Bible As Literature Quotes & Sayings

Scholars of the Hebrew bible define something they call wisdom literature and I would say clearly the poetry of wisdom is something that comes with age or that might come with age which has to do with reflecting on experience. — Edward Hirsch

Whether you interpret the Bible as literature or as the final word of whatever God may be, Christianity has given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and around our necks, and we have just taken that for granted all of our lives. — Marilyn Manson

Texts like the Bible and the works of the holy elders were written under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The person who studies them partakes of this Divine Grace in a mystical way. The soul is nourished with Grace even if the person who reads such literature does not understand the meaning of what is being read. "Just by reading this material," he claimed, "the individual becomes spiritually empowered by the Grace embedded in the words themselves. — Kyriacos C. Markides

If one discards the Bible as being unreliable, then he must discard almost all literature of antiquity. — Josh McDowell

The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct. — Henry Ward Beecher

Different authors have different points of view. You can't just say, 'I believe in the Bible. — Bart D. Ehrman

A major premise of my fictional novel Noah Primeval is that the gods of the ancient world were real spiritual beings with supernatural powers. Thus, the mythical literature and artistic engravings of the gods that have been uncovered by Mesopotamian archeology reflect a certain amount of factual reality. The twist is that these gods are actually fallen divine angelic beings called "Sons of God" (Bene Elohim) in the Bible. — Brian Godawa

Biblical interpretation is not a passive matter. It requires our own active negotiation. When we pretend that, deep down, all the voices are really saying the same thing and ought to be able to get along, we forfeit our responsibility as inheritors of this richly, sometimes disturbingly, contradictive literature. — Timothy Beal

My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature. — John Ruskin

Every generation looks at literature through the lens of their own experience, but with the Bible, everyone gets apprehensive and thinks it'll be too stuffy. — Walter Kirn

All literature up to today is sexist. The Muses never sang to the poets about liberated women. It's the same old chanson from the Bible and Homer through Joyce and Proust. — Allan Bloom

To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist - all this is but the beginning of wisdom. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion, I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it. — Ken Follett

The Bible is not just one book, but an entire library, with stories, songs, poetry, letters and history, as well as literature that might more obviously qualify as 'religious.' — John Drane

I'm a reader and a storyteller, and God chose literature and story and poetry as the languages of my spiritual text. To me, the Bible is a manifesto, a guide, a love letter, a story. — Shauna Niequist

The Bible goes equally to the cottage of the peasant, and the palace of the king. - It is woven into literature, and colors the talk of the street. The bark of the merchant cannot sail without it; and no ship of war goes to the conflict but it is there. It enters men's closets; directs their conduct, and mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. — Theodore Parker

The New Testament, that is, was made by the Church; the Church was not made by the New Testament. That is why, speaking generally, Catholics differ from Protestants in the importance given to the authority of the Bible on the one hand, and to the authority of the Church on the other. Therefore, Catholics more than Protestants would tend to say that the community has authority over its normative literature. — James Carroll

A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible. — Anthony Burgess

Just because I've extricated myself from religion doesn't mean I'm not interested in the scriptures. I look at the Bible as itself. It's a holy book, it has incredible literature in it and beautiful poetry. — Patti Smith

There is a quiet revolution going on in the study of the Bible. At its center is a growing awareness that the Bible is a work of literature and that the methods of literary scholarship are a necessary part of any complete study of the Bible. — Leland Ryken

The sheer diversity of literature in the Bible is one of the secrets of its continuing popularity through the centuries. There is something for all moods and many different cultures. Its message is not buried in religious jargon only accessible to either believers or scholars, but reflects the issues that people struggle with in daily life. — John Drane

I wasn't reading it [the Bible] as literature. I was reading it as literature, and as history, and as a moral guide, and as anthropology and law and culture. — David Plotz

The passage in Genesis 1 refers to the general creation of humankind, while Genesis 2 gives information that is more specific. Critics of the Bible have seen a contradiction in these two accounts. However, these critics should study more literature in Hebrew. It is common in Hebrew literature to mention something first in a general way, and then later describe it more fully. It does not seem likely that Moses would be confused in his recording the origin of man in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 of his first written book! — John R. Hargrove

English literature is a glorious inheritance which is open to all - there are no barriers, no coupons, and no restrictions. In the English language and in its great writers there are great riches and treasures, of which, of course, the Bible and Shakespeare stand along on the highest platform. — Winston Churchill

It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race. — Lafcadio Hearn

If we are able to read stereotypical language of the Bible in reference to suffering -- and particularly the suffering involved in siege warfare -- as a measure not so much of the historical details of the disaster or catastrophe, but rather as a measure of the emotional, social, and obviously therefore spiritual impact of the disaster (after all, this is religious literature), then our analysis of a good deal of biblical literature in relation to the exile would need to be rethought. Stereotypical literature of suffering is not literature that can somehow be 'decoded' to mean that the exiles actually lived in Babylonian comfort. (p. 104) — Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

Give yourself to reading.' ... You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works,
especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Bible contains some of the most sublime passages in English literature, but is also full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces. — Richard Brookhiser

[P]eople need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible. This is how we need to live life generally. Everything we hear and see we need to evaluate - whether the inspiring writings of the Bible or the inspiring writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or George Eliot, of Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama. — Bart D. Ehrman

It is impossible to look into the Bible with the most ordinary attention without feeling that we have got into a moral atmosphere quite different from that which we breathe in the world, and in the world's literature. — Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

It often is better to ask an ancient Hebrew goatherd, instead of a so-called expert like myself, about the meaning of a particular, biblical story. — Richard Gist

For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete. — Lafcadio Hearn

The Hebrew Bible is the supreme example of that rarest of phenomena, a national literature of self-criticism. Other ancient civilisations recorded their victories. The Israelites recorded their failures. It is what the Mosaic and prophetic books are about. — Jonathan Sacks

Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book. — Thomas B. Macaulay

If you want to consume the cream of Christ's philosophy, then don't read the Bible, read Tolstoy. — Abhijit Naskar

Have been reading "Genesis" several Sundays, not as a Christian reads for "spiritual consolation," "instruction," etc., not as aninfidel reads to carp and quarrel and criticize, but as one who wishes to be informed and furnished in the earliest and most wonderful of all literary productions. The literature of the Bible should be studied as one studies Shakespeare, for illustration and language, for its true pictures of man and woman nature, for its early historical record. — Rutherford B. Hayes

The bible is literature, not dogma. — George Santayana

I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: the most conscientious student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning. — Northrop Frye

There's always been a need for horror fiction, though
ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature
and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That's one big horror story. And it's the most popular book on the planet. — Bentley Little

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature. — Alfred North Whitehead

There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view. — Lafcadio Hearn

I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum.. you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns. — Richard Dawkins

Here, you can walk into a bookstore and pick up a Bible or Christian literature and learn. Over there, they are lucky if they have one Bible for a whole village. — Michael Scott

Psalm PSALM - NOTE ON 37. This can be called a wisdom psalm because it reflects on themes normally dealt with in the Bible's Wisdom Literature, particularly in Proverbs. It addresses the issue of why godless people often prosper. It shows that it really is better to stay loyal to the Lord - a loyalty expressed in contentment, honesty, and generosity. In his own good time, the Lord will make a clear distinction between the godless and the faithful. Meanwhile, the faithful must wait patiently. — Anonymous

You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature. — Mahatma Gandhi

In classrooms and living rooms across the globe, an agnostic or an atheist may be heard to strenuously argue, 'But the Bible is just a book.' Similar arguments may be raised against other holy books. But they all are too ironic, by half. A book is the Bible. — Gerald Weaver

For many potential Bible readers, this expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. You're not holy enough to read the Holy Bible. It might even be sacrilege for you to try. If the Bible is God's perfect infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own depravity. That is, our sinful nature as fallen creatures is what separates us from God, and therefore from God's Word. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature. — Timothy Beal

You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions. — Richard Dawkins

The history of the Bible text is a romance of literature, though it is a romance of which the consequences are of vital import; and thanks to the succession of discoveries which have been made of late years, we know more about it than of the history of any other ancient book in the world. — Frederic G. Kenyon

The Bible is the greatest literature of all times. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible. — Hugh Blair

I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming. — William P. Young

One of the first courses I ever taught at Dartmouth was on the Bible as literature. — Jay Parini

On the Day of Judgment , life and death are not determined by the world but by God's wisdom and law — John Bunyan

I find it sad that more Christian literature does not address miracles, and the possibility of demons in our midst. Jesus performed countless miracles in his life that were clearly discussed in the New Testament. And, he cast out demons. Why do some Christians act as those the potential for miracles died with Him? Why do people believe in angels, but not demons? Both were evident in the Bible. — D.L. Koontz

Those who read the Scriptures as magnificent literature, breath-taking poetry, or history and overlook the story of salvation miss the Bible's real meaning and message. — Billy Graham

The Bible towers in content above all earlier religious literature; and it towers just as impressively over all subsequent literature in the direct simplicity of its message and ... its appeal to men of all lands and times. — William F. Albright

There is no valid reason for the perennial Christian preference of biography, history, and the newspaper to fiction and poetry. The former tell us what happened, while literature tells us what happens. The example of the Bible, which is central to any attempt to formulate a Christian approach to literature, sanctions the imagination as a valid form of truth. The Bible is in large part a work of imagination. Its most customary way of expressing truth is not the sermon or the theological outline, but the story, the poem, and the vision
all of them literary forms and products of the imagination (though not necessarily the fictional imagination). Literary conventions are present in the Bible from start to finish, even in the most historically factual parts. — Leland Ryken

When historians and literary scholars talk about the classical heritage, or the legacy to Western civilization from antiquity, they are primarily thinking of four worldviews that were written in Hebrew or Greek among the body of religious, philosophical, and literary texts created before 250 B.C. These are the Hebrew Bible, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and Hellenistic, or Alexandrine, literature. — Norman F. Cantor

I am interested in the literature and religion of ancient Israel. I focus on biblical law in its ancient Near Eastern context and on the way that biblical law was later reinterpreted in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple literature. I have also explored the relation of the Bible to later western intellectual history. In my latest book, A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll, I explore the relationship between biblical composition history and its reception history at Qumran and in rabbinic literature.

At the University of Minnesota, I have department affiliations with the Center for Jewish Studies and the Program in Religious Studies and am also an affiliated faculty member of the Law School. — Bernard M. Levinson

Between the Biblical writers and our own times have intervened ages in which all interest in literary beauty was lost, and philosophic activity took the form of protracted discussions of brief sayings or 'texts.' Accordingly this solidified matter of Hebrew literature has been divided up into single sentences or 'verses,' numbered mechanically one, two, three, etc., and thus the original literary form has still further been obscured. It is not surprising that to most readers the Bible has become, not a literature, but simply a storehouse of pious 'texts. — Richard Green Moulton

The book of the Psalms, which is the primary devotional literature of the whole Bible, is full of complaints. — David Augsburger

The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture. — Richard Dawkins

Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what's at stake, namely its credibility as God's infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably. But you can't fail at something you're not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That's a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. As we have seen, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere. — Timothy Beal

The Bible is still loved by millions, read by millions, and studied by millions. It remains the most published and most read book in the world of literature. — Bernard Ramm