With libraries full of Biblical scholarship, it’s not easy to say something original about the Bible. But School of Arts and Humanities Professor Lori Anne Ferrell has used her unique transdisciplinary background and interests to discover new insights about the most-read and most-owned book of all time.


For Ferrell, finding an academic home wasn’t easy. As a graduate student at Yale University, she wasn’t allowed to declare a double major, so she ended up with a PhD in British history. However, she snuck in more literature classes than allowed – sweet-talking the registrar has its advantages – and always kept an eye on a position that would allow her to indulge her dual passions. And after initially working in the religion department at CGU, in 2005 she received a joint appointment in English and early modern history.

“In the United States, I don’t think there’s many positions like the one I have,” Ferrell said. “CGU was the first place that recognized the kind of work I did.”

Among her many interests, Ferrell lists the impact of religious belief on literature and politics, the English Civil War, and “what makes people want to fight each other.” Of course, these interests often bring her back to the Bible. In fact, inspiration for her recent research project struck while co-curating an exhibit at the Huntington Library featuring 10 rooms containing 174 first editions of various English-language Bibles spanning the last millennium: “I was working on everything from a eleventh-century monastic Bible that was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, to these contemporary magazines teenage girls are being urged to read, which have the text of the Bible illustrated with glossy pictures and make-up tips.”

Ferrell’s idea was to chart the course of the English-language Bible, from ornate hand-copied manuscripts to teen magazines, and study the effect each of these permutations has had on its readers. She recently published this research in her book The Bible and the People (Yale University Press) late last year. The book was a departure for Ferrell, who chose to write for a general audience, not just scholars in post-reformation British literature or history. “It was hard to learn to write to more people than those I teach or hang out with at conferences,” she said. “But it was a great experience.”

Accordingly, The Bible and the People is full of information that should enlighten and challenge anyone with an even casual interest in the Bible. As Ferrell noted, before the Protestant Reformation, Biblical access was limited in the English-speaking world, with copies of the book rare, expensive, and in a foreign language. One might then think that translating the Bible into a common language would enable people to read and embrace it because it’s then easier to understand. However, Ferrell’s research led her to a surprising discovery: “In every century that the Bible was accessible in the people’s language, people do not love it or read it because it’s easy to read. They read it, and they keep reading it, and they fight with it, because it’s hard to read. In fact, when it’s in your own language, the strange things overlooked in Latin become even stranger.”

Ferrell added that this grappling with the Bible doesn’t just reflect on the work, but the people reading the work as well: “It always strikes upon me anew how incredibly eccentric Americans are; how remarkably, creatively weird. And why shouldn’t they be, when the text they have adorned so much of their culture with is itself deeply weird? That’s not to say anything about the theologies contained within. I’m not talking about religious life, which is a whole other topic. I’m talking about the Bible in culture, as a cultural artifact.”