144 - The Reader's Bible: A Narrative

The Reader's Bible: A Narrative
By Roland Mushat Frye, ed.
New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1979. xliv + 591 pp. $12.95.

This valuable book of selections from the King James version was originally published in 1965 in Houghton Mifflin Riverside Editions, reissued as a paperback by Princeton in 1977, and now appears in solid hardcover. Apart from Professor Frye's learned and highly readable introduction and six maps, it contains full excerpts (each section with useful headnotes) from the Pentateuch; Joshua, Judges, and Ruth; Samuel 1-II and Kings 1-II; the major Prophets; the Psalms, The Song of Songs, Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes (characterized as "A Genial Skeptic"); and Isaiah, the greatest of his tribe. The New Testament selections are Luke, John, Acts, six Pauline Epistles, and Revelation.

The real raison d'etre for such a compilation, a bringing in of the best sheaves, is to provide a way of getting at "The Bible as Literature," the title of Frye's introduction. Nothing could be better suited to the purpose. Even those thoroughly familiar with the Bible may gain new insights through this fresh arrangement of its most momentous and memorable passages.

Carlos Baker
Princeton, N.J.