John Ruskin’sRuskin, John early childhood was saturated in biblical textuality. In 1898, The Bible References of John Ruskin appeared, running to 303 pages (see Gibbs). For both Ruskin and John Henry NewmanNewman, John Henry, it constituted an Evangelical version of precocity, an election into religious and cultural empowerment that lifted more normative burdens of Oedipal alienation.