About
The book, the scribe, and the letters
The book
Why the Bible Began
Every card here comes from Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins (Cambridge University Press, 2023), the book these cards were built from.
Why did no other ancient society produce something like the Bible? The answer in this book is that the Bible was written by a conquered people. Forged after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, it makes not victory but total defeat the foundation of a new idea of belonging — a blueprint for a community that could survive the loss of its king and its land. That is why it reads as literature for the losers of history, which is to say, for most of us on most days.
The book won the 2024 PROSE Award in the humanities from the Association of American Publishers and was named to The New Yorker’s “Best Books we read in 2023.”
The scribe
Jacob L. Wright
Jacob L. Wright is professor of Hebrew Bible at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where he is also an associate faculty member at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Before joining Candler in 2007 he taught for several years at the University of Heidelberg; he earned his doctorate at the University of Göttingen.
His earlier books include Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (2004), which won a 2008 Templeton Prize for first books in religion, King David and His Reign Revisited (2013), and David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (2014), which received the Nancy Lapp Popular Book Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research.
His online course, The Bible’s Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future, has drawn more than 60,000 students since it launched in 2014.
The letters
The Daily Scribe
One short letter each morning from the Hebrew Bible: a passage, a reflection you can read in about two minutes, and one question to carry into the day. A year of them, each month taken up with one practice of living together.
Launching soon
The Daily Scribe is not open yet — the first letter goes out in January. When it is, signing up will take a few seconds and cost nothing.
While you wait, all 1,000 cards are here and free to scroll, and you can build a reading plan of your own.
A year of practices
- JanuaryBeginnings
- FebruaryTrust
- MarchResponsibility
- AprilMemory
- MayJustice
- JuneHospitality
- JulyWilderness
- AugustLeadership
- SeptemberRepentance
- OctoberLament
- NovemberGratitude
- DecemberHope