The author, one of the half-dozen leading computer scientists in the world, spent his weekends for five years preparing this striking tribute to the Bible. This amateur theologian and master writer and teacher used a form of stratified sampling to select 59 verses, which he studied in detail and retranslated into modern English. He wrote a three-page explanation and justification of each verse, always recasting its meaning to be consistent with current thinking, and commissioned 59 calligraphers to do full-page four-color illuminations of the verses.
Knuth composed the book with his TEX system, using typefaces he developed with METAFONT, prepared the illustrations with Adobe computer facilities, and had the softcover volume bound using Smythe-sewing. The physical result is magnificent. The text refers to computing and mathematics only in passing and in terms suitable to the religious laypeople it addresses. It tells much about the Bible but even more about the author, who is revealed as gentle, kind, loving, extremely intelligent, God-fearing-and-loving, and a writer and teacher without peer. Enormous effort was spent in tracking down the origins and the many interpretations that have been made of each verse. The book shows the result of exactly the kind of unremitting searching and clear reasoning and explaining that Knuth did in his computing masterworks.
Every serious teacher of Bible study classes must have and use this book, and every friend and admirer of Knuth, the author of the series The art of computer programming, should get it for its insight into the heart of the writer. May we now hope that he will turn his enormous talent to the completion of the long-awaited volume 4 of The art of computer programming.
