Book Review - The Bible for Grown-ups by Simon Loveday

The Bible for Grown-ups : a new look at the good book by Simon Loveday

London: Icon Books, 2017              ISBN: 9781785782633


This book is an easy-to-read breakdown of the history of the creation of the Bible. It is not a theological work in any great way, nor is it a work that attempts to tear down faith. Simon Loveday has used a limited number of sources, and the King James version of the Bible, to show us how and why the good book was created, and how the politics and history of the Jews in Judea and Israel affected what was written, how it was written, and what was excluded from the book.

The beauty of this book is that Loveday has given the reader a relatively easy to digest version of current Bible scholarship and shows us when each book was written (sometimes who wrote it!), and how editors and "redactors" have changed what was originally written to suit their purposes. He also shows us occasions where a mis-translation has had a big effect on the course of belief.

In his discussion of the New Testament, Loveday explains how it was the letters of Paul that were the first part of that book to be written, with the Gospels coming afterwards when the developing Church needed something written down to guide them. In fact Loveday writes that it was Paul who created what we know as the Christian Church today, not Jesus. One thing that I think is important that Loveday mentions is that the New Testament as we know it today wasn't in existence before about 350AD, even though most of the writings it contains were written hundreds of years before. The Gospels were written, especially Matthew and Luke, to ensure that the life of Jesus fulfilled the prophetic predictions of the Old Testament. So, the Bible isn't history, but it is an attempt to uncover truth, and the way it was written and constructed should make the reader wary of taking it too literally, although the messages of the New Testament are clear.

In the final section of the work Loveday shows us the literary qualities of the Bible, something that was quite different to the other literature (Roman and Greek) of the time, and how the Bible introduced the idea of character development into writing, and so arguably set the course for the development of literature as we know it today.

Like the curate's egg, The Bible for Grown-ups is good in parts.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell