This is the space I have designated for the English 300 Texts and Contexts class Individual Reading Assignment. The details of the assignment are that we each pick a book that is of interest to us(and pertinent to the class), and then do an online book review and summary to teach the rest of the class. The book that I chose to review is The Bible as Literature by John B. Gabel, Charles B. Wheeler, and Anthony D. York. Since most people don't know, or seem to know, that The Bible can be read as classic literature without the complicated issues of religion involved. I actually enjoy reading it as literature, and I would like to do my review on this book so that perhaps other people can do that as well. This book ties in especially well in chapters three, twelve, and sixteen to what we have learned in class. Those chapters deal with the literary parallels, the ownership of a text, and the different revisions made to The Bible.

The book starts off by defining its purpose (that it is not meant to undermine anyone's religious faith). The purpose of the book is to treat The Bible as a "collection of writings written by real people, in actual historical times." The book states that The Bible is fundamentally no different than the literary works of Homer, Karl Marx, or William Shakespeare. It then embarks upon its journey of illustrating the different genres, common metaphors, geographical and historical settings, different authorship traditions, and popular interpretations of The Bible.

The primary audiences of this book are college professors and students, specifically in the English, Philosophy, and/or Religious departments. These audiences would be most likely to be interested in The Bible as an actual literary text, instead of strictly a religious text.

The Bible as Literature deals with the common literary forms and strategies that occur in The Bible. The most prevalent of these are: hyperbole, metaphor, symbolism, allegory, personification, irony, wordplay, and poetry. These are just different rhetorical strategies used by all authors when deciding how they want to convey the information. Typically, authors stick to a few rhetorical strategies, but The Bible's authors used so many different strategies that just illustrating the strategies become an entertaining exercise in itself, let alone reading the whole text.

Chapter three gives some literary background as to popular ancient near-eastern genres, some of which are found in The Bible. This chapter relates very well to what we�re learning in our English 300 (Texts and Contexts) class. It shows how The Bible parallels to other contemporary literary works, and how each text had an effect on the others. Some of the nonbiblical literature that The Bible shares parallels with are: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enuma Elish, and The Story of Two Brothers. Some of the common themes that these nonbiblical texts share with The Bible are: the story of the flood, creation, and being framed for raping your master's wife. These themes seem to have been common in the near-east, as archeologists are finding more and more instances of them as they unearth more literary works that were once lost to the past. That is not to say that these events in The Bible did not happen, but that they were somehow so ingrained into nearly every society in the ancient near east that the writers decided to include these themes into The Bible. This is an excellent example of how the context of a particular situation affected the writer(s) of The Bible enough to warrant the inclusion of these contemporary themes into the religious guidebook of sorts that is The Bible.

Chapter four goes into detail about how The Bible is sometimes read as an accurate historical account, the limitations of that reading, some of what modern archeologists have found to be true about that time period, and how The Bible has been a good source of history in a different sense.

The book also details the geographical and historical setting of The Bible. It goes into detail about the ancient area of Palestine, the climate, the terrain and landscape, what we know about their urban and daily life, even going into detail about soil conditions and natural resources of the area. These things are important to us as readers so that we may as accurately as possible imagine the attitudes of the early authors and the readers, and how different writing approaches would have worked differently on the original audience. This gives us more contextual information about how the author(s) lived, and worked, and also helps us to better understand the text, since most of it contains detailed geographical directions to cities and important religious locations.

It then explains how the Jewish and Christian canons differ, and how each was selected. It also explains that both canons are closed, and it has been decided long ago that no more literature (inspired or not) is allowed to be included in either the Jewish or Christian version of The Bible. Again, more contextual information to help the reader to better understand the text. This information is important because the text of the Christian Bible is much different than the Hebrew Torah. Depending on the reader�s religious situation, the text might be vastly different or mean something totally different than it would to another reader with a different religious situation.

The Bible as Literature then goes into detail about what we know about the composition of the different sections in The Bible. Chapter seven deals with the Pentateuch, which is the Hebrew name for the first five books of The Bible (also called The Book of Moses since Jewish tradition holds that Moses was the author). Chapter eight talks about the Prophetic Writings, namely the books of The Bible that deal with the lives of the famous ancient Hebrew prophets. The interesting part about this is that the Prophetic Writings are included in the historical section, where The Bible talks about the kings and rulers of the Hebrew Nation. Chapter nine deals with the Wisdom Literature, its supposed authors (who we know very little about), the common patterns of thought, and the common themes in the Wisdom Literature. Chapter ten deals with the Apocalyptic Literature of The Bible. It deals with it not as an attempt to interpret, but to compare the characteristics of the two versions of the apocalypse in The Bible and to explain how Jewish and Christian tradition views these books. This is like a more in-depth explanation of the context of how the Hebrew and Christian contexts differ.

Chapter twelve talks about the Greek context and background of the New Testament, and how the Greek influence on the Christians changed some of their ideas. This is a perfect example of how context can affect a text, as well as illustrating the idea that a text is really made and owned by the reader(s) and not the author(s). The Greek philosophies also influenced Christianity, but none so much as Stoicism. Stoicism emphasizes "morality, the essential oneness of all humankind, and the importance of personal initiative and responsibility." The book contends that it was through these similarities that the Christians found common ground where the two ideas could influence each other, which is how the Christian religion first started to spread. Looking at this example it is easy to see why some people say that it is indeed the reader(s), not the author(s), who own a text. In this case the Greek readers had so much of an influence on the apostles that certain Greek moral ideals were included into The Bible and the rest of Christianity, in order to gain more supporters in Greece.

The next few chapters are almost in opposition to what we have learned in class about how contexts affect texts. These chapters show how the texts can actually have a huge influence on even the micro level on context. Chapter fourteen and fifteen deal with the Gospel, Acts, and the Letters sections of the Christian Bible, and explain them in the same ways that it explained the Jewish sections. Chapter sixteen talks about the "Text of the Bible" and how it has been revised over the centuries, the different versions of The Bible that were in place at one time or another, and why there is only one accepted version in each religion today. Chapter seventeen deals with the issues involved in translating The Bible, and how that affects interpretation and religious beliefs based simply on word choice. Again, this is an example of how not only the context affects the text, but also how the text can and does affect the context on every level from the micro to the macro.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, since it was almost against what I'd been taught growing up that The Bible can be read as classic literature without the complicated issues of religion involved. This book relates so very well to our English 300 Texts and Contexts class. It shows how both texts and contexts affect each other, and how the individual readers can have such an overwhelming affect on the author(s) of a text, that the text is actually changed to fit the reader�s views. Again, I would like to state that the purpose of this book (and incidentally it's review) is not meant to undermine anyone's religious faith. The purpose of the book is to treat The Bible as a "collection of writings written by real people, in actual historical times." It says that The Bible (minus the religious implications) can be treated exactly like the literary works of Homer, Karl Marx, William Shakespeare and any other writer. The different genres, common metaphors, geographical and historical settings, different authorship traditions, and popular interpretations, all make up a wonderful collection of texts in The Bible, and The Bible as Literature: An Introduction does an excellent job of explaining them all, as well as melding them into a perfect example of a book that illustrates how texts, contexts, readers, and authors all affect each other.

Bibliography

Gabel, John B; Wheeler, Charles B; York, Anthony D. The Bible as Literature: An Introduction (Fourth Edition). New York, Oxford. Oxford University Press. 2000.