Avenues for Further Learning

Companion Book for the Series

Romer, John. Testament: The Bible and History. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1988. A flood of books about the history of the Bible have appeared since Testament was first published in 1988; the book is still in print and contains a list of the series’ basic source materials. Amazon.com (bible+history+books) holds a long list of these later books, which range from photo-essays to cookbooks to multivolume academic tomes.

As to the archaeology, there is little of real substance to add to the fundamental information presented in Testament. Professor Norman Golb’s contention that there is no evidence that the community at Qumran produced the Dead Sea Scrolls—which I followed in Testament’s third episode—has gained wide academic acceptance, although still, perhaps, somewhat sotto voce.

To my regret, we could not film the inscription found in 1961 at Caesarea Maritima that bears Pontius Pilates’s name, and is the only archaeological evidence of his governorship in the Holy Land (Episode 4). Finally, the little silver scroll with the priestly benediction that we identified as the oldest Biblical text in existence (Episode 2) and filmed in an archaeological storeroom, now has its own exhibition case in the Israel Museum.

Though the discovery was kept secret at the time, new portions of the Codex Sinaiticus were found in 1975, during building work in St. Catherine’s monastery. The wonderful website www.codexsinaiticus.org has an up-to-date history of that key text and a high-definition copy of the manuscript. — John Romer

General Resources

Armstrong, Karen. The Bible: A Biography. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007.

Daniell, David. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

De Hamel, Christopher. The Book: A History of the Bible. New York: Phaidon Press, 2001.

Metzger, Bruce M., and Michael D. Coogan, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, Inc., 1979.

Rogerson, John, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.