The book I found in the library is entitled Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide by Dr. J. P. Fokkelman. I used the Lafayette College card catalog to search for my book. I first searched Noah & the Flood, which took me to Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction by Eric H. Cline on the 2nd floor of the library. However, this book mainly concerned biblical sites and the excavations of these sites, so I figured I would continue my search for a more relevant book. After looking at the books adjacent to this book I found Reading Biblical Narrative.

I was surprised to see how potentially beneficial this book could be for my studies in this course. Many of the learning outcomes of this book run in unison with the learning outcomes of our course. Reading Biblical Narrative teaches amateur readers of the Bible certain skills to enhance their analysis and understanding of the bible. Fokkelman provides the reader with a thorough breakdown of the Bible’s organization, point of view, narration, etc. Reading Biblical Narratives discusses mostly the Old Testament of the Hebrew bible, but does offer some analysis of the New Testament. I thought this to be the most relevant book to this course in this section of the library; especially considering a majority of the surrounding books concerned the Christian Bible.

Rice, John A. The Old Testament in the Life of Today. New York: Macmillan Company, 1921. Print.

My search for a book to use was more difficult than expected. I began my search on the library’s website and went to OneSearch. I typed in Adam and Eve because I find these characters in the Old Testament particularly intriguing. While looking for a book titled “Adam’s Sons, Eve’s Daughters,” (which wasn’t in its right spot on the shelf) I stumbled upon “The Old Testament in the Life of Today” by Rev. John A. Rice.

After  flipping through this book I realized that this one may be even more interesting than the Adam and Eve book I intended on using! The Foreward section of the book strives to inform the audience what the author’s intent is in writing the novel. The author is trying to broadly outline the growth of the Old Testament so the reader can look at the stories within the Old Testament and eventually string them together to get the big picture. The author then states that a difficulty in the way the Scriptures are used comes from the “distance from us of the world out of which they came,” (Rice vii). I found this to be the most important message because the Scripture has little purpose if it cannot be applied to people in their lives today. Other books that surrounded this one were related in the fact that the topic was the Old Testament but the title of Rice’s work seemed most interesting.

 Zeitlin, Irving M. Jesus and the Judaism of His Time. Cambridge: Polity, 1988. Print.

In order to find my book in Skillman, I used the Lafayette Library website catalog. To find the location of my book I searched keywords like “bible” and “Jesus” . That helped me come across the section in the basement where I found this book and a bunch of other ones like it. I was originally searching for another book but found this one to be more interesting at first glance because of the title and the cover art.

The book I chose is called Jesus and the Judaism of His Time. This book explores what life would have been like during the time Jesus was alive.  A lot of the research in this book focused on trying to discover what Judaism in the first century was like. The book also attempts to explore how Jesus understood himself and his role in religion. Charisma and its role in Jesus’s life is also brought up in relation to how Jesus came into his role in early Christianity. The sources used in this text to uncover more about Jesus’s life and Jewish traditions were ancient writers such as Josephus who lived during that time. Other than discussing life in the first century, this book evaluates the legitimacy of certain authors in the New Testament such as Matthew. The straightforwardness of the title kept true to the contents of this book.

Anlezark, Daniel, ed. Old Testament Narratives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2011. Print.

The book that I found in Skillman is called Old Testament Narratives edited and translated by Daniel Anlezark. I found this book by searching the term “Old Testament” in the catalog search box on the Lafayette College Library website. There were over 400 hits, but I found this book to be most intriguing. The other books around it were not of the same subject matter, so I did not find any other relevant books in the area.

When I flipped through the book, I was surprised to see that a lot of it was in another language. There are 5 Old English poems within the book that have been edited and translated (Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, Daniel, and Azarias). They were originally copied at a time when the Anglo-Saxons took an interest in their culture’s poetic tradition in the 10^th century. An Anglo-Saxon cowherd named, Cædmon, composed these poems. Each poem is composed as a narrative that gives a different insight to some of the classic Biblical stories and even discusses stories that are not in the Bible (Lucifer’s envy and God’s punishment for him). Creation, Noah, Abraham, the Exodus of the Israelites, and the story of Daniel are some of the narratives throughout the book. The text of Azarias reveals a different perspective to the story of Daniel.

Schearing, Linda S., and Valarie H. Ziegler. Enticed by Eden: How American Culture Uses, Confuses, (and Sometimes Abuses) Adam and Eve. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2013.

Finding a book can be difficult, but if you use the online catalog you can easily find related books to what you are looking. In my case, I wanted to find a book related to the Bible and interpretation. While doing so, the first book that got my attention was Enticed by Eden: How American Culture Uses, Confuses, (and Sometimes Abuses) Adam and Eve. I decided to search for it and reading the back, I found it very interesting. The back reads: “Sex, seduction, and perfect marriage. Though it may not have been the intent of Genesis 1-3, the biblical first couple has been used for generations to sell consumable goods and strange ideologies –both salacious and holy—to willing western buyers.” This got my attention and I wanted to know what the books purpose was. As I kept reading, the authors mention how both religious and secular groups have recast the archetypal image of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden. To do this, they have consulted cultural artifacts and demonstrate how the ancient family has been born again in the image of man, woman, and marketplace. I think this book is a great example of interpreting the story of Adam and Eve and this book shows us that interpretations can change over time.

While I was checking out Enticed by Eden,I came across multiple books that talked about Evolution and Creation. This didn’t really surprise me as there is a lot of controversy on which one is correct. What really got my attention was the fact that a night before I saw a video that talked about creation and that discredited evolution. The speaker in the video had many interesting point like, how much faith does it take an atheist to believe that creation occurred due to an accident that started with one cell? How can chaos create order? And he said that how can intelligence of human beings be an accident, this required a creator, an intelligent creator. To further this, he says, the word universe means “one single spoken statement”. That is exactly what took God to create, we see this in Genesis where He said “let there be” and it was created. 

Marc Zvi Brettler, Petter Enns, Daniel J. Harrington, editors. The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

The Bible and the Believer looks like a great book for thinking about how one can study biblical texts using academic methods but also still find those same texts meaningful in a faith-based religious context. Brettler, Enns, and Harrington offer their personal perspectives as a Jew, Protestant, and Catholic – and each one responds to the others’ perspectives. I thought it would be a great book for anyone struggling to make sense of the differences between scholarly study and more conventional religious reading of the Hebrew Bible. For some people, studying the Hebrew Bible academically can make returning to their religious readings difficult, but these scholars show how the two are compatible for them.

While I was checking out The Bible and the Believer, I was also really excited to find Text, Image, and Otherness in Children’s Bibles: What is in the Picture?, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper.   There are chapters on “Otherness, Ideology, and Illustration of Daniel 6,” South African children’s Bibles, and the flood. I’m interested in visual culture, especially in how images are interpretations of verbal text and can lead us to read verbal text differently. I have read some other articles on the history of printing bibles with images, but this is a great addition to those ideas.