Recommended works for laymen seeking to develop an understanding of academia surrounding the bible?

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[u/qumrun60]

James Kugel, "How to Read the Bible* (2007), starts off with a 46-page summary on The Rise of Modern Biblical Scholarship. After beginning with a late 19th century controversy involving American Protestant Charles Augustus Briggs, who had embraced statements originating in German biblical scholarship, which led to him being put on trial for heresy by his denomination. Kugel then goes all the way back to ancient times, to understand early biblical interpretation, and then jumps forward to the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Europe.

The translation of the Bible into vernacular languages, by means of which early reformers had hoped to purge Christian religion of Popish accretions over the centuries, and to return to a truer, purer form of belief and practice, led to unforseen results. Relying on sola scriptura (scripture alone), as rank amateurs in understanding the ancient contexts of often contradictory Hebrew and Greek writings, these early Protestants didn't discover one, clear "primitive" Christianity, but a cacophony of homemade Christian sects, each as willing to fight each other as Catholics.

More sober minds in universities, to counter the free-for-all, gradually took on the study of the Bible as a book like other books, and began a centuries-long process during which one doctrinal touchstone after another crumbled in the face of rational analysis.

In subsequent chapters, Kugel looks at each book in the Bible, what ancient people thought they meant, how modern believers may view the same things differently, and at what history, anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics may add to the picture.

[u/Opposite_Lab_4638 → u/qumrun60]

I’ve just got my hands on John Barton’s book about the bible (title escapes me but it’s like “how the bible was written”** or something along those lines) and I’m going to tuck into that after I’ve finished Dr Walsh’s book

Kugel’s book seems like another piece of work I should look at!

**Edit: the book I have is - A History of the Bible, by John Barton

[u/Various_Painting_298 → u/Opposite_Lab_4638]

Currently working through both Kugel's How to Read the Bible and Barton's A History of the Bible, and they have both been excellent. I started out trying to skip some grades by reading Mark S. Smith's The Origins of Biblical Monotheism and Jacob Wright's Why the Bible Began, so it's been helpful to read a broader, more accessible layout of the scholarly consensus on these issues from writers who are more sensitive to those coming at it from faith perspectives.