The Old Testament

by SparkNotes

SparkNotes Literature Guides:
Making the reading experience fun!
 
When a paper is due, and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis; explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols; a review quiz; and essay topics. Lively and accessible, SparkNotes is perfect for late-night studying and paper writing.
 
Includes: An A+ Essay—an actual literary essay written about the Spark-ed book—to show students how a paper should be written.

16 pages devoted to writing a literary essay including: a glossary of literary terms
Step-by-step tutoring on how to write a literary essay
A feature on how not to plagiarize

Genres: Nonfiction

72 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2002

About the author

Many of the editions by this group of authors are actually guides to books rather than the works.

If the author of the SparkNotes is known, they should be the first author. Please leave these SparkNotes Editors as the second author and the author of the original work as the last author. Do not combine with the original work. Do not put the author of the ORIGINAL work first.

Link to discussion.

Reviews

[Dennis Mitton]

Great overview...

[Armand · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reference is surprisingly good. I know that Sparknotes markets itself to college undergrads and being 38 years old, I'm not the demographic. Nevertheless, the author put in a lot of hard work to create a thoughtful, well written review / refresher of the works of the Old Testament (from a literary perspective NOT a theological perspective)which I haven't really reviewed since 8th grade. Unlike the Sparknotes website (which tries to be trendy and unselfconsciously cool), the language in the book is clear, does not speak down to the reader, and to the point.

A lot of solid stuff in here including major plot points in the story of the Bible, a review of the biggest characters, themes and also some nice historical info to put things in context and a clear and easy-to-understand review of old Hebrew poetic structure. A very handy reference.

I'm giving it four stars because not because it was a great work of literature but because it is an approachable, thoughtfully constructed reference for the non-expert(me)and a good tool for learning that has earned a place on my bookshelf.

[Michael Teter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It offered some interesting information

[Archie Lewallen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect for when you need an unbiased approach to the Gospel.