The Unchained Bible: Cultural Appropriations of Biblical Texts. By HUGH S. PYPER.

Abstract

This collection of essays offers a wide range of unexpected readings of the Bible in popular culture, literature, film, music, and politics. It emerges from various invited lectures that the author has given on cultural appropriations of the Bible, and builds on his earlier work in this area, notably An Unsuitable Book: The Bible as Scandalous Text (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005). Hugh Pyper’s point throughout the present volume is that the Bible’s effects may surprise and sometimes dismay both religious and secular groups when it is ‘free to roam’, unchained from the constraints of the Church. Infused with his characteristic wry humour, Pyper’s book seeks to provide a conscious engagement with these effects, ‘both in terms of historical cultural critique and as an important element in biblical reception and interpretation’. Its scope is broad, and as a result some of the essays fit together more closely than others. The sixteen essays are clustered into seven themed sections. Their content is disparate and ranges from ‘The Bible in the Metropolis’ (which examines the biblical view of the city in relation to late Victorian views of London) to ‘Wrestling the Bible’ (a disturbing account of the Bible’s manipulation in World Wrestling Entertainment, part of American popular culture). There is much to make the reader uncomfortable in Pyper’s volume, and deliberately so, as the author sets out to expose aspects of the Bible’s influence that have been either purposefully hidden or unconsciously assimilated. It is a shame that the volume is marred by a large number of typographical errors, but this should not deter the reader from persevering to gain many valuable insights.