Stephen L. Harris (1) (1937–)

To get details about how the Bible came to be and the various academic debates about its origins and authors, you are going to need a textbook. The textbook I have read and am recommending is Harris's Understanding the Bible. However, I do not think that it is particularly special. I chose it because it covers both testaments in one volume, was well rated on Amazon, and was available at my local library. Any textbook that meets those criteria will probably meet the needs of a basic student of the Bible as an ancient text.

The text includes some chapters of overview and some chapters providing historical background. However, the bulk of the text is devoted to a discussion of each book of the Bible plus the Old Testament apocrypha. Although you will certainly get more out of this book by reading the whole thing, these core chapters are structured so that each can be read on its own. For each book, there is a discussion of the historical circumstances surrounding the composition, the date (or possible dates) of composition, a discussion of authorship, a discussion of literary genre (where appropriate), and a discussion of the content of the book. Harris provides some justification for why scholarly opinion has settled as it has, and he provides an extensive bibliography for each chapter that can be used for those who want to examine the different views in more depth.

One of the most useful things I got out of both of my studies was the overview of Jewish thought, especially how it evolved after the Hebrew canon was closed. I think that people who have not been educated otherwise often assume that Jewish thought stopped after what was recorded in the Bible. I know that people who use the New Testament as their main reference on Jewish thought at the time of Jesus have an unfairly negative view of the Jews of the time. Learning a little about the actual history of Jewish thought shows how many of the tenants of Christianity which people now claim were novel innovations actually followed quite directly from the thoughts of the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus and his followers.… (mehr)