Big Ideas · Prologue
A movable monument
Empires built cities and temples to celebrate their might, and nearly all crumbled. A conquered people built a library instead, and carried it with them for 2,500 years.
What you can carry, conquerors can't burn.
Dig deeper
In the second century CE, the satirist Lucian observed that Nineveh had already disappeared without a trace and predicted Babylon would follow. The Bible, by contrast, foregrounds military defeat while celebrating ordinary families, and it became the cornerstone of world religions and political communities.
Source: Why the Bible Began, pp. xvi–xvii
Reader thoughts
Loading comments…