The Bible In Literature: An Independent Reading Project

Author

 Tochi Onyebuchi, seen in the first image at a book signing, is a Nigerian-American author, born in Massachusetts and currently living in the same city his novel takes place in: New Haven, Connecticut, a skyline view of which is shown in the third image. A former civil rights lawyer, Onyebuchi’s novels focus on civil rights and Afrofuturism. His 2022 novel Goliath does the same, also working with biblical themes. Onyebuchi’s relationship to the Bible can be inferred by his first name meaning “praise God” in Igbo. Though explicit biblical references in Goliath are limited…

Nona the Ninth is the third book in the critically acclaimed sci-fi series, the Locked Tomb.

About the Author: Tamsyn Muir was born in 1985 and is a New Zealand writer. Although she has written several short stories since she began her career as an author in 2011, Muir is most known for her (at the time of writing this) only series of novels. Known collectively as The Locked Tomb Series, it consists of books Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, Nona the Ninth, and the yet to be released final book--Alecto the Ninth. Among…

Published in 2010, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman has received critical acclaim and scrutiny for its themes of anti-organized religion. Pullman recites the life of Jesus as it presents in the Gospels, but with a twist: Mary has given birth to twins. Jesus and his brother Christ present the reader with two distinct characters -- the morally righteous Jesus and the scheming Christ. Christ contrives a narrative of his twin, ultimately leading to his death and the establishment of weaponized religion -- the Church. 

Phillip Pullman, born 19 October…

William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! is a modern Southern tragedy that navigates through the collapse of a family, and a region, through the haunted memories of its narrators. Faulkner, raised in the deeply religious American South, draws on the Bible not for doctrine but for structure, language, and myth. By reworking the story of King David and Absalom from 2 Samuel he transforms a biblical tale of rebellion and grief into a critique of legacy and historical memory in the post Civil War South.

THE AUTHOR

The first plate depicts a 1924 publicity photograph showing…

Plot Summary

The world of the Handmaid’s Tale is one where climate change, pollution, and an unspecified nuclear event has caused a sharp decline in fertility rates worldwide. In an abhorrent attempt to remedy this issue, a group known as the Sons of Jacob, has taken over the United States in a military coup and replaced it with the nation of Gilead: a Christofascist state that severely limits the rights of all those within its borders, placing both men and women into strict hierarchies. The laws regarding women are especially strict. The group most notable within the women’s…

In the first plate is a photograph of Anita Diamant, the author of The Red Tent. The second plate shows an image of The Red Tent’s book cover. The third plate is a painting by James Tissot, which depicts the abduction of Dinah from the Bible’s point of view. In the final plate is an image from The Red Tent miniseries, which helps to illustrate the content of the story as Dinah is standing proud with the red tent in the background.  

About the Author: 

Anita Diamant is an author of fiction and nonfiction books. She has…

This Gallery is focused on John Milton's Paradise Lost, which is based primarily on Genesis chapters 1-3 in the Bible.

About the Author:

Plate 1 shows a painting of Milton done by either Mary Beale or Peter Lely during his years at Christ's College, Cambridge. John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, in London, England. Milton attended St. Paul’s school in 1620 as a youth and later was enrolled at Christ’s College, Cambridge where he graduated in 1629 with a B.A. and in 1632 with an M.A. It was likely that he was studying to join the ministry, but…

This Gallery focuses on the novel “God Knows” (1984) by Joseph Heller which is primarily based on the biblical story of King David.   

About the Author: 

Joseph Heller (as shown in photo 1 c. 1979) was born on May 1st, 1923, in New York City, and died on December 12th, 1999 (aged 76) in East Hampton, New York. He was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays and is best known for his novels "Catch-22," (1961) and “Something Happened” (1974).  Heller’s writing genre is mostly satirical with a twist of dark humor and…

              Plate 1 depicts stars and galaxies, imaged by the European Space Agency using the Hubble Space Telescope, as we know them today. There are multiple perspectives on the story of how such stars and our lives came to be. Alan Lightman’s Mr g offers an interesting take on the story of creation. The novel is told from the perspective of Mr g, who is essentially God, but not the traditional all knowing, all controlling figure we imagined in the Bible. In the beginning of the novel, Mr g exists a formless void…

William Faulkner (depicted in Fig 1) was born September 25, 1897 in Mississippi. Being raised in the American South at the time he was, religion would have been inescapable. Following dashed “dreams of martial glory,” Faulkner turned to writing (Britannica). He was largely self-taught, and his work was deeply informed by the Southern environment he was brought up in. He depicts a South in decay (see Fig 2, the original cover of Absalom, Absalom! which depicts a plantation home overrun by moss and shadow), a place unable to cope with the upheavals brought by a world…

Plate One: About The Author - 

Anita Diamant is a fiction and nonfiction writer born on June 27th, 1951, spending her early childhood in Newark New Jersey, and later moving to Denver Colorado. She attended University of Colorado Boulder, then transferred to Washington University graduating with her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature in 1973 and earning her masters in English from Binghamton University in 1975. She is best known for her 1997 novel The Red Tent and has written six guides to contemporary Jewish practice. Much…

Dante Aligheri (illustrated in Frame 1) was a poet and politician born in 1265 in Florence, Italy. As an Italian born during this time, he was deeply involved in political struggles surrounding the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict, as well as the following conlict between White Guelphs and Black Guelphs. He was a White Guelph and wanted more freedom from the Holy Roman Empire, and when the Black Guelphs took over Florence he was exiled for two years and given a large fine to pay before he would be able to return, as they claimed Dante was corrupt durring his time in office at…

The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant was publised in 1997. It is a fictionized version of the story of Dinah, that draws inspiration from chapters of Genesis in the Bible.

About the Author:

Anita Diamant is fiction and nonfiction writer. She has published five novels, most notably The Red Tent, and six guides to modern Jewish practice. Born on June 27, 1951, Diamant spent her early childhood in Newark, New Jersery before moving to Denver Colorado when she was 12. In 1973, she received her bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature from Washington University…

Katherine Anne Porter was an acclaimed fiction writer of the twentieth century.  She received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1966 for the Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter...