BOOKS: Biblical fiction

[Pons]

By Biblical fiction I mean fiction based on the Bible. Some may include retellings (in whole or in part) of events like the life of Jesus. Examples that come to mind are Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace and the Christ the Lord series by Anne Rice. Some are apocalyptic like the Left Behind series. I’d like to focus on the former type. What titles can you recommend? What titles are compatible with Catholicism?

I wouldn’t trust the Jesus Chronicles by the Left Behind authors (Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins), for example, to be such. I browsed through the first volume, John’s Story: The Last Eyewitness. It features an elderly John writing his gospel against Gnostics. Relevant. It features Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch. Nice. But it also has John explaining to these Church Fathers how the Eucharist is just symbolic.

 

[Della]

If such works are damaging to your faith then don’t read them. If, on the other hand, you wish to be able to refute them and are reading them for that reason, that’s fine. The Church doesn’t forbid us to read such works, but it’s only prudent to know the kind of teachings they contain before reading to then decide if they would be detrimental to us or not.

 

[bluerose]

The Spear by Louis de Wohl