SOURCE: Undset, Sigrid. “A Treasury for All Mankind.” New York Times Book Review (24 December 1944): 1, 14.

In the following essay, novelist Undset outlines some minor disagreements with Chase's biblical interpretations in The Bible and the Common Reader while treating the book as a whole in positive terms.

It always seemed to me that literary elaborations on subject-matter borrowed from the Bible never improved the old stories. It is true that the Ages of Faith produced a wealth of religious poetry and drama which belong among the treasures of our spiritual inheritance. The Mysteries of the Middle Ages—the Latin hymns and sacred songs in the vernacular—the great religious epics—even a work like the Old Norse “King's Mirror” (which draws upon the Book of Proverbs for the advice of a father to his son on practical as well as spiritual matters) prove the immeasurable debt of European letters to...