Scripture under the microscope
From Genesis to genetics, scientist Steve Jones applies modern methodology to update the holy book, writes Steven Shapin
The Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science
by Steve Jones
Little, Brown
You've always thought of the Bible as an early science text. You'd like to compare its factual content with what modern experts have to say. The Old Testament, for example, has all those begats, but little or nothing about the mechanics of generation; it records the ages of the patriarchs, topped by Methusaleh's 969, but you'd like to find out what life scientists now think about human longevity and its prospects.
The Serpent's Promise, then, is the book you've been waiting for, its title an allusion to the eye-opening and the knowledge-of-all-things the snake promised Eve in Eden. You will not have been wholly satisfied with Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, since what you have been searching for isn't a foam-flecked denunciation of religious ignorance, lies and superstitions, but a calmer and more patiently informative update of the good book.
You will not have been in the market for one of the many current suggestions about how science and religion can carve up the culture and divide authority without serious inconvenience to each other: it's not cultural harmony you really want but solid information.
You will surely be open-minded enough about the stories respectively told by scripture and science to have reserved judgment on their validity and to be on the lookout for a book that will sort things out, even though it's pretty clear from the cover and first pages that The Serpent's Promise is going to side with science.