How Children Read Biblical Narrative

How do children read the Bible? This book makes a major contribution to this underexplored area by analyzing how children interpret Bible stories, focused around an empirical investigation of one group of eleven- to fourteen-year-old children, and their readings of the Gospel of Luke. The first section of the study establishes the nature of the text and the readers in this project: exploring the Gospel of Luke as a narrative of Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection, and then looking at the developmental traits of children as readers. The next section offers a model account of how biblical scholars can investigate empirical readings of Scripture, by describing the methods used to bring together one group of child readers and Luke. The third section then analyzes the resulting multitude of interpretations that the children offered in their reading of the book, concentrating on the key trends in their interpretive strategies. It critiques the children's readings of Luke, but it also points to some of the surprising and beneficial results of reading Luke using the interpretive strategies of a child.

""A genuinely interdisciplinary study which offers important insights into the interpretive strategies of children and young people reading the Bible.""  
--Louise Lawrence, Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies, University of Exeter

""Educational resources on the Bible for children abound, but there is almost no research on how children actually read the Bible. In this pioneering book Briggs, an expert in both children's literature and biblical studies, provides a rigorous model for researching children's readings. Refreshingly honest about the difficulties and rewards of this work, she succeeds in making us rethink why we want children to read the Bible and how we read it ourselves.""
--Hugh S. Pyper, Professor of Biblical Interpretation, University of Sheffield


Melody Briggs (PhD, University of Sheffield) is the Lay Ministry Tutor for Lindisfarne Regional Training Partnership in northeast England. She has been involved in theological education for more than twenty-five years and throughout that time has taught a range of biblical, theological, and discipleship courses in various college and church-based settings.