Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore

Review In the most recent of Dundes's three important contributions to the study of religion. It is our good fortune that this most eminent of American anthropologists and folklorists well known for his work on folklore theory and on subjects as diverse as German national charachter and American joke cycles, has now brought his scholarship to bear on religion. Dundes's work is already widely influential in the United States and deserves to be better known among British scholars of religion.... Holy Writ as Oral Lit offers insight into the Bible without diminishing it..... The fact of variation in the Bible is an important point, which Dundes documents abundantly. . . Dundes's emphasis on folklore analysis for understanding the biblical writings is salutary.....--Ronald S. Hendel It has long been recognized by professional biblicists that the Bible is full of duplications and that the Bible originally circulated orally. Folklorist Alan Dundes? original contribution, carried out with the spriteliness and verve for which he is celebrated, is to show how the duplications are not contingent but inherent in the nature of folklore, and thereby to show how the folkloristic nature of the Bible continues in even its written form. A wonderful book....--Robert Segal 'Holy writ as Oral Lit, ' a brief but illuminating excursus into the Bible.....--Johnathan Kirsch About the Author Alan Dundes is known as one of the world's leading authorities on folklore. In more than 30 books he has unveiled the meanings in the oral traditions of many cultures. He lives in Berkeley, where he is professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California.