the

world's most remarkable book.