In the beginning of American history, the Word was in Spanish, Latin, and native languages like Nahuatal. But while Spanish and Catholic Christianity reached the New World in 1492, it was only with the coming of the Mayflower that English-language Bibles and Protestant Christendom arrived. The Puritans brought with them intense devotion to Scripture, as well as their ideal of Christendom - a civilization characterized by a thorough intermingling of the Bible with everything else. That ideal began this country's journey from the Puritan's City on a Hill to the Bible-quoting country the U.S. remains to this day. In the Beginning shows how important the Bible remained, even as that Puritan ideal changed considerably through the early stages of American history. It is no exaggeration to claim that the Bible has been -- and by far -- the single most widely-read text, distributed object, and cited or referenced book in all of American history. Author Mark Noll shows how seventeenth-century Americans received conflicting models of scriptural authority from Europe: the Bible under Christendom (high Anglicanism), the Bible over Christendom (moderate Puritanism), and the Bible against Christendom (Anabaptists, enthusiasts, Quakers). In the eighteenth century, the colonists turned increasingly to the Bible against Christendom, a stance that fueled the Revolution against Anglican Britain and prepared the way for a new country founded on the separation of church and state. One of the foremost scholars of American Christianity, Mark Noll brings a wealth of research and wisdom to In the Beginning. This book is the first of a projected two-volume study of the Bible in American history, and provides a sweeping, engaging, and insightful survey of the relationship between the Bible and public issues from the beginning of European settlement. A seminal new work from a world-class scholar, In the Beginning offers a fresh account of the contested, sometimes ambiguous, but definite biblical roots of American history.

About the Author
Mark A. Noll is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and author of numerous books, including America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (OUP 2002), and Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2011).

Reviews
This is a superb book. In his lucid prose, Noll clarifies a complex topic and weaves an astounding number of sources into an engaging narrative. The result is an authoritative history of the Bible in early America that refocuses our view of the nation and its most influential book. * James P. Byrd, Journal of Church and State *
In the Beginning Was the Word offers genuinely fresh insights into the roots of American ideology. * Theo Hobson, Times Literary Supplement *
In the Beginning Was the Word is the fruit of more than thirty years of reflection on the public meaning of the Bible in American history ... this work is characterized by both clarity of writing and complexity of argument. The book offers an important expansion of Noll's narrative of how the God of the Bible became "America's God." * Beth Barton Schweiger, Journal of American History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190263980
Author Mark A. Noll
Format Hardback
Page Count 448
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 703g
Dimensions(mm) 163mm * 231mm * 38mm