The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible

When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?” he received no answer. In this provocative, vastly learned, and elegantly argued book, a historian of international reputation asks the same question of the Bible, with triumphant results.

The Unauthorized Version discusses the two incompatible creation stories in Genesis and the historical errors in the Gospels’ accounts of the Nativity. It introduces us to a Bible that came late to monotheism, propounded a jumble of conflicting laws, and whose authors wrote under assumed names. Far from debunking the scriptures, though, Robin Lane Fox locates their core of his book is a bold and original contribution both to the history of religion and the literature of belief.