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Hello, in the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament appear to agree about the power

of money.

Ecclesiastus says, money answers all things, and Timothy says the love of money is the

root of all evil.

It's a theme that seems to echo down the centuries,

at least until Karl Marx writes Dust Capital,

but even on to the cast of cabaret crying out

money makes the world go round. But our economic

factors really are the fundamental pulse of all historical events. Even more simply can

everything in the end be brought down to the influence of money.

In Neil Ferguson's new book, The Cash Nexus, Money and Power in the Modern World,

he makes a case against economic determinism.

He's professor of political and financial History at the University of Oxford and

is with me now.

Also here to discuss the role of Money and History is Richard J Evans, Professor of Modern History

of Cambridge and Jane Humphrey's Reader in economic history at Oxford University.

Neil Ferguson, before we get into the economic arguments, what grip has the Bible

the older than the New Testament had on economic thought.

An enormous grip in the sense that its moral critique of the power of money has proved very enduring.

I mean, even those who purport to be atheists are in some ways steeped in the kind of moral

...