Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Unveiled
by Francine Rivers
I think there's a whole new genre I've gotta get into--Biblical fiction. It's when an author will take a story from the Bible, or a setting from the same, and fill in the details to flesh out the tale. I've read three different books like that in my daughter's curriculum, and enjoyed each one. And now along comes Unveiled, an expansion on the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. That tale stands on its own, of course, but I tend to fill in the blanks with my own 20th Century American worldview. In this book, Ms. Rivers tries to fill it in with ancient Hebrew and Canaanite values. More importantly, she interprets the tale as one of redemption. Through it all she stays faithful to the biblical text. Despite the addition of fictionalized elements, you might even say that she does a better job of presenting the tale than does a typical Bible class. In my experience, we just pull the story of Judah and Tamar out of the text, never dwelling on it's relation to the overall story of Joseph, in which it's placed. Anyway, I'm going to have to find a copy of Unveiled to put on my shelf.
LibraryThing link
I think there's a whole new genre I've gotta get into--Biblical fiction. It's when an author will take a story from the Bible, or a setting from the same, and fill in the details to flesh out the tale. I've read three different books like that in my daughter's curriculum, and enjoyed each one. And now along comes Unveiled, an expansion on the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. That tale stands on its own, of course, but I tend to fill in the blanks with my own 20th Century American worldview. In this book, Ms. Rivers tries to fill it in with ancient Hebrew and Canaanite values. More importantly, she interprets the tale as one of redemption. Through it all she stays faithful to the biblical text. Despite the addition of fictionalized elements, you might even say that she does a better job of presenting the tale than does a typical Bible class. In my experience, we just pull the story of Judah and Tamar out of the text, never dwelling on it's relation to the overall story of Joseph, in which it's placed. Anyway, I'm going to have to find a copy of Unveiled to put on my shelf.
LibraryThing link
Labels: FrancineRivers, LineageofGrace, OnMyShelf
// posted by John @ 6:54 AM 
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