Professor Dodd's answer to the question, 'what is the Bible' is that it is 'a unity of diverse writings which together are set forth by the Church as a revelation of God in history'. In the four earlier chapters of this digitally reprinted edition of his 1946 work he examines these diverse writings in their historical setting, and makes clear their claim to unity. In the three subsequent chapters he discusses in greater detail the idea of history as revelation, considering what special significance that idea confers upon the Church, and upon non-biblical history relating to the troubled events of the mid twentieth-century; and finally, what an acceptance of the idea of history as revelation implies for the individual in his own time and circumstances.