The Bible as Literature

Tom Henn's classic work represents an important and illuminating reading for the student of English literature and religion, the general reader of the Bible and the Bible lover. Based on the King James (Authorised) Version of the Bible, Dr Henn looks critically at the epic, narrative, lyric and dramatic qualities of the sacred texts. He examines the Bible's unique forge of style and the imagery which so profoundly give the Bible its Biblical character. The Bible's immense variety, its capacity to speak to the heart and mind of the reader, its powerful readability and above all its sense of the eternal, are all brought into Henn's masterly work. As Henn says: 'The Bible has been burned deeply into the fabric of the life and literature of the English-speaking peoples. Its proverbs and its parables, its episodes sacred or profane, have been expounded in drama and poetry from the earliest written English.'