Suzanne E. Lier
Short Vita
Suzanne E. Lier, born 1958 into a German-American family, a Catholic and ecumenical Christian, was raised in Germany (Freiburg, Altenberg and Bensberg) and studied Philosophy, English and Educational Science in San Rafael (California), Bonn (Germany) and Cambridge (England). After completing her studies, she worked as a freelance journalist and enjoyed an extensive stay at home raising five children. Since 2008 she has been enrolled as an auditor at the University of Bonn, where she has been studying theology and art history. In 2012 she founded the publishing house “Bible & Art” which aims to produce quality books on biblical texts and art.
How the Book Came About
The published storybook is the fulfillment of a dream I had ever since my children were young, and I read Bible stories to them at bedtime: to have a Children’s Bible for them which tells the stories without embellishments (to make sure they don’t feel cheated when they read the stories in the real Bible later on!) in clearly understandable language and which is illustrated with art on each double page. I observed that children are more alert if they have a corresponding picture to look at while being read to aloud. The pictures they saw had an immense influence on how they felt about the stories.
This book did not exist, and thus I started to work on it when time permitted. In the process of writing, I asked myself many questions and tried to answer them by reading a lot of books and enrolling as an auditor at the University of Bonn. I turned my findings into brief commentaries below the texts for adults and explanations alongside the pictures for children.
And since whatever you do becomes more interesting the more you get into it, my Children’s Bible became longer and longer. By no means did I want to omit texts I found important, and thus I had no other choice than to divide my project into several volumes. Also, it became clearer and clearer to me how important the First/Old Testament is for the Christian faith.
Thus, three volumes have developed for the core texts of the Old Testament (the first volume published in 2013 covers the Five Books of Moses, the second volume, 2017, covers the Books Joshua through Kings, the third volume, 2021, covers the Prophetic Books) and a fourth volume is in the planning stages comprising the remaining Old Testament Books (the “Writings”: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ruth, Ecclesiastes and other).
To make sure my books – originally written in German (Reise durch das Alte Testament, ISBN: 978-3-9815308-0-3; ISBN: 978-3-9815308-2-7; ISBN: 978-3-9815308-4-1) – find many readers, I have translated Part I and II into English (English edition: ISBN 978-3-9815308-1-0 und ISBN 978-3-9815308-3-4). My own imperfect translations were then revised and shaped into wonderful English by Dr. Patrick Labriola, professional translator and interpreter in Bonn/Germany and Dr. Amy Kepple Strawser, Senior Lecturer at Otterbein University/USA.
Presentation of the Bible Project
in: zoé. leben mit anderen augen sehen, No. 6, March 2020
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