How We Got the Bible

By: Neil R. Lightfoot

Narrated by: Claton Butcher

Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

How We Got the Bible provides factual, accessible answers to questions such as: How and when did the books of the Bible originate? In what sense are these books different from other books? How have these books been preserved and transmitted to us? Why do we have so many different translations of the Bible?

A popular guide for Bible students, it has sold more than one million copies during its 40 years in print. Learn about the development of the most important book in history.

©2010 Baker Books (P)2016 Baker Publishing Group

History of the Bible

Interesting. If you like history, and you want to know how the Bible made it thru the centuries, you will find this a good retelling of it.

Most important book in the world

An interesting, detailed, and well researched book on how the Bible was compiled, translated, and brought to us today.

Flawless

It's one of those books that you need to keep repeating over and over. It has lots of details and information.

Wealth of information!

Loved this book. Gives such great information on how we received the Bibles we have now. Narrator does a great job as well. Book flows well and is a pleasure to listen to.

Excellent for laymen. Enjoyable voice and content.

I have listened to this book twice and have throughly enjoyed it. My guess is that it is written at a Bible College level but not at such a level that a layman would not enjoy. I highly recomend it for most individuals wanting to understand how we can have a high level of certainty that the Bible we have today is what God would have in our hands. This made the transmission of the scriptures much clearer in my mind. Loved it!

An Excellent and Enlightening Audiobook

This was a fascinating as well as comprehensive Bible lineage. Nothing is left out. It begins with the stone, clay, leather, and papyrus that the words were originally written on to what was used to write with and who was writing it all the way to how we've gotten to the most popular Bible(s) KJV and NIV to date. This was an impressive piece of work written by the late Dr. Neil R. Lightfoot.

I listened to this book slowly as it was a lot to absorb with many details. Ancient texts were called codex or codices and were the first bound books. Early ones consisted of letters, narratives, and etc. This book talks about the languages which were Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The three oldest manuscripts in the world are the Vatican, the Sinaiticus, and the Alexandrian. There's also the Psoriatic, the Coptic, and the Latin.

This book also talks about Ben Asher, William Tyndale as well as other important figures. This is a very comprehensive book and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in ancient text or the Bible. This is a study guide as well and one can skip around to different parts. I'm amazed at how much of this I retained. Loved it.

Claton Butcher's performance was outstanding. He made this an amazing listen. His voice inflections and cadence were so much in tune with the book that he made it easy to follow and understand. His pronunciations were/are impeccable. I'm a huge fan of his work.

Audiobook received inx for my honest review.

Great introduction to biblical studies

The books could also be aptly named "A overview of Biblical Scholarship." To be sure, this isn't a work on theology. Rather it's about the book, its origins and transmission.

I particularly like the fact that author is open about his Protestant bias and does a fantastic job of keeping information separate from opinion. I can trust an author who's honest about his bias more than an author who blends opinion into his/her facts.

The contents of this book are required reading for any person with an interest in the Bible, Christian or otherwise. Because this book is not itself a source of scholarship but rather a compilation of it, the information here can technically be found elsewhere. However, one would be hard-pressed to find it in such a clear, concise, direct and organized way. The summary section at the end of each chapter was particularly helpful for the audio format. When listening instead of reading, sometimes I gloss over details and lose track of the structure of the book. Not so with these recaps.

The narrator's tone and interpretation sounds a little unnatural, but not enough to distract from the book.

Great Start

This was written and narrated well. It is very informative and gets straight to the facts. it is a great start in learning about the Bible translations as well as textual criticism/variance, Manuscripts, and a whole lot more. I highly recommend this.

Enjoyable but flawed

Well researched and written. But I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if Lightfoot had presented the argument for the Majority Text in any serious way. I don't expect Bible critics to agree on the debate over old versus widely-copied manuscripts, but it's irresponsible to not at least present both sides before giving your own opinion.

Excelent introduction to the Bible's origin

Hated that the chapters i Audible disn't have the chapter names of the book.
Can't fault the author or the reader.