The resonance of biblical themes in both classical and modern literature runs deep, touching everything from narrative structure to character development and moral conflict. Writers across centuries have borrowed from scripture—not just for subject matter, but for rhythm, metaphor, and a kind of moral architecture that gives their works weight and timelessness. Think of Milton, whose Paradise Lost is steeped in the Book of Genesis, or Dostoevsky, whose novels pulse with notions of sin, redemption, and divine justice. These authors didn’t just reference the Bible; they repurposed its stories as frameworks to wrestle with profound philosophical questions.
In classical literature, biblical allusions were often used to appeal to a shared cultural vocabulary. Shakespeare, writing for an audience steeped in church teachings, folded scriptural language into his plays. Hamlet debates mortality with lines that echo Ecclesiastes, and the themes of guilt and divine retribution in Macbeth feel drawn from Old Testament severity. These layers invited readers and theatergoers to interpret the stories through a moral lens shaped by religious tradition.
As literature moved into the modern era, some authors challenged, satirized, or reinterpreted biblical motifs. James Joyce reconstructed the fall of man through the lens of Irish Catholicism in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, while Toni Morrison’s works, especially Beloved and Song of Solomon, draw from scripture to explore Black identity, trauma, and liberation in ways the traditional canon largely ignored. Morrison’s use of biblical names and archetypes isn’t ornamental—it reclaims and reshapes sacred narratives through the lens of African American experience.
Even in postmodern literature, where irony and skepticism often take center stage, biblical themes haven’t disappeared. Don DeLillo and Marilynne Robinson engage scripture in contrasting ways—DeLillo to highlight spiritual alienation in the consumer-driven West, Robinson to mine the depths of grace and forgiveness in quiet American towns. Regardless of approach, they demonstrate that biblical references still carry cultural and emotional voltage, anchoring abstract themes through familiar symbols and stories.
The Bible’s influence on literature doesn’t rely solely on faith. It’s embedded in the language, the archetypes, and the rhythm that echo through centuries of verse and prose. Whether used as sacred inspiration or cultural reference point, scripture remains a vital wellspring for writers trying to capture the complexity of the human experience.
Influence of scripture on visual arts and iconography
From frescoes in medieval chapels to oil paintings in Renaissance cathedrals, scripture has etched itself deeply into the visual history of Western art. It wasn’t just inspiration—it was often commission. The Church, as dominant cultural patron, enlisted artists not simply to decorate but to teach, to move, to make visible the unseen. Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro didn’t just dramatize a scene from Matthew or Acts; it shaped how generations would emotionally register mercy and betrayal. The visual language of faith became entwined with artistic technique and ambition.
Stories from scripture offered artists a vast, emotionally charged palette. Scenes like the Crucifixion, the Last Judgment, or the Annunciation demanded more than technical skill—they required the artist to interpret, to embody the spiritual intensity of the text. Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel doesn’t just recount Genesis; it wrestles boldly with creation as a divine act, bristling with muscular life and tension. These weren’t illustrations—they were interpretations, refracted through the lens of paint and stone.
Iconography, too, became a vocabulary shaped by scripture. A lamb holding a cross? Christ as the sacrificial figure. A snake intertwined on a tree? The Fall. Over time, these symbols became so embedded that they persist even outside explicitly religious contexts. Early Christian mosaics used coded images to convey faith covertly; by the Gothic era, windows and altarpieces read like lavishly illuminated pages of a sacred manuscript. Art wasn’t peripheral to scripture—it was a parallel form of exegesis, visual theology rendered in gold leaf and pigment.
In more modern eras, artists began to challenge and play with biblical themes. Marc Chagall’s work, for instance, reimagines scripture through the fractured lens of memory and exile, layering Jewish mysticism with dreamlike color. His “Exodus” doesn’t just depict a Biblical event—it becomes a meditation on displacement, suffering, and promise. Meanwhile, painters like Salvador Dalí gave scriptural scenes a Surrealist twist, bending time and space to underscore their psychological depth. The Bible, filtered through modern anxieties and experimentation, became a site of perpetual reinvention.
Even in contemporary art, where overt religious imagery might be sparse, the structure and symbolism seeded by scripture continue to shape the visual landscape. Installation pieces referencing Genesis, video art echoing themes of apocalypse and salvation—these all point to the Bible’s staying power. Not just as text, but as image. Not just as literature, but as a visual canon, constantly influencing how artists frame ideas of morality, existence, and transcendence.
Legacy of biblical narratives in contemporary culture
Biblical narratives haven’t exactly faded into the background of modern culture—they’ve just traded burning bushes for movie screens and streaming platforms. From superhero origin stories that mirror Messianic arcs to dystopian novels laced with prophetic fervor, echoes of scripture are still riding shotgun in how we tell stories and grapple with meaning. Shows like The Handmaid’s Tale twist Genesis into something chillingly dystopic, exposing how ancient scripture can be bent by power structures. At the same time, pieces like Darren Aronofsky’s Noah don’t just retell religious stories—they wrestle with them, asking new questions about human nature, justice, and divine will.
In pop culture, the influence isn’t always subtle. Think of how widely the archetypes endure: the chosen one, the betrayed savior, the prodigal child, the great flood. These aren’t just plot devices—they’re narrative DNA. Video games trade in apocalyptic visions with Revelation-style imagery. Graphic novels often reference creation myths and plagues with a modern, gritty twist. Even comedians—Jon Stewart comes to mind—riff on scripture to spotlight hypocrisy and challenge moral posturing. The Bible slips into culture in forms as diverse as hip-hop lyrics, fashion design, and speculative fiction.
What’s striking is how these reboots and riffs rarely treat biblical material as untouchable. They interrogate it, repurpose it, sometimes subvert it entirely. That dynamic is especially visible in literature. Margaret Atwood, raised on the King James Bible, writes like someone steeped in its rhythms, yet she deliberately turns its moralism inside out. In The Testaments, scripture becomes battleground rather than beacon. Others, like Colson Whitehead or Jesmyn Ward, explore themes of grace, sacrifice, and revelation through narratives grounded in the Black American experience—recasting familiar stories with voices historically excluded from the canon.
Contemporary visual art follows a similar trajectory. Artists like Kehinde Wiley quote religious masterpieces directly, inserting Black figures into Renaissance-style compositions—turning classical Christian imagery into a commentary on race, power, and presence. In street art, murals of the Madonna holding a child show up not in basilicas but on crumbling city walls, where they invoke both reverence and resilience. The sacred becomes communal again, not through institution but through visibility and access.
What’s emerged is a kind of remix culture where scripture still serves as source code, foundational and malleable. Its imagery, cadences, and stories are continuously rewritten across mediums—from fashion runways to digital installations. Even disaffection with organized religion hasn’t erased the emotional and symbolic force these narratives hold. If anything, it has opened up space for artists and writers to reclaim and reinterpret biblical themes with fresh urgency. The Bible, instead of belonging to the past, keeps finding ways to speak in the language of now.