 First edition cover. | |
| Author | Irving Wallace |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mystery |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | March 27, 1972 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 576 (first edition) |
| ISBN | 0-6712-1153-6 |
The Word is a 1972 mystery thriller novel by American writer Irving Wallace, which explores the origin of the New Testament of the Bible.
The plot of the novel is based around the discovery within Roman ruins of a new gospel written by Jesus' younger brother, James in the first century. In the gospel, many facts of Jesus' life, including the years not mentioned in the Bible, are revealed not to be as factual as they were once thought to be. Steven Randall, a divorced public relations executive running his own company in New York City, is the man hired by New Testament International, an alliance of American and European Bible publishers, to give publicity to James' Gospel as published by them. The project has been top-secret for six years, and now it is about to be unveiled to a world long in need of Christian revival. However, as Steven gets more involved in the project he runs into several questionable circumstances, as radical clerics centered in Central Europe oppose the publication of the document, since it would give ammunition for the conservative churches to keep the flow of worship from the top to the bottom, instead of bringing the faith to the masses. A struggle for control of the World Council of Churches, the suspicious absence in the project of archeologist Prof. Augusto Monti, the original discoverer – and whose daughter Angela is a potential love interest for Steve –, and the potential notion that the newly discovered gospel itself is a forgery made in the 20th century instead of a legitimate historical document, all are guaranteed to make Steve question the worth of the new job he is undertaking, and the newly re-found faith in God he acquired along with it.
Wallace touches on several topics related to the origin of the Bible, and current issues of Christianity, while writing the book:
The Word was a New York Times best seller. It spent 31 weeks on the list, two of which were at #1. [1]
The book was made into an eight-hour miniseries (4 episodes - 2 hr. each) that aired on CBS Nov 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th, 1978. It starred David Janssen as Steven, Kate Mulgrew as Steven's first lover Darlene (renamed Tony in the TV version), Florinda Bolkan as Angela, James Whitmore as George Wheeler, Eddie Albert as Ogden Towery, Geraldine Chaplin as Naomi Dunn, Hurd Hatfield as Cedric Plummer, John Huston as Nathan Randall, John McEnery as Florian Knight, Ron Moody as LeBrun, Diana Muldaur as Claire Randall, Janice Rule as Barbara Randall, Martha Scott as Sarah Randall, Nicol Williamson as Maertin de Vroome, and Mario Scaccia as Prof. Monti. Tessie O'Shea, a British singer who does not appear in the book, makes a cameo as herself. [2] A cut, 3 hour version was released on VHS in 1996. The entire miniseries has never been released on home video in any form.
Apocrypha are written works, often of unknown authorship or doubtful origin. In Christianity, the word apocryphal (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were to be read privately rather than in the public context of church services -- edifying Christian works which were not considered canonical Scripture. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the word apocrypha came to mean "false, spurious, bad, or heretical".
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as sacred scripture by Christians.
Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact". Some equate inerrancy with biblical infallibility; others do not.
William Barclay was a Scottish author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister, and Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow. He wrote a popular set of Bible commentaries on the New Testament that sold 1.5 million copies.
The King James Only movement asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is superior to all other translations of the Bible. Adherents of the King James Only movement, mostly members of Conservative Anabaptist, Conservative Holiness Methodist, and some Baptist churches, believe that the KJV needs no further improvements because it is the greatest English translation of the Bible which was ever published, and they also believe that all other English translations of the Bible which were published after the KJV was published are corrupt.
Partial Bible translations into languages of the English people can be traced back to the late 7th century, including translations into Old and Middle English. More than 100 complete translations into English have been written.
The Douay–Rheims Bible, also known as the Douay–Rheims Version, Rheims–Douai Bible or Douai Bible, and abbreviated as D–R, DRB, and DRV, is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, in the service of the Catholic Church. The New Testament portion was published in Reims, France, in 1582, in one volume with extensive commentary and notes. The Old Testament portion was published in two volumes twenty-seven years later in 1609 and 1610 by the University of Douai. The first volume, covering Genesis through Job, was published in 1609; the second, covering Psalms to 2 Maccabees plus the three deutero-canonical books of the Vulgate appendix following the Old Testament, was published in 1610. Marginal notes took up the bulk of the volumes and offered insights on issues of translation, and on the Hebrew and Greek source texts of the Vulgate.
In Christianity, disciple primarily refers to a dedicated follower of Jesus. This term is found in the New Testament only in the Gospels and Acts. In the ancient world, a disciple is a follower or adherent of a teacher. Discipleship is not the same as being a student in the modern sense. A disciple in the ancient biblical world actively imitated both the life and teaching of the master. It was a deliberate apprenticeship which made the fully formed disciple a living copy of the master.
Liberal Christianity, also known as Liberal Theology and historically as Christian Modernism, is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by taking into consideration modern knowledge, science and ethics. It emphasizes the importance of reason and experience over doctrinal authority. Liberal Christians view their theology as an alternative to both atheistic rationalism and theologies based on traditional interpretations of external authority, such as the Bible or sacred tradition.
Donald Arthur Carson is an evangelical biblical scholar. He is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and president and co-founder of the Gospel Coalition. He has written or edited about sixty books and currently serves as president of the Evangelical Theological Society.
The temptation of Christ is a biblical narrative detailed in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. After being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus was tempted by the devil after 40 days and nights of fasting in the Judaean Desert. At the time, Satan came to Jesus and tried to tempt him. Jesus having refused each temptation, Satan then departed and Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his ministry. During this entire time of spiritual battle, Jesus was fasting.
Bart Denton Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Scottish Bible Society (SBS), founded in 1809 as the Edinburgh Bible Society, amalgamated in 1861 with the Glasgow Bible Society to form the National Bible Society of Scotland, is a Scottish Christian charity that exists to make the Bible available throughout the world.
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is a book by Bart D. Ehrman, a New Testament scholar at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Published in 2005 by HarperCollins, the book introduces lay readers to the field of textual criticism of the Bible. Ehrman discusses a number of textual variants that resulted from intentional or accidental manuscript changes during the scriptorium era. The book made it to The New York Times Best Seller List.
A gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a synopsis, although the word harmony is often used for both.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Christianity:
Traditionally in Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy have been viewed in relation to the "orthodoxy" as an authentic lineage of tradition. Other forms of Christianity were viewed as deviant streams of thought and therefore "heterodox", or heretical. This view was challenged by the publication of Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum in 1934. Bauer endeavored to rethink Early Christianity historically, independent from the views of the current church. He stated that the 2nd-century church was very diverse and included many "heretical" groups that had an equal claim to apostolic tradition. Bauer interpreted the struggle between the orthodox and heterodox to be the "mainstream" Church of Rome struggling to attain dominance. He presented Edessa and Egypt as places where the "orthodoxy" of Rome had little influence during the 2nd century. As he saw it, the theological thought of the "Orient" at the time would later be labeled "heresy". The response by modern scholars has been mixed. Some scholars clearly support Bauer's conclusions and others express concerns about his "attacking [of] orthodox sources with inquisitional zeal and exploiting to a nearly absurd extent the argument from silence." However, modern scholars have critiqued and updated Bauer's model.
In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the King of the Jews, both at the beginning of his life and at the end. In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, e.g., in John 19:3, this is written as Basileus ton Ioudaion.
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Greco-Roman cultural setting of early Christianity, as well as the Pauline Epistles and Gnosticism.