The BibleBiblical writers

Adler cites the Bible in chapter after chapter of the Syntopicon, and he puts those citations first, ahead of Homer and Plato. He indexes seventy-seven biblical books among the Great Books. In the chapter on God he calls it the book about God and man.

Commandment and covenant taught the West how to speak about obligation. Sin and neighbor became ordinary words. Courts swear on these books. Universities began as schools for reading them. After antiquity, philosophy and political argument still have to answer this text. Augustine reads his life through Scripture. Hobbes names Leviathan from Job. Hume treats Gospel miracles as a question of evidence. Milton can write Paradise Lost because the Fall is already a public story.

Later writers quote the Bible, assume its plots, fight it, or try to replace it. They still work in its language. This page cites the King James Version.