Literary Bible

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.

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.

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.

In Reading the Bible, Dr. Bill Creasy takes you on an extraordinary adventure through the entire Bible, introducing you to unforgettable characters, gripping drama, uproarious comedy, and profound tragedy, all the while examining the literary genres and rhetorical strategies that make the Bible the greatest story ever told.

John Kennedy Toole - who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces - wrote The Neon Bible for a literary contest at the age of 16. The manuscript languished in a drawer and became the subject of a legal battle among Toole's heirs. It was only in 1989, 35 years after it was written and 20 years after Toole's suicide at 31, that this amazingly accomplished and evocative novel was freed for publication.

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.

In this updated edition of the popular textbook An Introduction to the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann and Tod Linafelt introduce the listener to the broad theological scope of the Old Testament, treating some of the most important issues and methods in contemporary biblical interpretation. This clearly written textbook focuses on the literature of the Old Testament as it grew out of religious, political, and ideological contexts over many centuries in Israel's history.

The many voices in scripture form a dialogue with readers, which produce theological truths that are larger than the individual parts. This introduction is informed by both literary theory and theology. It groups sections of the whole Bible together by genre. Each section identifies and describes the genre (such as historiography, poetry, prophecy, gospel, letter, apocalypse), and then moves into a discussion about the literary characteristics and theological insights.

When Luke graduates from Wharton with his MBA, his father, CEO and co-founder of Fortune 500 Crisp’s Copy Centers, is ready to share some good news: he wants to turn the family business over to his son. But Luke has other plans. Taking control of his trust funds, Luke leaves home to pursue a life of wanton pleasure seeking. But when his funds run out, so do his friends. Humbled and alone, Luke takes a job at one of his father's copy centers.

Popular writer and teacher Jeannine Brown shows how a narrative approach illuminates each of the Gospels and highlights the overarching stories. This book offers a corrective to tendencies to read the Gospels piecemeal, one story at a time. It is filled with examples that show how narrative criticism brings the text to life, making it ideal for courses on the Gospels. Listeners will gain hands-on tools and perspectives to interpret the Gospels as whole stories.

Proverbs: Audio Lectures provides students of the Bible with a careful analysis and interpretation of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament book of Proverbs, quickly allowing viewers to grasp the big idea of each passage and how it fits in the larger context.

Galatians 1-3: Audio Lectures features top New Testament scholar Thomas R. Schreiner teaching through Galatians 1-3 in these engaging and challenging lessons. These lessons help bring the meaning of one of Paul's great letters into the 21st century. As he works his way through Galatians 1-3 passage-by-passage, Schreiner focuses on the textual structure of the book, enabling viewers to better understand the literary elements of Galatians, comprehend the author's revolutionary goals, and ultimately discover the book's vital claims upon the church today.

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.

The Dirty Parts of the Bible is a humorous adventure across America during the Great Depression - a rollicking tale of love and liquor, preachers and prostitutes, trains and treasure, sure to appeal to fans of O Brother Where Art Thou?, Water for Elephants, Mark Twain, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash. It's 1936, and Tobias Henry is stuck in the frozen hinterlands of Michigan. Tobias is obsessed with two things: God and girls. Mostly girls, of course. But being a Baptist preacher's son, he can't escape God.

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.

Reverend Maloney isn't the world's greatest spiritual advisor. He drinks gin out of his coffee cup and has sex dreams about the Holy Ghost. His best friend Eli isn't perfect either, but he's a chess genius, so Maloney sees an opportunity in traveling around the country so Eli can win major chess tournament after chess tournament (while Maloney pockets Eli's winnings).

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.

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.

The Gospel according to John has always been recognized as different from the "synoptic" accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But what explains the difference? In this new translation and verse-by-verse commentary, Michael Pakaluk suggests an answer and unlocks a 2,000-year-old mystery. Mary's Voice in the Gospel According to John reveals the subtle but powerful influence of the mother of Jesus on the fourth Gospel.