This past summer, I traveled to South Carolina on vacation with my family. I am enough of an introvert that I can truly enjoy long periods of time alone in book stores - flipping through books and magazines, taking in small snapshots of the world. But I also like the bargain section. Because I like to pay less for more. (I suddenly have the terrible feeling that some mega-corporation's slogan has made its way into my brain.) Usually the selections on books related to faith are pretty sad. They're either coffee table books full of shallow applications of scripture or the run-off of teleevangelists who printed too many copies. But this time around I found one book that was stunning.

I picked up a copy of Gustave Dore's "Scenes from the Bible". The book is a collection of Dore's biblical illustrations - from Genesis to Revelation. His illustrations are simply amazing, giving a visual picture to the stories of scripture.

Dore (who looks like a member of The Killers) is also famous for his illustrations for Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Milton's "Paradise Lost"

Here are some of the ones that impacted me the most from this collection: