How to Read the Bible

The How to Read series provides a context and an explanation that will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. These books use excerpts from the major texts to explain essential topics, such as the definition and role of God in the Bible, the most influential book in human history.

The trouble with reading the Bible is that it claims to be God’s autobiography; so the first thing readers must do is decide what they understand about God and how they are going to interpret his role in the rambling library of books that claims his authorship. Richard Holloway offers a usefully dialectical approach to this central question that will allow unbelievers as well as believers to profit from a study of the most influential book in human history.

“Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”—The Book of Job

Richard Holloway is a former Bishop of Edinburgh and Gresham Professor of Divinity. Now a writer and broadcaster, he is the author of more than twenty books, including, Godless Morality (1999), Doubts and Loves (2001) and Looking in the Distance (2004). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and is Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council.

Simon Critchley is a professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and at the University of Essex, Colchester. His many books include Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity and, most recently, The Book of Dead Philosophers.