Full Description
This volume explores a number of instances of unexpected but influential readings of the Bible in popular culture, literature, film, music and politics. The argument in all of them is that the effects of the Bible continues to have an effect on contemporary culture in ways that may surprise and sometimes dismay both religious and secular groups. That the Bible was at one time chained in churches is true. The subversive misreading of this enchainment as a symbol of a book in captivity to the established church is hard to suppress, however. Yet, once released from these chains, the Bible proves to be a text that gets everywhere and which undergoes surprising and sometimes contradictory metamorphoses. The pious advocates of making the Bible accessible who sought to free it from the churches' chains are the very people who then decry some of the results when the Bible is free to roam.
Contents
Introduction
Section 1. Making Sense
The Beginnings of the Bible
Biblical Nonsense
Section 2. Biblical Politics
Religion Despite the Bible
The Bible in the Metropolis
Section 3. The Bible as Guidebook
Biblical Tourism: Portuguese Novelists and the Life of Christ
The Book of Dave versus the Bible
Section 4. Music, Nationalism and the Bible
Jonah in Estonia, Joseph in Latvia: The Bible and National Identity in the New Baltic Republics
Musical Analysis and Biblical Interpretation: Brucknerian Transpositions
Section 5. The Sporting Bible
Wrestling the Bible
The NASCAR Bible
Section 6. The Evolution of the Bible
When Jesus was (nearly) Scottish: Judaism and its Alternatives in Biblical Interpretation
Dispelling Delusions: Dawkins, Dennett and Biblical Studies
Conclusion
