John Forrest – Professor Emeritus, Purchase College SUNY, Purchase, NY, USA

Series: Anthropology Research and Developments; Religion and Society
BISAC: REL006050; REL006080; REL006630
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52305/XFYA8687

This work starts by re-ordering the books of the Bible from the canonical, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, etc., to the order in which the author conjectures they were written. From there he explores their social contexts as much as he did with the book of Genesis. This is a massive, and ambitious, project, yet the author is unusually qualified to carry it out because of his long-term experience in Biblical exegesis and anthropology:

“In this book I am going to dispense with all the problems inherent in contemporary readings of the Bible and in source criticism. Instead, I am going to ask what at first blush appears to be a beguilingly simple question, but which is next to impossible to answer in more than a rudimentary way: What did the books of the Bible mean to the people who wrote them?”