I thirst! Water, I beseech thee

Mary Douglas

  • How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualisation of Ancient Israel by William Schniedewind
    Cambridge, 257 pp, £25.00, May 2005, ISBN 0 521 82946 1

The title puts it fairly. Sacred books don’t spring out of thin air; there was a Bible before ever its stories and laws were fixed in writing. How the Bible Became a Book starts with the history of writing and its impact on Judaism, but as it goes along, fascinating comparisons with other histories of ‘textualisation’ crop up, together with a wide range of similar disputes about the sources of religious authority. Is the holy Book the sole authority? Or are there specialists with strong claims to interpret it? What happens if they disagree?

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