Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The Bible is too important to be left to believers

But beneath the sneering, it might have something important – if also wrong – to say

issue 06 August 2016

May I write a review of a review? I have to get this out of my system, having been unable to sleep last night, for anger at Christopher Howse’s beastly, scoffing and unjust treatment of a new book: Simon Loveday’s The Bible for Grown-Ups, reviewed in our 30 July issue. Somebody needs to call a halt to the tedious practice of using review to show off at somebody else’s expense.

It happens that I feel a special protectiveness towards this book, having seen the manuscript last year and encouraged its author to seek a publisher. Icon books have now published him, and done his study proud.

The book deserves it. Let me tell you first (as Mr Howse, who writes about religion for a national newspaper, finds no time to tell his readers) what Mr Loveday sets out to do. Many valuable studies of the Bible place the Christian (and, more generally, faith-based) message of the great book at the centre of the examination.

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