Here’s what people have been saying about The Writing on the Wall

Rachel Thorpe, writing for Evangelicals Now, says:
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.

Dawn is insistent — and rightly so — that the Bible is central to an understanding of art in the West. Few would disagree: H.G. Wells called it ‘The Book that has held together the fabric of Western civilisation’ and Coleridge claimed that, ‘For more than a thousand years the Bible […] has gone hand in hand with civilisation’. Here, these claims are brought to bear on current cultural production as much as on classical works. From Handel to Belle and Sebastian, Van Gogh to Monty Python, this book chronicles the pervasive and powerful influence of the Bible, and draws our attention to the ways that it has been interpreted by artists throughout history.

Rebecca Paveley, Church Times

It is a consciously unpreachy book — an introduction to the Bible that does not demand a religious response. It is written in a lively and readable style by the multi-talented Dawn, and would make a good present for would-be English students who have skipped Sunday school — or even for those who haven’t. It contains much that is interesting and insightful for regular worshippers also, who are almost certainly not as biblically literate as Christians of 50 or 100 years ago.

Jonny Baker says:

…it’s delightfully written, easy to read and yet laden with nuggets. shakespeare, monty python, handel’s messiah, epstein’s jacob wrestling with an angel – these are the sorts of texts. they are mainly classic but plenty of pop culture thrown in the mix. i hope it makes it to high street book shops as it struck me that it’s written not just with a christian audience in mind.

as well as being a good read it’s a wonderful book to keep as a reference – i’ll pull it off the shelf next time i’m asked to preach on a story from the bible to see what art maggi connects with it.

books are changing – ipad, kindle and whatever comes next will change the way we think what a book is. i wish that new approach was here for this book. i wanted this to be a hyperlinked book so i that as i read i could click on a piece of music to hear it, or watch the scene from shawshank redemption, or see the art in question!

Kim Fabricius at Faith and Theology:

Biblical illiteracy in the UK is pandemic in popular and high culture alike. Enter Maggi Dawn, Cambridge college chaplain and star blog babe, to give us an education in this fabulous and fluent book, which takes what used to be well-known Bible stories, re-narrates them, and then shows what the arts have made of them down the ages… this is a book for the beginner. But the cognoscenti too will learn a lot from it, while preachers and Bible study leaders will find it a valuable resource for illustration and illumination…

Mark Meynell at Quaerentia:

I enjoyed and learned a great deal from The Writing on the Wall… for those who are familiar with the Bible, this will be a useful guide to extra-biblical paths not yet travelled. And for those familiar with western culture, vice versa!… As a readable introduction, this is a really helpful addition to any bookshelf (and even more so when it comes out in paperback!). It takes us on a thrilling cultural adventure.

Alan Wilson at Bishop Alan’s Blog:

…a trip through the Bible for the biblically ignorant but otherwise educated reader, giving some basic info and background on the stories that have shaped our literature and history. She doesn’t just tell the story, but gives enough background to it to help you understand its meaning, and why it may have been used as it has been. So she turns on a light bulb to illuminate a range of cultural basics — Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Milton, Spenser, Jacob Epstein, Wilfred Owen, William Blake, Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, yea even Monty Python… and hundreds of others.

So, here is an ideal present for the sixth former in your life who seeks some background to our culture. Its clarity and sense of perspective may also help the busy preacher…

A review from Paul Fromont at Prodigal Kiwis

…Maggi’s book does its likely many readers a wonderful service, especially if those readers may have heard significant stories (.e.g. the Creation account, or the Fall etc) from the Bible, but never engaged or read them from within their own everyday contexts… Reading it will be a fruitful experience whether you read the Bible, think you know its stories, or have never read it before. It’s the kind of adventure we all need from time-to-time, and Maggi’s book is just the kind of accompanying friend we need.

The Goodbookstall says:

It is sometimes a surprise to recall that the teachings of Jesus, his vivid stories about idle servants, scary kings and landlords, seasons and festivals, even down to the very stuff of life – bread, wine, shelter, work – were not received as great theological truths by their first hearers… every generation has to ‘earth’ the teachings of Christ in the experiences of their own culture so that we, too, might have the same experience of recognition and understanding. Maggi Dawn’s book contributes greatly to this perennial need.