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This study focuses on the Bible as a landmark of literature, showing both how it has influenced writers through the ages and how it in turn has been influenced by contemporary literature. It describes what is known about the historical context of the documents, the changes of interpretation they have undergone over the centuries, and the problems and influence of various translations, ranging from Tyndale to the Good News Bible.
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Landmarks of world literature THE BIBLE
Landmarks of world literature General Editor: J. P. Stern Dickens: Bleak House - Graham Storey Homer: The Iliad - Michael Silk Dante: The Divine Comedy - Robin Kirkpatrick Rousseau: Confessions - Peter France Goethe: Faust. Part One - Nicholas Boyle Woolf: The Waves - Eric Warner Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther - Martin Swales Constant: Adolphe - Dennis Wood Balzac: Old Goriot - David Bellos Mann: Buddenbrooks - Hugh Ridley Homer: The Odyssey - Jasper Griffin Tolstoy: Anna Karenina — Anthony Thorlby Conrad: Nostromo - Ian Watt Camus: The Stranger - Patrick McCarthy Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji - Richard Bowring Sterne: Tristram Shandy - Wolfgang Iser Shakespeare: Hamlet - Paul A. Cantor Stendhal: The Red and the Black - Stirling Haig Bronte: Wuthering Heights - U. C. Knoepflmacher Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago - Angela Livingstone Proust: Swann's Way - Sheila Stern Pound: The Cantos - George Kearns Beckett: Waiting for Godot - Lawrence Graver Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales - Winthrop Wether bee Virgil: The Aeneid - K. W. Gransden Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude - Michael Wood Cervantes: Don Quixote - A. J. Close Celine: Journey to the End of the Night - John Sturrock Boccaccio: Decameron - David Wallace Wordsworth: The Prelude - Stephen Gill Eliot: Middlemarch — Karen Chase Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Dale Kramer The Bible: - Stephen Prickett and Robert Barnes
The Bible
STEPHEN PRICKETT Regius Professor of English University of Glasgow and ROBERT BARNES Lecturer in Religious Studies Australian National University, Canberra
The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. Cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521365697 © Cambridge University Press 1991 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1991 Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2008 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Prickett, Stephen. The Bible / Stephen Prickett and Robert Barnes. p. cm. — (Landmarks of world literature) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0 521 36569 4. - ISBN 0 521 36759 X (paperback) 1. Bible - Introductions. I. Barnes, Robert. II. Title. III. Series. BS475.2.P75 1991 220.6'.1-dc20 90-26059 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-36569-7 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-36759-2 paperback
This book is dedicated to Maria, Mary, Tanya and Harab al-Shams
Contents
Preface A time chart
page IX
xi 1 1 6 8
1
Introduction The book The Jewish and Christian Bibles The Bible: the circumstances of its writing
2
The contents of the Bible The Hebrew Bible The New T