Everyday Biblical Literacy: The Essential Guide To Biblical Allusions in Art, Literature, and Life, by J. Stephen Lang

Now, it may seem strange that someone like myself (who is fairly obviously a biblical literate) would go out of their way to read a one-volume encyclopedic work that covers what ought to be fairly straightforward scriptural allusions, most of whom would be very familiar. I must admit, when I picked this book off of the Barnes & Noble bargain bin to be my in-flight reading on the trip to Thailand before I left, I figured that the book would provide at least moderately interesting reading about a subject I am greatly interested in (the influence of the Bible on culture) and that it might provide some useful information for my instruction.

As it happens, the book is a better one than I expected it to be. It exceeded my modest expectations, even if it was not as complete as I would have liked. The book had errors in fact, and clearly some bogus doctrinal understandings (see its entries on the Sabbath, the law, Paul, the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity). That said, even where the book was wrong, it was usually a relatively well-informed view of how “traditional” Christianity views such matters with a helpfully ironic perspective. The book also included apocryphal references (including a few to Judith and Tobit, the only “biblical” example of a pet dog in scripture, which tended to look down on “man’s best friend.”).

Where the book was particularly surprising in its strong information (and very useful as a reference material) is in comparing the Bible to Muslim fables, which I don’t have a close personal familiarity with, and in examining the relationship of biblical names to cultural contexts in naming towns, churches, and one’s children. A casual read of the book is enough to demonstrate the ubiquity of scriptural influence in our society, even if it largely subterranean and unrecognized these days. Even though the book has no separate entries for the prophet Nathan, Nathanael (or Batholomew), the Israelite in whom there is no guile (though both of their major incidents are explained under David and Nazereth, respectively), nor the Sons of Korah (nor many of the other obscure biblical subjects I enjoy stuying and researching in great depth), the book is a worthwhile one to the culturally sensitive person who wants to see the influence of Christianity and a reasonably fair admission (even if not a complete belief) in what the scripture itself says. And that’s a far better book than I had any reason to expect. Any book that includes references from “fruit of the loom” to “smiting them hip an thigh” and speaks in a very frequently complementary fashion about William Tyndale (perhaps my favorite all-time biblical translator) has to be a respectable study material, though. And this book is a worthwhile biblical read.