King James's Bible: A Selection

"Many of my students stumble into vaguely mythological stories in their writing. When I ask them anything about the Bible, they frankly, by and large, don't know. I don't particularly blame them for it. But I do think there is a real problem with the education system that has allowed these great stories to disappear, to fade out of the diet everyone gets at school. It's an essential piece of cultural luggage."
- Poet Laureate Andrew Motion

Without an understanding of Biblical stories, readers lose out on much of the richness of English literature, as authors from Milton through T.S. Eliot to Jeanette Winterson draw inspiration from Biblical stories in their own writing. This user-friendly annotated selection of key passages from the King James's Bible clarifies the key themes, characters, stories and genealogies for students, offering timelines, a bibliography, and a detailed index for quick and easy reference.

The original 1984 version, of which this is a revised edition, was written by Bill Stevenson as a response to his students' difficulty with biblical references in literature - a selection from the King James's Bible that would give the student a notion of what the book contains, including the history of the 1611 text, the strands of imagery that bind the whole together. It gives the student a brief overview of the political, historical and religious contexts of the stories in the Bible as well as a brief history of the different versions of the Bible.