Ben has tagged me with a meme about books which have influenced how I read the Bible:
Name 5 books or scholars that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible. [Ken Brown has collected responses.]
The New International Version of the Bible. I grew up using the AV. It wasn’t till I adopted the NIV that I began to realise that much of what I thought was serious Bible Study, was simply translating Elizabethan English into my own vernacular. Reading the NIV opened my eyes to the concept that the Bible was intended to be understood. These days I read the New Living Translation in my devotions, but it was the NIV that changed my life.
Fee and Stuart’s little book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth is another life changer. It first brought home to me concepts such as reading the text in context, looking at the genre of the Biblical text and so on. It all seems rather basic today, but these were new concepts to me at the time. I don’t think a better entry level guide to Bible study has been written.
The New Testament and the People of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God v. 1 (I am reading the rest – slowly) by NT. Wright is a stunning book which opened my eyes to the Jewish context of the Gospels. Like Ben, I’m also very impressed by Wright’s paper on the authority of Scripture.
Some serious Bible Blogger or other will probably laugh at me for mentioning Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. However, this book forced me to take a very hard look at my views of Scripture and to re-evaluate how I was choosing to interprate it. I’ve read more scholarly books which said similar things, but which left me in my ivory tower. Rob Bell made me rethink things in the real world.
The Kouya New Testament. Having worked so long on the Kouya translation, whenever I look at a New Testament passage, I find myself wondering what we did in Kouya. Just this morning in Church I found myself wondering about the translation of John 1:1-18 during the reading.
Awesome. Thanks for sharing. I have Fee and Stuart on my shelf in line to read. Will hopefully soon tackle that one.
[...] Arthur at Kouya Chronicle: The NIV, Gordon Fee/Douglas Stuart, N.T. Wright, Rob Bell, The Kouya New [...]
Eddie, thanks for the reviews. I’m going camping this weekend, and you gave me a lovely list of things to check out at the library. Keep the reviews coming! They’re really helpful, especially when I’m overseas and can’t keep current with what’s new.