The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present [Hardcover]

Professor Ruth B. Bottigheimer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 1996

For more than five centuries, parents, teachers and preachers in Europe and America have written and illustrated Bibles especially for children. These children's Bibles vary widely, featuring different stories, various interpretations, and markedly divergent illustrations, despite their common source. How children's Bibles differ, and why, it the subject of this book, recognizing children's Bibles as a distinct genre with its own literary, historical and cultural significance. Comparing European and American children's Bibles, Ruth B. Bottigheimer reveals how the cultural standards and social attitudes of adults who tell Bible stories to children affect the selection and interpretation of Old and New Testamant stories. She also analyzes many familiar Bible stories - for example, the parting of the Red Sea, the Garden of Eden, and the Crucifixion - to see what they tell us about the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish societies that presented them to children. Bottigheimer finds that even disparate religious groups transformed Bible stories for their young according to a common pattern: stories initially stayed close to scriptural text, then troubling passages underwent revisions, and finally a thoroughgoing amendment of the story emerged. Numerous illustrations throughout this book underscore the variety among children's Bibles of different eras and cultures.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The stories of the Bible are often promoted as fascinating in and of themselves. Outlandish tales range from a single soldier fighting an army with a bone from an ass to a bearded man parting the sea to save a community of refugees. Yet, as Ruth B. Bottigheimer details in this remarkable book, many of these stories underwent extensive overhaul to make them palatable to children. These alterations include simplification, censorship and rewriting, all of which have changed the nature of the book. Bottigheimer has meticulously researched these changes and produced a work that should appeal not only to Biblical scholars but to any of us interested in the making of that monumental book.

From Publishers Weekly

This comprehensive analysis of children's bibles, which traces the evolution of the genre from the time it first emerged in Germany with the invention of the printing press, graphically demonstrates that Bible stories for children teach far more than the Bible or biblical content. In fact, such volumes reveal as much or more about the times in which they were compiled and about the moral and social perspectives of their various authors and editors. Social utility joins soul-saving as various generations retell stories, include or omit stories from their collections and emphasize or marginalize portions of stories. Troublesome heroes such as Jael, along with sexual scenes such as David and Bathsheba, pop in and out of children's Bibles as the years pass. Such selective editing is inevitably reinforced by illustrations (Bottigheimer has included 46 examples here). An impressive scholarly achievement, this volume may prove too academic to appeal to the casual or seeking reader, but its content just may prompt the interested reader, the concerned parent and certainly those who teach Bible to children to examine their materials closely for implicit social messages as well as for theological content.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 338 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 24, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300064888
• ISBN-13: 978-0300064889
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,578,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Great History of Children's Bibles, September 25, 2000

By 

Vicki Wiley (Long Beach, Ca USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present (Hardcover)

This book is for you if you are interested in how we, throughout history have changed the way that we present God to children. In great depth, this book shows how the earliest Children's Bibles had a very different way of telling the stories in the Bible to children and how the culture of the day affected what stories were told and how the information was presented. I feel that it is important to look at this today, in order that we are more careful about the theology that we present to young children; theology that can stay with them a lifetime.

This book is also beautifully illustrated, with pictures from many very old books and Bibles. Anyone that enjoys church history or history of childhood will appreciate the care and great effort put into this remarkable book.