Keith Ward introduces this volume on the world's greatest ever bestseller by suggesting that the Bible is neither a book dictated by God, as some believe, nor just a set of out-dated taboos and politically slanted histories, as those at the opposite extreme maintain.

Rather, it is a very mixed set of documents, by many different writers, from many different times, which records the struggle of many people in one particular religious tradition to respond to their discernments of a transcendent spiritual power.

What makes the Bible distinctive among other religious books is that the dominant image of transcendence, of spirituality, that slowly develops in its pages is the image of a power that helps humans to seek a moral goal in history even when such a thing would seem impossible to achieve - were it not for the power of grace.

The Bible is, in short, a spiritual text.