People Of The Book
In this book David Lyle Jeffrey seeks to characterize illustratively the historical commitment of Christianity to the literacy and literature of Western culture.\ Against postmodernist tendencies to deride 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...
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In this book David Lyle Jeffrey seeks to characterize illustratively the historical commitment of Christianity to the literacy and literature of Western culture.Against postmodernist tendencies to deride 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 looks 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 enrich and fortify the story it tells.Calvin Theological JournalJeffrey's book is without question a valuable contribution to hermeneutics, intellectual history, and literary theory. Its interdisciplinary outlook is combined with careful scholarship.... An outstanding work.
List of IllustrationsPreface1Logocentrism and Scriptural Tradition12Scripture upon Scripture193Secular Scripture: The "Beautiful Captive"714Evangelization and Literacy975The Book Without and the Book Within1396Authorial Intent and the Willful Reader1677Symbolism of the Reader2098Authentic Narrative2659The Bible and the American Myth31710Theory and the Broken-Hearted Reader353Epilogue375Index of Names and Subjects383Index of Scripture References393
\ Calvin Theological JournalJeffrey's book is without question a valuable contribution to hermeneutics, intellectual history, and literary theory. Its interdisciplinary outlook is combined with careful scholarship.... An outstanding work.\ \ \ \ \ Choice"In an impressive attempt to answer literary critics who mistrust the "logocentrism" of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, Jeffrey singles out Harold Bloom's Deconstruction and Criticism and Susan Handelman's explanation of Derrida in Slayers of Moses as typical of the criticism he opposes.... [Jeffrey] contends that in the development of Western literature since ancient times, the word itself was not so important; rather, it mattered because it led inevitably beyond itself to God, and to the expectation that the author would speak ethically to the human condition. Therefore, concentrating on the word rather than on that to which it referred was always a form of idealism, even idolatry, that the Christian tradition never countenanced. Jeffrey offers a fascinating survey of this tradition, from the biblical writers to recent American fiction and poetry, persuasively tying together this disparate material while showing the price such critical theories as deconstruction have paid for abandoning the text, and with it the word. One need not have any personal Christian belief to learn a great deal from Jeffrey's arguments. His evident faith position leaves him with little patience for the American Puritan influence and its recent political manifestations. A number of illustrations, thorough notes, and two indexes enhance the usefulness of this book."\ \ \ Church History"Erudite and pleasantly instructive.... There is much that is engaging and illuminating in this book, and its display of Christian history as the cultural history of reading is edifying."\ \ \ \ \ First ThingsJeffrey has written a fascinating and provocative book, one that deserves wide reading not only among Christians but also among those literary scholars and cultural historians for whom the power of the Bible is an unfortunate historical accident they would prefer to neglect or forget.\ \ \ \ \ Grant WackerDavid 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.\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyAn elegant literary critical study in the tradition of Matthew Arnold, Geoffrey Hartman and Wayne Booth. It will be instrumental in recovering for humanistic literary studies the deep significance of reading literature from a religious perspective.\ \ \ \ \ Studies in ReligionAn important contribution to the study of Christian poetics.\ \ \ \ \ Theological StudiesA convincing, deeply and widely informed reading of almost 2000 years of a book-oriented culture.\ \ \ \ \ TheologyPeople of the Book is something of a tour de force, not only in terms of the extraordinary range of illustrations from literature and art, all of them sensitively introduced and discussed, but also in the way the whole work is held together by the relentless working out of a single argument. Not all will necessarily agree with the argument in all its aspects, but such a masterly array of fascinating evidence, marshalled here for the first time in this readable form, will in itself ensure that literary theorists as well as theologians and students of the history of biblical interpretation, will read and enjoy it for many years to come.\ \ \ \ \ TouchstoneJeffrey has written a fine volume attempting to restore an understanding of Western literary culture as having the Bible as its deepest source. In the process he offers a trenchant challenge to the moral and spiritual shortcomings of much in contemporary literary theory. Jeffrey's erudition is vast, and he takes the reader deftly from early biblical commentary to Augustine, to Flannery O'Connor and Harold Bloom with a rich clarity and vigor. A view of literature that, while embedded in tradition, is also patiently relevant to modern literary theory and practice.\ \
