Hi. I’m Jeanne Petrolle. For ten years, I’ve taught a course called The Bible as Literature at a secular private college in Chicago’s South Loop, one of the city’s most ethnically, economically, and culturally diverse neighborhoods. I love teaching biblical literature in a diverse environment. While my personal faith holds the Bible as sacred text, my greatest professional satisfaction comes from making the Bible understandable to the non-religious. Religious people do not and should not own the Bible. As the Western world’s first recognized and best-selling literary classic, the Bible belongs to everyone. Teaching has shown me that approaching the Bible as allegory—as storytelling wrapped around philosophical or religious ideas—enables people with conflicting worldviews to explore the Bible together peaceably. I love teaching people how to read the Bible allegorically, because allegorical reading brings unlike-minded people together in conversation about the things that matter: life, death, work, sex, gender, power, family, creativity, violence, peace, hatred, love, betrayal, revenge, forgiveness, destruction, renewal, and more. I welcome you to this site, which shares my professional and personal experience with reading the Bible as allegory. Whether you know the Bible well or not at all, whether you are religious or nonreligious, read on. We undertake a journey into the ancient world that can enhance your understanding of our present culture and illuminate the pressing human questions that occupy all classic literature.

Jeanne Petrolle holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Illinois. She is the author of Religion without Belief: Contemporary Allegory and the Search for Postmodern Faith and Dancing with Ophelia: Reconnecting Madness, Creativity, and Love. She has published essays about literature, religion, and culture in Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Film Quarterly, Image: A Journal of Art and Religion, Issues in Integrative Studies, and Hektoen International Journal. She lives with her husband and son in the Chicago area, and escapes to a farm in Connecticut whenever she can, for retreats from city life.