The Bible As Literature

Anderson, Bernhard E. Understanding the Old Testament. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice-Hall, 1986. [BS1197.A63 1986]

College-level introduction to the entire corpus of Old Testament literature, describing its meaning and development within the context of Israelite history.

Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative. N.Y.: Basic Books, 1981. [BS1171.2 .A45]

Alter, Robert. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996.

Scholarly new translation meant to reclaim the meaning and strategies of the original text.

Alter, Robert and Frank Kermode. The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1987.

Forty essays by an international team of biblical and literary scholars. Contributors use the resources of modern literary criticism in the analysis of structures, themes, narrative techniques, and poetic forms.

Armstrong. Karen. In the Beginning. N.Y.: Knopf, 1996.

A popular, but astute, commentary on the tales of Genesis.

Poetry in English inspired by the Bible. Vol. I: Genesis to Malachi. Vol. II: Gospels to Revelations. Arranged in biblical order, these two volumes present the works of more than 300 poets. Each poem responds to a specific passage of the Bible. This unique arrangement reveals the differing ways that poets have retold, contemplated, debated with, or reimagined the language and events of the Bible.

Auerbach, Erich. "Odysseus' Scar," Mimesis. N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957. [PN56.R3 A83 1957]

Bartel, Roland, ed. Biblical Images in Literature. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Forty-one essays on biblical images in fiction, poetry, and drama.

Bates, Ernest Sutherland, ed. (Updated by Lodowick Allison). The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature. Based on King James Version. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

First published in 1935, Bates presents the Bible as a more typical book: he eliminated the traditional double-column format, separated the stories, poems, and songs from the text, introduced quotation marks, and modernized spellings and words when that did not interfere with the majestic rhythm of the KJ original. He also eliminated chapter and verse headings.

Buchmann, Christine and Celina Spiegel. Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible. N.Y.: Fawcett-Columbine, 1994. [BS1171.2 O45 1994]

Twenty-eight essays by prominent women writers including Cynthia Ozick, Ursula LeGuin, Patricia Hampl, Elizibeth Swados, Fay Weldon, and Louise Erdich.

Black, Matthew, and Harold H. Rowley, ed. Peake's Commentary on the Bible.NY: Nelson, 1962. [BS491.B57]

A good one-volume commentary on the Bible, with excellent introductory articles and brief but sound explanations of the text.

Bland, Kalman P. "The Rabinnic Method and Literary Criticism." in Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, ed. Kenneth Gros-Louis, 1972.

Bright, John. A History of Israel. 3rd ed., Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981. [DS121.B72 1981]

Very readable history of Israel.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Frye, Northrop. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. [PN56.B5 F7]

Gabel, John B. And Charles B. Wheeler. The Bible as Literature. 2nd ed., NY: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Gordon, Cyrus. The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations. N.Y.: Norton, 1965. [CB301.G66 1965]

Graves, Robert and Raphael Patai. Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964. [BS1236 G7]

Gros-Louis, Kenneth, ed. Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972. [BS535. G76]

Hamilton, Edith. Spokesmen for God: The Great Teachers of the Old Testament. N.Y.: Norton, 1949. [BS1505. H242]

A layman's approach and no footnotes or references, but helpful on the prophets.

Harris, Stephen. Understanding the Bible. 2nd ed., Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1985. [BS475.2 H32 1985]

Henn, T.R. The Bible as Literature. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1970. [BS535.H45]

Hone, Ralph, ed. The Voice Out of the Whirlwind: The Book of Job. 1972.

A collection of essays on Job.

The Interpreter's Bible. 12 vols. NY: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952. [BS491.2I55]

Volumes in this series can be used only in the library ; they provide introductions to each book in the Bible, along with verse by verse explanatory comments. In Volume I are excellent articles on Israelite history and religion, the development of the literature, texts, and translations.

Jeffrey, David, ed. A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992.

Compendious reference containing nearly 800 articles on biblical names, concepts, and common quotations. Each entry discusses how the word or phrase was used in the Bible and discusses the history of the biblical term in English literature.

Josipovici, Gabriel. The Book of God: A Response to the Bible. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. [BS535.J67 1988]

McConnell, Frank, ed. The Bible and the Narrative Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Discussion of literary approaches to the Bible by distinguished critics.

Meeks, Wayne, ed. The Writings of St. Paul. N.Y.: Norton, 1972. [BS2505 A3 M43]

Metzger, Bruce M. and Roland E. Murphy, ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/Deuterocannonical Books Based on New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. NY: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Includes brief introductions to each book, explanatory comments to the text, and a useful set of maps.

Miles, Jack. God: A Biography. NY: Random House, 1995.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Miles' book shows us a God who evolves through his relationship with man, the image who in time becomes his rival. Brilliant and audacious.

Mitchell, Stephen. Genesis: A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories. N.Y.: Harper- Collins, 1996.

The Genesis text is clarified by separating into their sources stories that were combined by scribes centuries after they were written and omitting all verses that are recognized as scribal additions. Scribal additions are fully translated in an appendix and extensive textual notes.

Moyers, Bill. Genesis: A Living Conversation. NY: Doubleday, 1996.

The transcript of the discussion groups recorded for the PBS series on Genesis.

Reed, Walter. Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature According to Bakhtin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Reed shows how the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament dramatize a set of verbal encounters between God and his people. Analysis of dialogic patterns in Genesis, Job, and Revelations.

Reyken, Leland. "The Epic of Exodus," in The Literature of the Bible., 1969.

____________. "Literary Criticism of the Bible: Some Fallacies." in Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, ed. Kenneth Gros-Louis, 1974.

Sandmel, Samuel. The Genius of Paul. N.Y.: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1958. [BS2505 .S38]

Interesting analysis from a Jewish point of view.

____________. The Hebrew Scriptures, N.Y.: Knopf, 1978. [BS1140.2 .S2]

Sewall, Richard B. "The Book of Job," The Vision of Tragedy,. New ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. [PN1892,S43 1980]

Solle, Dorothee, Joe H. Kirchberger and Herbert Haag. Great Women of the Bible in Art and Literature. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1994. [BS575 S52713 1994]

Explores the various meanings artists have found in the Bible's female figures. Many full color reproductions from the early Christian era to the present, accompanied by texts and commentaries.

Sternberg, Meir. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. [BS535. S725 1985]

Trawick, Buckner. The Bible as Literature (College Outline Series). 1970.

_____________. The New Testament as Literature (Gospels and Acts). N.Y.: Barnes and Noble. [BS2525.T7]

Wojcik, Jan. "Improvising Rules in the Book of Ruth." PMLA, March 1985, pp. 145-153.

Wojcik contents that Boaz, Ruth, and Naomi draw on a rich common store of literary allusions and laws derived from Hebrew literary tradition to create a happy ending for the sterile stories of their individual pasts

Reference:

Harper's Bible Dictionary. Ed. Paul Achtemeier. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985. [BS440.H237 1985] (Does not circulate)

Internet Sources:

http://negus.uchicago.edu:1080/pub/goerwitz/bible_browser/pbeasy.html

Bible Browser developed by Richard Goerwitz of the University of Chicago. Finds references to a word in the Bible and conducts searches far too complex for standard biblical concordances. Various texts include King James, Revised Standard, Latin Vulgate, and five lesser-known translations. Goerwitz attempts to keep site ideologically neutral.