Book Review: Author’s guide to saints helpful
BOOK REVIEW

Comments 0
Published: July 14, 2009

Here is a quick reference book about saints of the Bible, the majority of which are from the New Testament. In "Saints of the Bible: Exploring Scripture With Holy Men and Women” (Our Sunday Visitor, $9.95 paperback), Theresa Doyle-Nelson presents 1½ to 2 pages on various saints. Among those she discusses are the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, Paul, Stephen, Barnabas, the Holy Innocents, Mary Magdalene, Lazarus and his sister Martha and Philemon.

Multimedia

Photoview all photos

She arranges them in order of their feast days, starting with Mary, the Mother of God (Jan. 1) and finishing with the Holy Innocents (Dec. 28). The general reader will enjoy this book, and others can use it as an introduction into the study of the saints.

Doyle-Nelson has a bibliography that includes books and dictionaries on the saints, as well as Internet sites. The author provides not only the current date of the feast of the saint, but if the feast day has been moved, she shows the old date.

She begins the biography of each saint with a short quote from Scripture on the particular saint and at the end of the biography provides citations as to where to find more Scripture quotes on the saint. There also is a chart that has the saint’s name, what the name means, date of feast, patronage of, and Scripture reference. This book is highly recommended as an introduction to saints of the Bible.

— Benet Exton