The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present (Dialogues of Plato; 3)

Review\nHer research is impressive in scale, admirable in scholarship and fascinating for the light it throws. . . . If there is a better book published about children's literature in the coming year, it will have to be a very good one. -- The New York Times Book Review, Nicholas Tucker\nFor more than five centuries, parents, teachers and preachers in Europe and America have written and illustrated Bibles especially for children. These children's Bibles vary widely, featuring different stories, various interpretations, and markedly divergent illustrations, despite their common source. How children's Bibles differ, and why, it the subject of this book, recognizing children's Bibles as a distinct genre with its own literary, historical and cultural significance.\nAmazon.com Review\nThe stories of the Bible are often promoted as fascinating in and of themselves. Outlandish tales range from a single soldier fighting an army with a bone from an ass to a bearded man parting the sea to save a community of refugees. Yet, as Ruth B. Bottigheimer details in this remarkable book, many of these stories underwent extensive overhaul to make them palatable to children. These alterations include simplification, censorship and rewriting, all of which have changed the nature of the book. Bottigheimer has meticulously researched these changes and produced a work that should appeal not only to Biblical scholars but to any of us interested in the making of that monumental book.\nFrom Publishers Weekly\nThis comprehensive analysis of children's bibles, which traces the evolution of the genre from the time it first emerged in Germany with the invention of the printing press, graphically demonstrates that Bible stories for children teach far more than the Bible or biblical content. In fact, such volumes reveal as much or more about the times in which they were compiled and about the moral and social perspectives of their various authors and editors. Social utility joins soul-saving as various generations retell stories, include or omit stories from their collections and emphasize or marginalize portions of stories. Troublesome heroes such as Jael, along with sexual scenes such as David and Bathsheba, pop in and out of children's Bibles as the years pass. Such selective editing is inevitably reinforced by illustrations (Bottigheimer has included 46 examples here). An impressive scholarly achievement, this volume may prove too academic to appeal to the casual or seeking reader, but its content just may prompt the interested reader, the concerned parent and certainly those who teach Bible to children to examine their materials closely for implicit social messages as well as for theological content.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.\nFrom the Back Cover\nFor more than five centuries, parents, teachers, and preachers in Europe and America have written and illustrated Bibles especially for children. These children's Bibles vary widely, featuring different stories, various interpretations, and markedly divergent illustrations, despite their common source. How children's Bibles differ, and why, is the subject of this ground-breaking book, the first to recognize children's Bibles as a distinct genre with its own literary, historical, and cultural significance.