n the world of scholarship, the Bible is usually viewed as a ancient book, a product of the past, an inheritance, a heritage; it is essentially a book with origins. These lectures adopt an opposite starting point: that the Bible is in the modern world, a physical object strewn about the world of today, an in-print book that real people are reading at this very minute. So the focus here is not on the origins of the Bible but on its reception, not of what its authors may have intended it to mean, but on what its readers today take it to mean. In conversational style, David Clines enquires after the Bible and the Academy, the Bible and Culture, the Bible and the Public, the Bible and the Church--and offers his own reflections and admonitions. This is a corrected reprint of the 1997 edition. So the focus here is not on the origins of the Bible but on its reception, not of what its authors may have intended it to mean, but on what its readers today take it to mean. In conversational style, David Clines enquires after the Bible and the Academy, the Bible and Culture, the Bible and the Public, the Bible