The Bible
I've been busy write-write-writing over the last few months, and in between whiles trying to amass a list of suggested reading to go at the end of my next book. It's quite a different exercise from giving a bibliography, which is either a sample or a complete list of the main sources that are referenced or are strong influences on your own text. Suggested reading, though, is more like – "you find this interesting? well here are some other books at a similar level on the same or closely related topics. Most of the books that lie behind my own book are way too specialist, and not readily available (except at £100 a copy, or in a copyright library) so there's not much point in recommending them.
One book that is so excellent I must mention it right now is Karen Armstrong's The Bible: The Biography, which I read a while back. It's not new, but if you haven't got round to reading it yet, give yourself a treat.
2 Responses to “The Bible”
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author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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>So yesterday we were informed that working mothers weren’t allowed to take care of each other’s children any more. Today we have the guilt loaded on for going to work.
Good point
Interesting how this is being set up (e.g., on R4 Today) as a ping-pong debate rather than an authoritative study that we need to think about.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8279000/8279843.stm
(7.13 and 8.55)
Matt
I do often wonder who commissions and carries out these ’surveys’, and what planet they live on.