Reading the New Testament

Patrick Grant shows how the New Testament presents problems of religious faith imaginatively, so bringing home to us the full challenge of faith. He notes that however much enriched by narrative and symbol, myth and image, the New Testament in the final analysis is intolerant of the fictive imagination, and asks us to believe that the crucified Jesus is God. The way in which we are led through the literature to the extra-literary is examined in chapters on each of the four Gospels, the first and second letter to the Corinthians, the letter to the Hebrews and in Revelation. This approach to the New Testament's depiction of faith is partly prompted by rapprochement between literary criticism and biblical scholarship. Grant also argues that the literary approach to the sacred texts is fruitful. Patrick Grant is author of "The Transformation of Sin: Studies in Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Traherne", "Images and Ideas in Literature of the English Renaissance", "Six Modern Authors and Problems of Belief", "Literature of Mysticism in Western Tradition" and "Literature and the Discovery of Method in the English Renaissance".