The Unauthorized Version

The Unauthorized Version

Truth and Fiction in the Bible

Summary

In The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, historian Robin Lane Fox takes an uncompromising look at the historical proof - or refutation - of biblical events.

The Bible is moving, inspirational and endlessly fascinating - but is it true?

Starting with Genesis and the implicit background to the birth of Christ, Robin Lane Fox sets out to discover how far biblical descriptions of people, places and events are confirmed or contradicted by external written and archaeological evidence. He turns a sharp historian's eye on when and where the individual books were composed, whether the texts as originally written exist, how the canon was assembled, and why the Gospels give varying accounts even of the trial and condemnation of Jesus.

'So clear, so lively, and, in many respects, so just'
  Frank Kermode, Guardian

'A marvellously absorbing book'
  Financial Times

'Magnificent ... Learned but never pedantic, he is unfailingly incisive, thought-provoking, human, courteous and often entertaining'
  Economist

Robin Lane Fox is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a University Reader in Ancient History. His other books include Alexander the Great, Pagans and Christians and The Classical World. He was historical advisor to Oliver Stone on the making of Stone's film Alexander, for which he waived all his fees on condition that he could take part in the cavalry charge against elephants which Stone staged in the Moroccan desert.

About the author

Robin Lane Fox

Robin Lane Fox is Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford, and taught Ancient History at Oxford University from 1977 to 2014. He is the author of Pagans and Christians (1986), The Unauthorized Version (1992) and many books on classical history, all of which have been widely translated, including Alexander the Great (1973), The Classical World (2005), Travelling Heroes (2008) and Augustine: Conversions to Confessions (2015), which won the Wolfson Prize for History. He has been the gardening correspondent of the Financial Times since 1970.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more