THE WRITING ON THE WALL
High Art, Popular Culture and the Bible
By Maggi Dawn. Hodder & Stoughton. 262 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978-0-340-98003-3
In The Writing on the Wall, Maggi Dawn sets about doing what John Stott called ‘double listening’ — ‘it means that we’re called to listen both to the Word of God, and to today’s world, in order to relate the one to the other’. In a deft move, she explains the Bible to the culturally literate, and culture to the biblically literate. This is no mean feat, requiring a collection of the most culturally iconic Bible stories and a whistle-stop tour of Western art right up to the 21st century.
Dawn follows the narrative of the Bible from creation to Revelation, stopping at stories like Noah’s Ark, Daniel in the lion’s den, the prodigal son and Jesus’s betrayal, to provide the full text of the story. She follows these with thoughts on the story’s significance and meaning in the form of paintings, music, poetry and sculptures, all from the canon of Western art. There is not space for her to fully critique every example, but the book is a treasure trove for anyone wanting interesting illustrations to use in sermons or with a youth group.
