'Decrying the tendency to compartmentalization and excessive specialization in biblical studies, Trebolle offers a broadly based and "interdisciplinary" history of the Bible, aimed primarily at students. Handy as a reference book, this intelligently constructed and elegantly written text can be read with pleasure. This reader found it hard to put down; it is full of unusual insights, and the wide scope means that it has something new to say to almost everybody.Nicholas R.M. de Lange, Vetus Testamentum, 1995.