" The Bible is the spiritual guide for one of every three people on Earth. Translated into over 2,000 languages, an estimated six billion copies have been sold in the last 200 years. It remains the best-selling book in the U.S., year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history. Acclaimed historian Karen Armstrong analyzes the social and political situation in which oral history was transformed into written scripture, collected, selected, translated, interpreted, and accepted as “God’s word.”"