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The Bible has been the most influential text in all of Western culture. It's difficult to understand medieval or early modern or much of modern literature without knowing it...

Prof. Barbara Newman, Northwestern University
from 2006 Bible Literary project

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It's not that it's impossible to read some writers without a Biblical background, but that you would miss a whole dimension to their work.

Prof. Steven Goldsmith, University of California at Berkeley
from 2006 Bible Literary Project

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I can only say that if a student doesn't know any Bible literature, he or she will simply not understand whole elements of Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth

Prof. Robert Kiely, Harvard University
from 2006 Bible Literary Project

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...there is truth in the remark. "without Tyndale[Bible translator], no Shakespeare"...

Prof. David Daniell, University College London
from The Bible in English

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You can't really study Western literature intelligently or coherently without starting with the Bible.

Prof. Gerald L. Bruns, University of Notre Dame
from 2006 Bible Literary Project

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...a familiar understanding of Christian doctrine in historical perspective thus contributes to a fuller appreciation of Shakespeare's art, but Shakespeare's art

Prof. Roland M. Frye
from Shakespeare and the Christian Doctrine

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In English tradition and also for an American tradition begun by Puritan writers, a knowledge of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is even more crucial than classical references.

Prof. Ulrich Knoefplmacher, Princeton University
from 2006 Bible Literary Project

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There is no book more important for our culture than the Bible, and it is fundametal to the study of English literature and language.

Prof. David Jasper and Prof. Stephen Prickett
from the Bible and literature

Eat to their heart’s content (Proverbs 13: 25)

bible verse

The righteous eat to their hearts’ content, but the stomach of the wicked goes hungry.

meaning

to eat heartily.

origin and application

The idiom now came to mean satisfying the appetite of your stomach, but originally it refers to the satisfying of one’s soul. In the King James Version, the idiom appears as “eat to their soul’s content” in present day terms, but in the New International Version released in the seventies of the twentieth century, the proverb appears as “eat to their heart’s content” which become current nowadays. This proverb taught that the righteous focus on the satisfaction of their spiritual wants with God’s word, but the wicked, who care more about their physical cravings, are never satisfied.

example

Those who are on diet cannot eat to their heart’s content.

Keywords

content    eat    heart   

Related Information

NIV official site
Chinese Bible (???)

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