Asimov's Guide to the Bible: A Historical Look at the Old and New Testaments - Isaac Asimov

Asimov's Guide

My daughter suggested that I give her a Bible concordance as a Christmas gift. I bought one for her and then looked for Asimov's guide, which I have in my library and consider the best available guide to the Bible. Fortunately, I found it on Amazon. She was fascinated with it. Asimov knew what he was writing about. He wrote 200 books and I consider this among his best. He didn't just "translate the King James version into modern English"; he shared his vast knowledge of ancient history, geography, and languages.

Asimov's outdated guide; it's still a good read

This work was published in 2 volumes: OT 1967 and NT 1969 and sadly, the information in this book is outdated because so many new discoveries and evidence about this subject has exploded in the 1990s and 2000s. So, to a student of biblical criticism this book was rather a bore at times but, if you are new to the game I would recommend this book to get you started.
I am sure this would have been a great read in the 1960s - 1980s.

Must have hot Biblical Historicity students

This book can be only described with one word. AMAZING!

The insight and knowledge of the late Isaac Asimov is shown here with such an amazing simplicity. He can explain the mystery of life in laymen's terms with extreme ease.

This book, while vast and detailed, is a must have for all the people that have that itch to understand all the mysteries of the bible and only find books that only confuses them more.

Fascinating Historical Background of Biblical Times

Isaac Asimov was widely considered the best science writer of the 20th century, because of his outstanding ability to make his subject matter interesting and understandable to the layman. This book gives the reader the historical background of the writing of the Bible and of the events recounted therein. Knowing this background material makes the Bible more readable and more understandable. Having been written by Isaac Asimov, the Guide is so interesting that you may have difficulty putting it down, but it is also a valuable reference work, to be kept handy whenever you read from the Bible.

This is not a scholarly work of biblical criticism, nor does it attempt or pretend to be. If you are looking for such, look to books by such as:
Marcus Borg (e.g. Reading the Bible Again For the First Time ),
John Dominic Crossan (e.g. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography),
Michael Goulder (e.g. St. Paul Versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions),
Burton Mack (e.g. The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins), snd
John Shelby Spong (e.g. Liberating the Gospels). THIS IS A MUST READ before reading (or rereading) any of the gospels.
These are all excellent books, well worth reading, but they don't give the reader the background Asimov does.(nor are they to be faulted because they don't, any more than Asimov's guide should be faulted for not being serious biblical criticism).

watziznaym@gmail.com

Great secular view of the Bible

Asimov's book gives a very good secular view of the Bible and puts the events occuring in the Bible into historical perspective. It also provides an understanding of the the structure of the Bible, e.g., what is considered canonical (by Jews, Catholics, Protestants), who likely wrote what (although the scholarship may be dated), what was occuring in history when the various books were written, etc. Consider this a book for Bible 101 to teach basic Bible literacy.