<p>The Bible continues to be the world?s runaway best-seller. But very few people could say just how its seemingly disparate jumble of writings — stories, letters, poems, collections of laws, religious visions — got there. Filling this knowledge gap, <I>How the Bible Was Built</I> clearly tells the story of how the Bible came to be.</p> <p>Penned by Charles Merrill Smith in response to his teenage granddaughter?s questions, the manuscript was discovered after Smith?s death and has been reworked by his friend James Bennett for a wider audience. Free of theological or sectarian slant, this little volume provides a concise, factual overview of the Bible?s construction throughout history, outlining how its various books were written and collected and later canonized and translated.</p> <p>Written in an easy conversational style and enhanced by two helpful appendixes (of biblical terms and dates), <I>How the Bible Was Built</I> will give a more informed understanding of the Bible to people of virtually any reading level and any religious persuasion.</p> <br> <ul><p><big><b>Did you know?</b></big> <li>The word ?Bible? comes from <I>biblion</I>, a Greek word meaning ?papyrus scroll.? <li>It took several thousand years to construct the Bible. <li>The book we call Deuteronomy was discovered hidden away in a dark corner during the reconstruction of the temple under King Josiah. <li>The Apocrypha contains some of the earliest ?detective? stories on record. <li>Church councils had many disagreements about which books ought to be authoritative (a book called the Shepherd of Hermas almost made the cut; the book of Revelation almost didn?t). <li>A heretic helped form the canon. <li>Debate over the canon didn?t really end until the Protestant Reformation and the use of the printing press.</p></ul>