Why knowing our Bibles helps our reading - and our writing - by Fran Hill

I studied for A level English Literature at 37, late to the educational party. I’d failed to accept my school’s kind offer in 1978 of a sixth form place, deeming it preferable to earn £16 a week in a factory, drilling holes in circuit boards. In my teenage wisdom, I thought this more fulfilling than studying Larkin or Shakespeare.

I’m surprised the school even offered a place; I was known more for backchat than appreciation for the Bard. Poor Mr Jackson, my English teacher.

In my mid-30s, I discovered challenging literature.  My childhood reading had been Blyton-dominated. Then, at home in my 20s bringing up three children, I’d read formulaic romances and the novels of Dick Francis or John Grisham - good stories, but a world away from George Eliot, the Brontes or Kate Atkinson. It was Atkinson’s ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ that galvanised me into attending creative writing classes, then later taking my A level. 

But in those English Literature classes on Monday nights, I found my risible knowledge of classic texts a handicap. I’d reached 37 with a tenuous grasp on literary tradition. Any author’s allusions to Greek myths, to the witches in Macbeth or intertextual references to the wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales mystified me. Other students seemed more clued up; perhaps they’d listened to their parents.

Where I did triumph, though, was with Biblical references. By then, I’d been a Christian for 20 years, so …

Mention of serpents in our text? 

‘Garden of Eden! The Fall of Man!’ I’d yell, glad of a chance to shine. 

References to the parting of the waves? Water into wine? Balaam’s donkey? Lazarus? Ask me, ask me! I fell on the opportunities like eagles onto slow mice. No doubt my fellow students wondered how someone could be so dense in some areas (‘What is an Iliad, anyway?’) and so ‘chapter and verse’ in others.

Later, at university, I hoovered up the myths and the classics, plugging the gaps. Now, I teach English myself (Mr Jackson: stop giggling in your grave) and preach a ‘read the Bible and other classics’ sermon to all my Literature classes. I am shocked by their poor understanding of fundamental Bible narratives such as the nativity, or the resurrection.

‘If you’ve never encountered the Bible,’ I say, ‘you won’t understand how Shakespeare exploited Edenic imagery in The Tempest, or how poets used conventions for describing women like those used in the Song of Solomon.’

‘No?’ their faces say. ‘And this will ruin our lives how, exactly?’ 

As a writer who’s a Christian, I like adding Biblical intertextuality into my writing. Informed readers, recognising the inferences or comparisons, will enjoy them. Who doesn’t like to be ‘in the know’?

And maybe the less informed might just pick that old Bible off the shelf, dust it off, and look up the story of Lazarus to see why I used it as a metaphor for, say, taking off layers of winter clothing.


Fran Hill is an English teacher and writer living in Warwickshire. Her comedy novel about one rollercoaster day in a teacher's life is available from her blog site right here and for your Kindle just here and you can follow her Fran Hill Writer facebook page by going here