Friday, December 20, 2013

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Blake and the Bible: (from Evident to the Child)

Jonathan Roberts and Christopher Rowland contributed a chapter to the Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature in which they present their views on Blake's use of the Bible (Page 376):
"This emphasis on the importance of individuals (and their social contexts) in interpreting the Bible means that Blake is particularly concerned with replacing a literalist hermeneutic with one that considers the Bible to be a stimulus to the imagination. This means above all engaging readers in the interpretation of the text, rather than demanding they accept it as in object above and beyond them. To this end Blake provides a consistent polemic against the preoccupation with the literal sense of the text, and against a reverence for the text that comes at the expense of what an imaginative and life-affirming encounter with the Bible might offer. These two tasks required a thoroughgoing assault on the ways in which the Bible had been constructed and reduced to a focus on the sacrificial death of Jesus and a religion of moral virtue. Blake would have no truck, for example, with the view that humans are inherently sinful: that God must be appeased by a sacrifice (of Christ); and that God - having made that sacrifice - then expects humanity to behave morally in order to stay in relationship with him (i.e. by keeping his commandments). Such an outlook, Blake thought, led to a denial of aspects of the human person and the subjection of some human beings to others."

Blake seemed to continue to read the Bible as he had as a child - with an open mind. He didn't look back to what the words had meant when they were written exclusively, but to what they meant in the immediate present to his own imaginative ability. His conversations with Ezekiel and Isaiah may have begun long before he wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and continued long after.


Old Testament
Genesis
Exodus




Judges

Ruth

1st Samuel

2nd Samuel

1st Kings 1-11

1st Kings 12-22

2nd Kings

1st Chronicles 1-15

1st Chronicles 16-29

2nd Chronicles

Ezra

Nehemiah 

Esther

Job



Isaiah 1-30
Isaiah 31-66
 Jeremiah 1-26

Jeremiah 27-52

Lamentations

Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 1-12
                                          Ezekiel 13-24
                                          Ezekiel 25-37
                                           Ezekiel 38-48


Daniel

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah


Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi


New Testament

Matthew 1-20
Matthew 21-28

Mark

Luke 1-13
Luke 14-24

John 

Acts 1-14 
Acts 15-28

Romans

1st Corinthians
1st Corinthians 13
                                      1st Corinthians 15

2nd Corinthians

Galatians

Ephesians


Philippians

Colossians
                                   
1st Thessalonians

2nd Thessalonians

1st Timothy

2nd Timothy

Titus

Philemon


Hebrews

James

1st Peter

2nd Peter

1st John

2nd John

3rd John

Jude

Revelation


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