> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Romer-La-Bible-et-lhistoire/179597

> Coups de chapeau : Aux éditions Vernal-Philippe Lebaud pour la belle aventure qu’elles nous donnent à lire avec ce gros et passionnant ouvrage : la Bible et l’Histoire de John Romer. Il fallait une telle somme sur l’oeuvre qui a marqué la civilisation occidentale au point de la définir et élaboré une philosophie de la destinée humaine qui nous pose encore la question du sens de notre action en ce monde. John Romer suit donc l’histoire de la Bible depuis ses origines jusqu’à aujourd’hui : c’est palpitant, car admirablement bien mis en scène et fort instructif. Bravo.
—Nouvelles Clés, (15), Janv./Févr. 1991, (p. 79)

Testament describes the making of the Bible, the creation of both the Old and the New Testaments and charts the book's survival through the long centuries of its life. John Romer uses his considerable experience of the worlds of art history and archaeology to advantage as he unravels the story of the making and the use and misuse of the world's most beautiful and influential book. With a sure touch he sets the historical scene and brings to vivid life the Bible's creators.

I can be a bit snobby about tie-in books, but the documentary series is so good – it wouldn’t be a stretch to say it’s the best I’ve seen – that I thought I’d give this a go. So glad I did. If you’ve seen the series (it’s knocking about on You Tube if you’re interested) you’ll know that a lot of it’s success is down to Romer’s whole manner, and his voice really comes through in the book – which it failed much to do in his earlier book Valley of the Kings. The book and series complement each other very well. The book, of course, has much more detail, but in the series you can see exactly what he’s talking about. That said, the book is very well illustrated, with seven colour plate sections and many many line illustrations. I see from another review on this site that not all editions reprint the illustrations. The first editions have them (both hardback and paperback) as do their 1989 reprints.

The sheer weight of Romer’s knowledge of this subject impressed me, I liked his attitude, and he really is a poet. Here he is answering people who want to date Abraham exactly:

“And if you try to pin these Patriarchs down more precisely in time the whole family will pack their tents and set off along the old trade routes, over horizons that stretch back thousands upon thousands of years.”

I love that equation of time and space. There’s an artistry to the book. Look for dates in the opening chapters and you’ll find few, and those vague. He’s trying to imagine you into the mindset of the time when time was a continuum, not like today where we look at it like a progression.

He’s also very good on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I’ve not read them so can’t make my own judgement, but he argues a fringe theory which makes much more sense than the scholars’ current consensus. ( )

Majestically-written "biography of Scripture"--my phrase, for the author's limning of the character of an obscured and obscuring Text, having a great life and impact on Western civilization. Romer takes as subject, the Bible, with its "incredibly diverse attitudes and opinions". [351] This work boldly historizes (bringing context) and updates (corrects) the books of "Word" which have influenced so many ideas and events. This is more than colorful "history". It bares the teeth and exposes the claws of an internal internecine Megiddo which is still being fought. And which in fact pales in importance to the gentle ainos of beauty, hope and love, we continue to unfold.

Individual personalities -- the crucial roles played by the redactors of the incestuous Adam-Eve Abraham-Sarah epics as they synthesized tales coming to them from Sumer, the Agean, Egypt and Asia, into "Genesis". This is not simple "documentary" history -- that would miss the point of the "sacred" which is unfolded around carefully-constructed questions and numerologically-painted purposes.

The author does cover a lot of ground and time quickly, but he does not "miss" much. For example, although writing about sacred Writings, he skips rapidly over Cleopatra--barely mentioning she was Ruler of the biggest city and bread-basket of the world, Priestess of a global Cult, friend of Hypatia the librarian of Alexandria, and linguistically-fluent as a writer in all seven religiously-significant languages just a generation before the "Christ" began arriving.

Romer does include these significant facts: Mark Antony gave the fertile oasis of Jericho, near the Mount of Olives, as a wedding present to Cleopatra. [67] Herod "backed" Mark Antony in the Roman civil wars, after destroying the last of the Maccabee family and seizing their territories in Galilee. [130] And in 15 BC, Herod began rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, the largest construction project in the world at the time. [131] Romer also describes Antioch, near Jerusalem, filled with Cleopatra's priests and temples, and where Antony and Cleopatra honeymooned. [188]

Romer does not mention that Cleopatra had already seduced two other Caesars, and went to Rome where she built the biggest Temple in the world. However, he does note that the Book of Acts tells us that Paul, Peter and other early preachers went to Antioch where the "followers of Jesus were first called "Christians", connected to the phrase "the catholic church"--literally meaning "universal". Outside of Acts, "there is no mention at all of this period of Christian history in any other literature". [188] Meanwhile we know Cleopatra placed one daughter as Queen in Syria, another in North Africa (Carthago), and began converting Roman temples into "universal" places of healing and worship.

Romer carefully documents how the Roman administrators used Greek and Jewish minorities against each other, even leading persecutions against them, blaming minorities for various plagues and fires. [192]

The ending is amazing. Romer ties in themes few have been able to discern. Of course, most of us are excused by the formidable "drama", suffering, complexity, and untidiness of cultures locked in conflict. His vision penetrates this dust and blood.

"Testament: the Bible and History," by John Romer, is a powerful and compelling book, a fitting vehicle for relating the story of the long historical creation of the Bible.

In the 1990s, I was always thrilled to find a John Romer documentary on TV. My favourite was the 6-part "Ancient Lives: The Story of the Pharaohs’ Tombmakers," in which he documented the archaeological evidence from a little Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings, known now as Deir el Medina. Unlike what we see these days on the cable channels, there was no sensationalism about Romer’s presentation, Romer didn’t need that, because he knew the archaeology so thoroughly that he could let it speak for itself. He had a friendly, informed, matter-of-fact style that carried us with him as he described the work the villagers did in the tombs, and how they spent their time at home in the village.

He brought exactly the same balance of careful scholarship and friendly, down-to-earth interest to the BBC Channel Four television series, "Testament," and its accompanying book. He looks thoroughly at the history and mythology behind the Bible, beginning his study of the Old Testament in ancient Mesopotamia, and moving to Canaan and Israel. He gradually works outward from Israel after Jesus’ day, following the expansion of Christianity and its documents through the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine worlds, following European history from the fall of Byzantium to the rise of the Catholic church, through the Reformation, and into modern times. He ends with the effects of Higher Criticism and Darwin’s theory of evolution on the way the Bible is viewed today.

What Romer excels at is finding meaningful, personal details of history and archaeology and demonstrating how they contributed to the greater whole. For example, he explained very plausibly how several tribes of poor, endangered people in the hills of Canaan could look below at the sophisticated cities of Philistia, and slowly band together in protection against them to become a self-confident nation, using the earliest biblical tales about tribes escaping from Egypt as the cement to glue them together.

Or, later, he described how Charlemagne and his descendants tried to recreate a cultured, educated kingdom using the misunderstood remnants of kingdoms that had risen and fallen before. He takes such details and weaves the stories of individuals through the great book, or collection of books, whose history he describes.

From the creation myths of ancient Sumer to the great Church Councils that decided doctrine based on Constantine’s political goals, to Jerome’s Vulgate Bible (and his problem with women), to the home life of Martin Luther, Romer leads us through history and helps us understand how the biblical texts became what they are today. And how, if one ancient politician had had slightly different goals here, or a troubled monk had taken a different route to resolve his theological questions there, the Bible might have ended up a completely different book. ( )