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Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time
Kristin Swenson
#UE3942
Paperback, 343 pages; 2011 (2010)
$14.99
 Members' Price: $12.74
Year after year, the Bible tops best-seller lists. Polls show that it is the runaway favorite book for Americans of all kinds, and it is considered holy by a full 84 percent of the U.S. population. It comes in every imaginable form. Leather-bound and embossed, in raggedy paperback, pink poofy cover, audio, multimedia, or clutched in the perfectly manicured fingers of Paris Hilton en route to jail. People swear on it in courtrooms. Families record births, marriages, divorces, and deaths in its pages. Soldiers take it into battle, and peaceniks wave it in demonstrations of opposition. The Bible is a singular document of inestimable influence; but all evidence to the contrary, it can be really hard to understand.
Enjoy a giant advancement in biblical literacy by delving into Bible Babel. Professor of religious studies Kristin Swenson traces the evolution of various versions of the Bible, gives a brief book-by-book overview of content, discusses historical context, highlights significant issues of translation, examines how people use biblical texts today to support or refute various ideologies, and more. This spryly intellectual and shrewdly humorous guide to who's who and what's what in the Good Book is an enlightening joy for religious and secular readers alike.
(CH)
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