For more than four decades, David Lyle Jeffrey has enriched the world of Christian scholarship. Throughout his work, Jeffrey has drawn attention to the ways in which imaginative engagements
with biblical texts have been central to major shifts in Christian and post-Christian hermeneutics, ethics, and aesthetics. The purpose of this volume is to challenge and deepen that growing
discourse by showing how English literature across varied traditions unfolds a central Christian interaction between divine Incarnation, invented narrative, and ethical praxis. In their
essays, the authors demonstrate how an imaginative engagement with biblical narratives, in historical or contemporary writing, continues to provide a fruitful means to address the
intellectual and ethical antinomies of the postmodern scene.
The articles in this collection form two groups: the first set of essays focuses on specific episodes or moments of historical change within European biblical literary traditions; the second
group focuses on the dissemination of biblical literary engagements in areas outside of European contexts, ranging from North America to South Africa to China. Unique in the wide range of
topics it covers?itself a reflection of Jeffrey’s own broad scope of scholarship?the collection functions as a working example of Jeffrey’s thesis that the biblical tradition has a
far-reaching influence on the development of Western literature, even by those who are reluctant to acknowledge its present influence.
＂David Lyle Jeffrey is a scholar of extraordinary depth and extraordinary breadth. The essays gathered in this collection in his honor do, indeed, pay tribute to his lasting contributions to
disparate fields as well as provide further scholarship in areas of significance to him.＂
?Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College
