The Most Influential Book in History?
Earlier this week, a prominent “public intellectual”, who shall remain unnamed for reasons of relevance, posted the following:
Regardless of how I might feel about the person making the claim, the sentiment got me thinking. I’m not a Christian, nor do I harbour any particular ill will toward Christians. But there’s no denying that the Christian Bible is indeed on the short list of the world’s most “influential” books.
But what are the other contenders? And how can we assess this systematically? Let’s take a stab at it.
Why the Bible Has a Strong Argument
It is demonstrably the most widely distributed book in history, with billions of copies shared worldwide. It has, of course, directly shaped Christianity, which remains the world’s largest religion by number of adherents. As a result, it has influenced laws, ethics, art, literature, music, education, politics, and social movements across much of the world for the last 2,000 years. And one can argue that it helped drive literacy through translation into thousands of languages.
Other Religious Contenders
The Quran has arguably had the deepest influence per believer, as it functions simultaneously as scripture, law, and language model for over a billion people. The Analects are up there, as well, as a defining tome for very large numbers of people, though almost entirely restricted to China.
The Hindu works, like The Upanishads, The Vedas, or even the ancient stories like The Mahabharata and The Ramayana enter the conversation. But it’s difficult to characterize these as a single book. And, like The Analects, their influence is geographically limited.
In fact, I won’t be surprised if most North American readers of this post have even heard of The Analects or The Upanishads.
How About by Political Influence?
The Communist Manifesto influenced governments that ruled roughly a third of humanity during the twentieth century. But that influence has, I would argue, mostly waned.
Less known is Two Treatises of Government by Locke. In it, Locke argued that legitimate political authority is based on the consent of the governed and exists solely to protect fundamental natural rights, including life, liberty, and property. This is the basis of the Age of Enlightenment and much of what we think of as political life today.
Into this category we can place Plato’s The Republic, which has shaped Western political theory, ethics, and metaphysics.
And I would argue that Machiavelli’s The Prince should also enter the conversation, for its emphasis on realism over idealism, in the pragmatic political context.
I’m a great fan of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, having written a book about it. But I must confess that most have not read it, though many should.
By Scientific Influence
Darwin’s On The Origin of Species fundamentally changed humanity’s understanding of life and our place in nature. Similarly, Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica laid the foundations of classical physics and the scientific revolution, which essentially defines the nature of our global civilization today.
Conclusion
If we distill the question down tom “Which book changed the largest number of human lives over the longest period of time?” Then I think The Bible is indeed the correct answer, if you take a sweeping view of the entirety of history over the entire globe. Though, I suspect, scholars in Cairo and Beijing might disagree.
What do you think?
