At each end of this book is a biblical encounter with the Other, an apprehension of the numinous. It begins with the visit to Abraham of three mysterious figures, described in Genesis 18, who inform him that Sarah, his aged wife, is to conceive a son, and warn him to flee the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The episode, in which Abraham’s visitors are sometimes referred to as “he,” sometimes as “they,” was interpreted by St. Augustine as a prefiguration of the doctrine of the Trinity, and prompted one of the masterpieces of Russian icon-painting, The Hospitality of Abraham (The Trinity) by Andrei Rublev. Its rewriting began as early as the New Testament story of the Annunciation, in which the three visitors become the archangel Gabriel, Abraham and Sarah become Joseph and Mary, but the news of the miraculous birth and the warning to escape the wrath to come (in this case Herod’s) remain. The Bible is never a closed book, even to itself, and a major strand of Professor Boitani’s argument is that it not only promises, but also possesses, eternal life, being endlessly renewed in subsequent literary avatars.

Like Abraham, Mary recognizes the divine because she is open to that possibility. Towards the end of his book, Boitani evokes another visitation to another Mary, in John 20. Weeping in the garden of Gethsemane, she at first takes the stranger whom she meets for the gardener. Only when she hears the familiar voice naming her does