ABSTRACT
Teaching the Bible as literature must always reckon with its status as a sacred text: its relationship with other literature is odd and even unique. Its “literariness” denies any claims for singularity of meaning, and as a work of sacred literature it is central to Shakespeare and the theologically impelled poem Paradise Lost. Even as the religious authority of the Bible declined in the nineteenth century its literary power remained undiminished, and if scholarly writings on the Bible and literature have changed little in the last thirty years that does not mean that we should ignore the supreme importance for studying the Bible both as literature and alongside other literature in our academic curricula.
