Understanding the Gospels

Elaine Storkey shares how she approached writing her latest book, Meeting God in Matthew (SPCK). In doing so, she provides tips for readers’ own close study of the Bible.

As a child, the children’s section of the town’s public library was one of my favourite places. I was not simply in the company of books and their fascinating, whimsical characters, I was also in the company of authors. Growing up with skilful wordsmiths, getting to know their voices and hearing their stories week after week enriched my childhood.

It’s probably not surprising that I was so attached to books. I come from a family of storytellers. My grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts were all narrators of one kind or another. As a young child I would creep back on to the stairs after bedtime, and listen to adult talk as visiting relatives recounted details of their everyday lives to each other. The pictures and narratives they wove were colourful, graphic and absorbing. And I was there, right inside their stories.

National public events were brought to life too. My grandmother was old enough to remember in detail the death of Queen Victoria and the Coronation of Edward VII. Not that she witnessed them physically, of course, or saw anything of those events. Those were days before the internet, mobile phones, television or even national radio. Telegraph wires near Osborn House on the Isle of Wight, where Queen Victoria stayed in her final days, allowed hourly news bulletins to be telegraphed to newspaper editors who published them to the nation. My grandmother remembered the scramble on the streets for the freshly released papers.