"This book has been written in the conviction that in order to understand and appreciate the literary culture of the Spanish Golden Age, we need to refine and extend our awareness of how the Christian Bible was read, interpreted, and transmitted in the society of the time. It is not, however, a study of the reception of the Bible in the Catholic Monarchy, nor does it consider in detail the biblical scholarship in which the Golden Age excelled. Its focus is instead the literature and art of the age, which it approaches by examining closely a selection of remarkable texts and paintings produced in Spain between the times of Columbus and Velázquez."--Preface, p. xv.