The unique History of the Bible

 A Hindu scholar of the world's religions once said to Lesslie Newbigin:

I can't understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion-and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don't need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside it. 

Newbigin, 1999, A Walk Through the Bible, Louisville, KY: John Knox Westminster Press, 4. See also Lesslie Newbigin, 1989, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 89. 

Taken from an essay Reading the Bible as one Story by Michael Goheen.