The first volume of The new Cambridge history of the Bible represents a nearly 50 per cent expansion from its ancestor. It is a tome of deep, sophisticated learning, with new emphases and further refinements. Comparison with the original illustrates the seismic changes in scholarship on the Bible over the past forty years. A few minutes scanning the table of contents offers encouraging signs that the fields of biblical studies, early Judaism and early Christianity have progressed in new directions.

Although present in the first Cambridge history of the Bible, published in 1970, issues of canon and text are more pronounced, and altered by the evidence. Numerous essays contain multiple references to canonicity and textual plurality, particularly with the Old Testament texts that we now know achieved stability only in the Common Era. The ‘textual plurality’ to which Qumran and the Septuagint attest bleeds over into canon debates, since we now have copious amounts of writings used in similar ways to what later became canonical Scripture. In some cases, these writings might well have been produced to replace those that later emerged as canonical. The earlier CHB had a chapter in its ‘Old Testament’ section on the ‘Canonical and non-canonical’ Old Testament, reflecting a binary that we would now consider oversimplified. In the NCHB the section itself is rebranded ‘Hebrew Bible and Old Testaments’, showing a concern both for the non-Christian origins of the text and the diversity that early Christians experienced with this collection, while the chapter written by the outright authority on the issue, John Barton, is appropriately re-signified with a plural as ‘The Old Testament canons’. Therein, Barton recognises a persisting imbroglio from which we need still to escape: ‘The tendency of scholarship to distinguish between “biblical” and “non-biblical” manuscripts among the finds at Qumran has the unfortunate effect of prejudging the question of the status of such works: at the time, and within this community, there is no way of knowing that the distinction was meaningful’.

With all this new attention on the diversity of scriptural collections and the far messier picture of the formation of the Bible in antiquity, it is unfortunate that John Collins's chapter on ‘The “apocryphal” Old Testament’ hardly discusses the books commonly understood as ‘apocryphal’. A simple change in the chapter's title would have solved the problem, as Collins, masterfully I might add, rather discusses the pseudepigraphical works. Still, in the same vein, I would applaud Collins and/or the editors for placing the word ‘apocryphal’ in quotation marks, since to do so acknowledges the prejudice inherent in reducing the discussion to ‘canonical’ and ‘apocryphal’ books: what are ‘apocryphal’ books to Protestants are ‘canonical’ books to others.

The fifth part, ‘The Reception of the Bible in the Post-New Testament period’, is essentially about the reception of the Christian Bible in the post-New Testament period. Günter Stemberger's earlier chapter on rabbinic exegesis and William Horbury's on ‘Biblical interpretation in Greek Jewish writings’ appear in the second part under ‘Hebrew Bible and Old Testaments’ but could have been included in a part v with a different title such as ‘The reception of the Bible in early Jewish and Christian writings’. The fourth part – ‘Biblical Versions other than the Hebrew and the Greek’ – offers three chapters on the Latin, Syriac and Coptic versions. Absent from this volume, but relegated to the next, are chapters on the Armenian and Georgian, even though they certainly appeared before 600.

Pierre-Maurice Bogaert's discussion of the Vetus Latina and the Latin Bible's transition to Jerome's Vulgate is now the authoritative essay. The advances in Qumran research and its effect on the picture of the biblical text are famous, but the work carried out by the Vetus Latina Institute in Beuron over the past several decades have also substantially enhanced our understanding of the Bible in the Christian West. The Vetus Latina may have been a complete Bible translation from the Greek Septuagint or it may have been a collection of ad hoc translations as need arose — Bogaert assumes the former. There were varieties, too: African, Italian and other European manuscripts raise the possibility of various Veteres Latinae. The Roman African origin may be the most plausible even if one might assume Rome or Italy; the production of Latin Christian literature in North Africa and the preference for Greek in Rome offer clues. Earlier generations had imagined a clean and swift break with the older Latin translations once Jerome appeared on the scene, but we now know that Jerome's Vulgate did not win the day until well into the medieval period. Until then, the Vetus Latina continues in manuscripts, lectionaries and even in medieval literature.

Although the final section is largely Christian in orientation, the chapters on early exegesis of the Bible are delightful. The co-editor of this volume, James Carleton Paget, has written a significant overview of ‘The interpretation of the Bible in the second century’, and therein we learn not only of exegetical practices but also of the Early Church's wrestling with both text and canon. Major figures –Origen, Eusebius, Jerome and Augustine – are given considerable attention – by Gilles Dorival, Michael J. Hollerich, Adam Kamesar and Carol Harrison – respectively commensurate with their impact on Christian exegetical history. More thematic treatments follow: Mark Edwards on ‘Figurative readings’, Francis M. Young on ‘Traditions of exegesis’, Mark W. Elliott on ‘Exegetical genres in the patristic era’, and Gerard Rouwhorst on ‘The Bible in liturgy’ are the highlights for the Greek and Latin material, while J. F. Coakley (if briefly) introduces the reader to the Syriac exegetical tradition, a new chapter that bears witness to the last forty years' burgeoning of Syriac scholarship. When the original CHB was finding its first readers, the field of Syriac Studies was emerging from embryonic form. A concluding chapter by Lucy Grig on ‘The Bible in popular and non-literary culture’ is no less important, and also suggests ways in which the modern study of the Bible has evolved.

In most cases one could not conceive of more authoritative scholars to have written the chapters in this collection. On almost every topic – from Jan Joosten on Septuagint and New Testament Greek to Emanuel Tov on the Hebrew Bible, to David C. Parker on the New Testament text and versions to Dale C. Allison, Jr, on the use of the Old Testament in the New – the editors have chosen the foremost authorities. The NCHB benefits from immense changes in the fields of biblical studies, early Jewish and Christian history, as well as archaeology and late antiquity. The editors and contributors have captured these shifts and have set before us a new volume that will be useful for years to come.