This week ABC Online is featuring an article titled What history really tells us about Jesus’ birth, pointing out that the inn, the shepherds and animals; pretty much everything we think we know about the Christmas Story is historically wrong. So, yes, Christmas is as good a time as any to take a closer look at the New Testament, not for religious reasons, but for the importance it has in Western literature. So in between doing festive season stuff around the house, I’ve been taking short breaks to read The New Testament as Literature, a Very Short Introduction, by Kyle Keefer.

As Keefer says in this interesting VSI, scholarly interpretations of The New Testament have been around for centuries, and the book has been read by more groups and individuals than any other book ever written. It is not only read for religious reasons by Christians, but also for cross-cultural interfaith understanding, as well as by people of no religion who want to discredit it. But for many, it’s the NT’s place in literature that matters, whether that’s in books with explicitly Christian themes like Paradise Lost or The Pilgrim’s Progress, or books like Ulysses of Absalom, Absalom! that allude to biblical language and themes undogmatically.

Keefer, who is Assistant Professor of Religion in the Bible Belt of the USA, is interested in the intersection of the Bible and the arts, and so am I. Although I don’t have a religious bone in my body I love looking at early religious art, illuminated manuscripts, Russian icons, and stained glass windows. Church architecture is sublime, and the music written for religious purposes by the great composers, is, I think, among the most beautiful that there is. And although I strongly disapprove of monarchies of all kinds, I am inclined to be more tolerant of the dead ones in Europe because, even though they did it for their own aggrandisement, they commissioned such beautiful art works – which (in mature democracies that have abolished the monarchy) are now accessible to the public.

But it is the influence of the Bible in literature that interests me most...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/12/28/the-new-testament-as-literature-a-very-short... ( )

summer-2013, tbr-busting-2013, fraudio, nonfiction
Read on August 25, 2013

Narrated by Jonathon Walker.

4* Sexuality
4* The New Testament as Literature
3* Paul
4* Racism
3* Ancient Egypt
4* Witchcraft
3* The Book of Mormon
4* Druids
4* Forensic Psychology
3* Forensic Science

Points:
1. Paul. How can he be good to the cause.
2. Revelation as the first fantasy novel
3. "I only know two kinds of people, those who believe in good and evil, and those that don't" BWHAHAHAHAH
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