The Bibles Cutting Room Floor, Joel M. Hoffman
The Bibles Cutting Room Floor, Joel M. Hoffman
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

The Bible's Cutting Room Floor
The Holy Scriptures Missing from Your Bible

Author: Joel M. Hoffman

Narrator: Jonathan Todd Ross

Unabridged: 10 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 09/02/2014


Synopsis

The Bible you usually read is not the complete story. Some holy writings were left out for political or theological reasons, others simply because of the physical restrictions of ancient bookmaking technology. At times, the compilers of the Bible skipped information that they assumed everyone knew. Some passages were even omitted by accident. In The Bible's Cutting Room Floor, acclaimed author and translator Dr. Joel M. Hoffman gives us the stories and other texts that didn't make it into the Bible even though they offer penetrating insight into the Bible and its teachings. The Book of Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve's time in the Garden of Eden, but not their saga after they get kicked out or the lessons they have for us about good and evil. The Bible introduces us to Abraham, but it doesn't include the troubling story of his early life, which explains how he came to reject idolatry to become the father of monotheism. And while there are only 150 Psalms in today's Bible, there used to be many more. Dr. Hoffman deftly brings these and other ancient scriptural texts to life, exploring how they offer new answers to some of the most fundamental and universal questions people ask about their lives. An impressive blend of history, linguistics, and religious scholarship, The Bible's Cutting Room Floor reveals what's missing from your Bible, who left it out, and why it is so important.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Arthur

A 10 hour and 30 minute unabridged audiobook. Quite an interesting listen, that ran the gamut from explaining why the Bible was abridged (scrolls became books but even books could only fit so many pages and things had to be trimmed down to keep one volume); to translation issues that mostly seemed to......more

Goodreads review by Nathan

Half of this is a great book. Hoffman starts out with several chapters detailing the socio-religious background of the Middle East within a couple of centuries of Christ -- the time in which the Old Testament canon was starting to solidify. Describing the tensions exhibited by the mainstream Jerusale......more

A decent intro to some (but not all, from a Christian perspective!) pseudepigraphal literature associated with the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Bible. Good parts are that Hoffman selects from specific Old Testament psuedepigrapha to explain some things, particularly in Genesis, that don't seem to......more