People of the Book
Christian Identity and Literary Culture
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Published: 1996
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Publisher's Description
This astute and challenging work by David Lyle Jeffrey seeks to characterize illustratively the historic commitment of Christianity to the literacy and literature of Western culture. Against postmodernist tendencies to divide the historical commitment to meaning in Western art and literature as a regressive "logocentrism," Jeffrey argues that the biblical tradition — the cultural and literary identity forged among Western Christians by virtue of being a "People of the Book" — has in fact given rise to Western literacy. Jeffrey here offers a fresh and generous look at the Christian "grand narrative" as it is reflected in Western literature, making apt use of the visual arts by incorporating a series of twenty-eight black-and-white illustrations that serves to enrich and fortify the story it tells.
Endorsements (4)
“David Lyle Jeffrey writes with clarity and power, and his erudition is simply awesome. His text moves deftly from Augustine to Goethe to Flannery O'Connor to Harold Bloom. Jeffrey seems to have read everything ever written about the role of the Bible in the formation of Western culture. Fortunately for us, he wears his learning lightly, as truly first-rate scholars always do. Jeffrey himself surely ranks as one of the premier Christian thinkers of the late twentieth century.”
“Powerfully conceived and compellingly argued across an impressive range of historical examples, this book seeks to restore Western literary culture to its most sustaining fountainhead, the Bible, and by so doing to restore depth and moral authority to literature itself. From a Christian perspective, David Lyle Jeffrey offers a weighty challenge to many fashionable trends in criticism today, but he also rises above these trends to offer a view of literature and culture at once deeply traditional and excitingly relevant to modern literary theory and practice. The result is an outstanding book, a tour de force that will captivate enquiring readers, on whatever side of the faith question they stand.”
“Deeply informed and astute, this book works through the multiple views of literature and textuality from ancient through postmodern in order to discern and describe the cultural and literary identity of Christianity in terms of the Bible and related literature. Ultimately, Christian identity is established not simply by assimilation of words or text but by embodiment in deeds in the person of the reader after encountering the sacred writings. A remarkably far-ranging and profound study.”
“A timely rejoinder to the often ill-informed dismissal of Christianity in current literary theory. This book demonstrates, with vigor and wide learning, the richness through the centuries of a Christian reflection on language and reading, and exposes the hermeneutical as well as the moral and spiritual shortcomings of much of the modern theoretical enterprise. One of its many strengths lies in bringing before the reader, at key moments, the huge sanity of Augustine.”
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