Sacred Keys

It is important to know biblical stories in order to understand secular literature. Harvard professor Gorden Teskey wrote an essay on the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton. Teskey argues that when Milton wrote his famous poem in 1658,

"The Bible was by far the most widespread, controversial, and important book in Europe, and increasingly, in the world. Its stories mattered to everyone, especially the story of Eve and Adam, because it is about everyone."

In his book The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, University of Toronto professor Northrop Frye contends 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 [...] it is the Christian Bible that is important for English literature and the Western cultural tradition generally.

In his book How to Read Literature like a Professor, University of Michigan professor, Thomas Foster writes that,

"The devil, as the old saying goes, can quote Scripture. So can writers. Even those who aren’t religious or don’t live within the Judeo-Christian tradition may work something in from Job or Matthew or the Psalms. That may explain all those gardens, serpents, tongues of flame, and voices from whirlwinds [...] our early literature in English is frequently about, and nearly always informed by, religion."

Northrop Frye learned through his experience as a college professor in Canada and the United States that most literature students,

"Are assumed either to have relatively little familiarity with the Bible, or, if they are familiar with it, to be unaccustomed to relating it to imaginative rather than doctrinal or historical criteria."

Anthony Swindell delves deeper into why people read books in the first place. In his book Reworking the Bible, he observes that,

"We read imaginative literature because it is life-enhancing. It may entertain us because it is amusing, informative, exciting, thought-provoking or even terrifying. We read it because it seems to offer the possibility of immersing oneself in another era, in the case of historical fiction; or entering somehow into the future, in the case of science-fiction.

"We read it because it takes us out of our current circumstances and into a form of aesthetic transcendence, as T.S. Eliot claimed poetry did. We read it because it helps us empathize with characters of a different gender or sexual orientation or generation or economic group or geographical region or religion. But we also read imaginative literature because we hope that it will help us understand or make sense of our lives [...] If we think of the Bible as a source of continuing wisdom about the human situation, then the study of the literary rewriting of biblical stories seems to offer an extra dimension."

While readers seek meaning in the books they read, secular writers have sought to add extra dimensions and meaning through the use of biblical allusion. British writer Ruth Blair discusses the importance of the novel Moby Dick and its,

"Mythic status for this nation and for the Western world. Melville’s life spanned the nineteenth century, and he was one of its outstanding thinkers. His work throughout is profoundly influenced by the Bible [...] the Bible is the bedrock of Melville’s career as a writer."

Melville was one writer over the centuries who drew inspiration from biblical texts. Writers continue that tradition in our current century. Foster mentions that,

"Even today a great many writers have more than a nodding acquaintance with the faith of their ancestors. In the century just ended, there are modern religious and spiritual poets like T.S. Eliot and Geoffrey Hill or Adrienne Rich and Allen Ginsberg, whose work is shot through with biblical language and imagery.

Eliot borrows the figure of Christ joining the disciples on the road to Emmaus in The Water Land (1922), uses the Christmas story in Journey of the Magi (1927), and offers a fairly idiosyncratic sort of Lenten consciousness in Ash Wednesday (1930).

Biblical references in literature may include overt connections through book titles like Absalom! Absalom! by Faulkner and Song of Solomon by Morrison. References to biblical antecedents may be inferred through character names like the protagonists Ishamel and Ahab in Melville’s saga Moby Dick. Place names also indicate an intentional desire by the writer to associate their work with a certain biblical narrative. Gilead by Robinson and East of Eden by Steinbeck are examples of this strategy.

Writers may go beyond referencing a story and instead choose to rewrite a entire biblical narrative. Paradise Lost by John Milton was a sympathetic rewrite of the original story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, while Cecil Day Lewis rewrote the story of Noah to critique contemporary society through a parallel story structure with the known biblical story.

The goal of this book is to present a selection of biblical stories that are referenced in art and literature from the Sistine Chapel to The Old Man and the Sea. The goal is not to persuade secular readers into becoming a Christian, but rather to enhance the appreciation of what you read and to deepen the insight that can be found as you analyze literature.

The corpus of stories selected in this book is subjective but not random. Every researcher must limit the scope of their work, especially when it covers the expansive works found in the Bible and the limitless field of world literature. The corpus of this book is similar to that of Anthony Swindell who chose the following fourteen biblical stories as the core of his study, Reworking the Bible.

1. Eden

2. Noah & Flood

3. Jacob & Esau

4. Moses

5. Joshua & Rahab

6. Samson

7. Susanna

8. Nebuchadnezzar

9. Esther

10. Jesus Christ

11. Salome

12. Lazarus

13. Prodigal Son

14. Descent into Hell

This book includes nine of the fourteen stories chosen by Swindell, but adds

fourteen more from the Old Testament, along with seventeen parables of Jesus.

1. Cain and Abel

2. Tower of Babel

3. Abraham

4. Isaac

5. Joseph

6. Egypt

7. David

8. Solomon

9. Job

10. Isaiah

11. Daniel

12. Nehemiah

13. Jonah

14. Malachi

I include more stories in my corpus than Swindell includes in his book because this is not an analysis of biblical stories or their derivatives, but rather the original stories themselves are here for you to read and internalize. This book was created for fiction writers, language teachers and avid readers who want to better understand and appreciate great works of literature.

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Sacred Keys for Secular Literature