Thematic Guide to Biblical Literature

Nancy M. Tischler is Professor Emerita of English and the Humanities at the Pennsylvania State University. Her previous books include All Things in the Bible (2006), Men and Women of the Bible (2003), and Student Companion to Tennessee Williams (2000), all available from Greenwood Press.

"Tischler's learned commentary on integral biblical themes reads as engagingly as a lecture by a teacher who both understands and values the Bible as a source of wisdom and as a component of world literature. Tischler respects the written word and the music of poetry and seems at home with all corners of American and British and, to some degree, world classics as well. Simple layout invites the neophyte to read signal passages of scripture on such topics as creation, gender, war, and the afterlife; and to peruse classic works--Billy Budd, To Kill a Mockingbird, Donne's sonnets, The Old Man and the Sea, Little Women, The Prince--for more recent thinking on the chosen subjects. Tischler's tone and diction avoid tedious cant and dogma by sticking to humanistic themes--godhood, justice, liberty, power, sacrifice, violence--and pure, uncluttered glimpses of human situations, such as the nonstop task of the shepherd, David's emergence into leadership, the circumscribed world of women, and the Jewish response to the threat of alien invasion....Highly recommended. Home, church, high school, and public libraries; general readers." - Choice