Reading the Bible as Literature: An Introduction
Select Format
Select Condition 
Book Overview
Reading the Bible as Literature provides the idealentry-point to the process of reading, understanding, and assessingwhat many recognize to be the important and powerful literature ofthe Bible. Such reading holds potential for helping studentsunderstand literature generally and the Bible in itself. The bookintroduces the tools of literary analysis, including: language andstyle, the formal structures of genre (narrative, drama, andpoetry), character study, and thematic analysis.
The overall organizational structure of the book proceedsincrementally from basic literary elements to higher units of form.Each chapter includes an outline, preliminary considerations thatprovide background and insight into scholarly debates, and anexplanation of the literary qualities of the primary text throughspecific examples, exercises, and directions for furtherstudy.
The book emphasizes the act of reading itself, focusing upon thewhole text as it exists in its current form. It invites anexperiential entering into and reliving of the Bible'sstories, encourages analytical and holistic reading, exploresmultiple interpretations, and embraces a power of languageoriginating in the mythological, metaphorical, and symbolic. Aboveall, the book seeks to return the Bible to the common reader and tobuild in that reader an appreciation for a collection of ancient, literary texts often trivialized by competing theologies ormarginalized by a relentless insistence upon fact, science, andhistory.
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
