Bible Picture
Brandon Pitre
Yes! We want to help those teaching the Bible in all nations of the world in this visual age. All pictures are free for use in teaching and non-commercial streaming. We provide the pictures and you tell the story, with the Bible as your reference source. Conditions about the reuse of the images in new projects vary with each contributor. Those who donate to this project help share these resources around the world as a gift.
The Holkham Bible (London, British Library, Additional MS 47682) is an illustrated collection of biblical and apocryphal stories in Norman French. The picture book was produced in England during the decades before 1350 for use by an unidentified Dominican friar. Its illustrations depict the stories in contemporary English settings, making it a visual source on medieval English society.
Newly designed with a fresh cover, text, and maps, this Scripture makes an ideal first Bible for young readers. Though the full text for 233 stories is provided, children can follow the colorful pictures and storyline without having to read every word. A perennial best-seller, The Picture Bible is loved by young and old, and has proved to be an excellent way to improve children's reading skills.
The ESV Big Picture Bible is designed for children ages 5-8 who are transitioning from a storybook Bible to a full-text Bible. In addition to over 90 beautiful, child-friendly illustrations adapted from the bestselling Big Picture Story Bible, 225 brand-new illustrations created specifically for this edition are included and interspersed throughout the full Bible text. Parents and children will enjoy reading the Big Picture Bible together as the colorful pictures illustrate the beloved stories of the Bible.
This is a relatively new situation. Prior to these story bibles, it is hard to find any such enthusiastic endorsements. So what are we to make of this? On the one hand it could highlight the extent of biblical illiteracy and theological immaturity among Christian adults and, more alarmingly, among seminary students. On the other hand, or perhaps in addition to this, it could speak of the quality of these books, although the lack of any sustained critical engagement with them means that claims of their value are largely untested.
That testing, therefore, is the focus of this article. Although several story bibles have appeared in recent years, the widespread popularity of these two justifies limiting our attention to them.7 My previous article demonstrates that it is neither an easy nor a quick task to evaluate a story bible. Drawing on the methodology my preceding article develops, this article considers these two popular story bibles with reference to four key relationships:
Not every review of a story bible need follow this sequence, or do so at such length, but I hope in what follows to build on the previous article in two ways: (1) to underline the significance and multifaceted nature of these relationships and (2) to demonstrate their usefulness as a framework by which to evaluate story bibles.
The first two relationships consider the connection of the story bible to the Bible. Now we turn to the relationship within the story bible of text and image. Their relationship can be characterised as one of enhancement, counterpoint, or contradiction.32 These are really points on a spectrum from a position where the two are in complete harmony, to where they offer complementary but different information, to where they fall into mutual contradiction. We have already noted a degree of counterpoint on the question of how much biblical detail text and artwork supply. There is, as far as I can see, no instance of outright contradiction. But there is a clear sense in which text and artwork mutually rely upon one another in a couple of ways we have not yet addressed.
The whole effect, therefore, is a marriage of word and image uncommon in story bibles. Sometimes one wonders if the author and artist ever even spoke, but BPSB unites word and image in pursuit of its goals. But what exactly are its goals? For a fuller consideration of that, we come to the last of the four relationships.
Story bibles are rarely simply abridged and illustrated versions of Scripture. Increasingly they add commentary, discussion questions, prayers, and so on, which require careful reading. How does the story bible view the child and his or her needs? How is the child being encouraged to respond to God or to conduct themselves? Even the purely abridged versions reveal something by what they deem worth including or omitting. Already in the case of BPSB there is the sense that its main aim is to offer a Bible overview, helping children see how the parts fit the whole and how the whole points to Christ. To explore this further we will consider first the engagement of the child from within the text and then consider how the artwork engages and situates the child.
Some of these omissions are, if we can say such a thing, almost welcome. Moralistic story bibles have often made the most of sibling rivalry (Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau) or the mention of children (Samuel or Jesus at the temple) to commend good behaviour, but JSB clearly rejects such approaches and chooses stories with other criteria in mind, as we shall see.40
Second, the story of the prodigal son does not mention the older brother. Although this is quite typical of story bibles, it is surprising in this case, given the influence of Tim Keller on JSB and his dependence on Luke 15 to highlight three ways to live: irreligion (the younger brother), religion (the older brother), and the gospel.43
Whether or not others accept these judgments, I hope the approach taken at least models the level of engagement that these works deserve, both in light of the enormous energies poured into them by authors and artists, and their widespread use in our churches. Our thanks are due to these authors, and I hope that even my criticisms demonstrate how seriously I take their work. This kind of sustained attention is a compliment of sorts, and I hope that others will pay the same compliment by taking up these tools to evaluate yet more story bibles. To the extent that these books are used by children and adults alike, the whole church stands to benefit.
[13] Omissions can be conspicuous either in comparison to other story bibles, for which there is a fairly well-established pool of narratives, or in comparison to Scripture. The latter is obviously more significant; we should learn to think which passages are significant in Scripture because they are prominent in their own place in the Bible (e.g., Babel), the Bible frequently alludes to them later (e.g. the golden calf), or they take on greater significance in the NT (the Son of Man prophecy or Rahab).
760c119bf3