The long awaited volume entitled The Arts and the Bible, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Wendy J. Porter (McMaster New Testament Studies Series 10; Eugene, OR: Pickwick/MDC Press, 2024, 504 pp.) is officially available at your favorite bookstore, online or in person.

The description of the book is as follows: Throughout its history, the Christian church has had a troubled relationship with the arts, whether literature, poetry, music, visual arts, or other forms of artistic expression. This volume is not designed to resolve the issues, but it is designed to present a number of different statements about various dimensions of the arts in their relationship to the Bible. The Bible is the document that stands behind the Christian church as an inspiration to it and to its arts. As a result, we have divided this volume into six parts: perspectives on the arts, culture and art, visual enactments, contemporary interpretations, music, and the Bible and literature. Many of the issues that the history of the interaction of the arts and the Bible within the Christian church has uncovered are insightfully and artfully addressed by this book. The wide range of contributors runs the gamut from practicing artists of various media to scholars within varied academic fields.

In the Preface (ix), the editors provide some background to the volume: “We at MDC [McMaster Divinity College] have long valued the arts—among others—and this conference [the 2017 H.H. Bingham Colloquium] was long overdue in that regard. We expanded our organizational scope to involve a wide range of members and various arts communities. As a result, we were fortunate to have musicians and actors and painters and sculptors and poets in our midst. This conference also expanded our traditional format for the conference by providing several parallel sessions besides our list of plenary speakers. This outline is reflected in the organization of this volume.”

Table of Contents:

The Arts and the Bible: An Introduction –Stanley E. Porter and Wendy J. Porter

Part One: Perspectives on the Arts

• The Fine Arts and the Study of Theology –Mark J. Boda
• The Art of the New Testament: Re-Establishing the New Testament as a Literary Artifact –Stanley E. Porter
• Hildegard of Bingen, the Breath of God, and a Musical Prophetic Voice –Wendy J. Porter
• Sight Unseen: Where Is Real? What Is Real? Who Is Real? –James Tughan
• Beyond Appearances: Imagination and the Biblical Narrative –John Franklin
• Prophetic Beauty: Argentina, Political Violence, and the Cross –Kimberly Vrudny

Part Two: Culture and Art

• “She Lifted Up her Voice”: Hagar in Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Visual Art –Natasha Duquette
• The Testimony of the Beautiful: Or, a Theology to Live by –Hallam J. Willis
• “Immortal, Invisible”: Christian Theology and the Art of the Unseen –Michael P. Knowles

Part Three: Visual Enactments

• Heaven in Earth: The Beatitudes in Word and Image – Elizabeth Brooks
• Portals of a Pilgrimage –Heidi Brannan
• The Shadows That Offend: The Actor’s Craft and Dorothy L. Sayers’s Sacramental Theology –Gwendolyn Starks

Part Four: Contemporary Interpretations

• The Right Words at the Right Time in the Right Place: Poems and Reflections from the Life of a Resident Church Poet –John Terpstra
• Hold Up: God and Beyoncé and Prosperity Gospel, Oh My! –Sid D. Sudiacal
• Harry Potter and the Gospel of Mark: Using Young Adult Speculative Fiction to Enhance our Reading and Teaching of the Bible –Caroline Schleier Culter

Part Five: Music

• The Artist as Pastor: Bruce Springsteen and Darkness on the Edge of Town –Lee Beach
• The Role of Theory in the Theodrama: Jazz Theory and Theology –Bradley K. Broadhead
• Repeat after Me –Peter Tigchelaar
• Is Contemporary Worship Music Void of Theology? A Discourse Analysis of Modern Church Music –David I. Yoon

Part Six: The Bible and Literature

• Lin Yutang’s Understanding of Spirituality and Aesthetics –Esther G. Cen
• Bilingualism in Perspective: A Point of View Analysis of the Hebrew/Aramaic Language Shifts in the Book of Daniel –Zachary K. Dawson
• Story Worlds and the Truth: Contrasting the Fictions of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Lewis, and Tolkien through the Sociology of Knowledge –Ryder A. Wishart

For those who were unable to attend the conference, this volume serves as a secondary opportunity to be exposed to a variety of ways in which the Bible and art (in its various forms) are related. With a wide range of topics within the intersection of the arts and the Bible, this volume provides interesting perspectives on the application of the creativity that God has given to those who bear his image.

— David I. Yoon