This book traces the emergence and development of Literature and the Bible as a field of scholarship, presenting key critical essays alongside more recent criticism that explores new directions. The Western literary tradition has a long and complex relationship with the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Authors draw on the Bible in numerous ways and for different reasons, and there is also the myriad of subconscious ways through which the biblical text enters literary culture. Biblical stories, characters, motifs and references permeate the whole of the literary tradition.