Topic 33 of 33 - Your Place in the Learning Journey
The Bible in Western Literature
The Bible is the most influential literary document in Western history. Its stories, images, characters, and themes have shaped Western literature so thoroughly that a reader unfamiliar with the Bible will miss central dimensions of the works they encounter. Dante's Divine Comedy is saturated with biblical typology. Milton's Paradise Lost retells Genesis 1-3 at epic length. Shakespeare's plays are dense with biblical allusion - Hamlet's meditation on suicide echoes Ecclesiastes, King Lear's suffering resonates with Job. Toni Morrison's Beloved uses the figure of the sacrificed child to explore the legacy of slavery in ways that are incomprehensible without the biblical background.
Several biblical narratives have proved especially generative for literary tradition. The story of Cain and Abel - the first fratricide, the mark of Cain, the question "am I my brother's keeper?" - appears in works from Beowulf to East of Eden. The Exodus pattern of bondage, liberation, and the journey toward a promised land has shaped African American literature in particular, from the spirituals through the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary fiction. The figure of Job - the righteous sufferer who demands an account from God - appears in works as different as Melville's Moby-Dick and Kafka's The Trial.
The influence works not only at the level of story but at the level of language. The King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611, shaped the English language's literary register for centuries. Phrases that have entered common usage - "the powers that be," "a drop in the bucket," "the skin of my teeth," "the writing on the wall," "cast the first stone" - all come from the King James Bible. Writers who have absorbed this language, whether they are believers or not, draw on a reservoir of imagery and cadence shaped by the biblical text.
Understanding the Bible's literary influence requires no particular theological commitment - it is a matter of literary and cultural literacy. But for readers who do bring theological commitment to their engagement with the tradition, the recognition that the biblical narrative has generated so much of the culture's most significant art and literature is itself a form of evidence about the text's power and reach.