Telling Bible Stories to Children : An analysis of versions of the Exodus and the Passion stories in children’s Bibles as a manifestation of use of history

This paper analyzes two selected passages from six children’s Bibles with respect to their use of the narrator’s voice and focalization. This means that the texts are analyzed with a focus on who is telling the story and from whose perspective it unfolds. The analyzes are also built upon what has been added or taken away from the Bible texts and what functions the illustrated pictures have. In this way, the result can also be analyzed through a theory about use of history; that is the idea that morality and identity formatting shape history telling. In this study the different children’s Bibles tend to lift different aspects of the Bible stories. Even though the aims of the book writers cannot be known for sure, their intentions of moralizing or shaping a certain Christian or Jewish identity, such as the institution of pesach or the communion, can be anticipated. Furthermore, the study shows that the children’s Bible genre is often very didactic, while moralization is generally avoided in newer versions. A general distinction between how the Old Testament and the New Testament stories are told can also be spotted. In the latter one, the reader receives more insight about the characters inner and outer speech, which could make it easier to identify and sympathize with them