Literary Bible

The Bible is the most influential book in Western history. As the foundational text of Judaism and Christianity, the Bible has been interpreted and reinterpreted over millennia, utilized to promote a seemingly endless run of theological and political positions. Adherents and detractors alike point to different passages throughout to justify wildly disparate behaviors and beliefs. Translated and retranslated, these texts lead both to unity and intense conflict.

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

Read by the author. Learn how to read the Bible as literature and fall in love with God's Word. We all want to read the Bible verse-by-verse, cover-to-cover, but what happens when you can't get past Leviticus or bog down and quit in Chronicles? How can you make the journey through the Bible...

Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders - including Eve, who narrates the story - decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

Unique among books that examine the bible as literature, this brilliantly compact introduction offers an intriguing double-edged look at this universal text - a religiously informed literary analysis. The book first explores the major sections of the New Testament - the gospels, Paul's letters, and Revelation - as individual literary documents. Keefer shows how, in such familiar stories as the parable of the Good Samaritan, a literary analysis can uncover an unexpected complexity to what seems a simple, straightforward tale.

You may have heard the saying that the Gospel of John is shallow enough for a child to wade in, yet deep enough for an elephant to swim—meaning that any literate Christian can adequately understand it, but there is depth of meaning below the surface that is well worth the effort to explore. In the Beginning Was the Word invites you to go deeper.

In order to understand, appreciate, and faithfully preach the word of God, pastors must discern the literary nature of the Bible. Instead of just acknowledging the various genres of Scripture, pastors and teachers should allow these genres to influence how the text is approached and communicated. In The Beauty and Power of Biblical Exposition, they will learn how to both read and preach the Bible as a literary anthology.

What is the good life? Proverbs: Audio Lectures, taught by Christopher Ansberry, answers this question across different collections and through different poetic forms, each of which are designed to (trans)form one's character. This project of character formation assumes that wisdom and virtue...

Many Christians view the Bible as an instruction manual. While the Bible does provide instruction, it can also captivate, comfort, delight, shock, and inspire. In short, it elicits emotion - just like poetry. By learning to read and love poetry, says literature Professor Matthew Mullins, listeners can increase their understanding of the biblical text and learn to love God's word more. Each chapter includes exercises and questions designed to help listeners put the book's principles and practices into action.

As Ethan and Jeremiah Mueller lose friends and neighbors to the front lines of World War II, the boys try to make sense of the mounting darkness with their imaginations. In a private, laconic language, they invent stories that mirror the irrational world around them: A chaplain with bad news becomes the Angel of Death, skeletal Nazis lurk around the corner, and the ghost of a dead playmate taps at their bedroom window in the night.

In The Bible Salesman, Preston Clearwater is scoring cash working a car-theft ring in post-World War II North Carolina. When he picks up 19-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier, Preston convinces the kid that he's an FBI spy. And before Henry knows what's up, he finds himself in way over his head with no apparent way out.

Maureen is an English teacher, and she’s had a long day. All she wants is a relaxing night out with friends, a few beers, and maybe the chance to forget the troubles of her past: The gambling ex-husband and the daughter who’d thrown her life away sleeping with married men. But her night—and maybe her life—is thrown off track when she leaves the bar and a man approaches her in the parking lot as she unlocks her car.