There is a growing interest in the gnostic and other non-canonical Christian writings from the first centuries of the Church, and increased curiosity (and suspicion of conspiracies and cover-ups) about how the canon of the Bible came to be settled and why there are different Protestant and Catholic versions. Should the so-called 'Apocryphal' Books be regarded as part of the Bible or not? Did the early Church deliberately suppress alternative gospels because they would have threatened its power? The Story of the Bible is an authoritative, balanced and entertaining introduction to the controversial story of how the Bible 'arrived', by a leading international biblical scholar.