Publisher's Weekly Review
After first setting aside belief, the late Loveday intelligently and successfully assesses the Bible in ways that are accessible and useful for those with open, inquiring minds. Sections that cover the Old and New Testaments address similar issues: historical context, structure, purpose, history, and morality. Loveday begins by asking (and attempting to answer) who actually wrote each section of the Bible, and investigating the core messages that inspired its original creation. Both parts evince the lack of correspondence between the Bible and historical reality. Loveday's declarations underscore his research; he writes, "The only authority in the Old Testament is what we give it" and "The writers of the Synoptic Gospels were wrong. And if they were wrong-so was Jesus." In part three, "A Vision of Freedom," Loveday approaches the Bible as unified, like a cathedral. His rhetoric beautifies his arguments, especially when he explores the lyrical quality of a passage such as Luke's Nativity. Quotes from scholars, especially Reza Aslan and Paula Friedricksen, confirm Loveday's stands as his humor lifts his prose. This 12-year project is a book to read for pleasure and to study for enhancement. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
An illuminating study of a work of many hands, whose strength lies in its symbolic power Literary critic Simon Loveday, who died last year, is not concerned with matters of faith or theology but with understanding the Bible as a text, or rather as many texts. He demolishes the idea that the Old or New Testaments are historically accurate: literalist readings of the Bible are, he says with a biblical metaphor, " built on sand ". There is not "a single shred of historical evidence" for the exodus, nor is there any record of Herod killing Bethlehem's firstborn. Far from preaching a single message, Loveday highlights the many contradictions in the Bible, due to the fact that it is a palimpsest: the work of many hands, writing, re-writing, editing and translating over hundreds of years. The idea of the virgin birth may even have been inspired by a mis-translation. But for Loveday, the Bible's enduring strength lies in its immense symbolic power, forged by those who shaped many diverse texts into one book whose core myth is deliverance. This illuminating study reclaims the Bible as a great work of human creativity, one that "celebrates our recapture of our own imaginings". - PD Smith.
