Top 5 Biggest Influences on How I Read the Bible

I have been tagged by Art Boulet, to answer a question that is traveling around the biblio-blogosphere.  The prompt is to list your top 5 books or scholars that have had the greatest influence on how you read the Bible.

I have had an interesting theological journey.  I began as an Arminian Dispensationalist, and progressed into Reformed Covenantalism.  Now I am finding myself questioning how well I even fit into the ‘Reformed’ camp anymore; or at least, how well the Reformed camp would like me calling myself ‘Reformed’! In light of these (fairly drastic) changes, at the very least it has helped me temper my theological knowledge with a dose of humility, because I know that there is always much more for me to learn!

So, rather than make my list in order of significance, I will instead make my list chronological, as how each book affected my reading of scripture.

1. How To Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.

This is a basic text for entry-level Bible college students.  It is an excellent introduction to a more exegetical way to engage with the texts of the Bible, rather than your typical “devotional” reading of scripture.  This book was my first introduction to the fundamentals of proper Bible reading, and laid an invaluable foundation for me to build onto in the future.

2. Plato.

It’s strange that the writings of Plato would have a large effect on how I read the Bible, but it did in a nontraditional way.  Reading Plato had the biggest effect on how I read Paul.  When I read Plato, I get a glimpse into a culture and world of the past.  Similarly, this helped break a subconcious barrier in my mind that read Paul’s letters as “timeless,” rather than deeply encultured by Paul’s own time and day.  God’s truth in Paul’s letters is indeed timeless, but the text itself is embedded in time, space, and history.  Of course I’ve always been conscious of this, but it was a subconscious barrier that it helped.

3. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible, by John Walton.

This book, along with my Norton Anthology of World Literature, was my first proper introduction to the contextual world of the Old Testament.  This book really blew me out of the water.  It seemed like there were mind-blowing nuggets of information scattered absolutely everywhere in the book.  While Walton doesn’t necessarily go as far as he can in some of his conclusions, the data he presents is an excellent introduction and analysis of how the Hebrew Bible fits into the ancient Near Eastern world that it comes to us from.

4. Pete Enns (“Inspiration & Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament”).

The work of Pete Enns has turned my thinking about the Bible completely downside up.  Although chronologically this book comes in fourth, in terms of significance it comes in first place.  In the same way that William of Ockham overturned the then-reigning Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics (“There are no Platonic ‘forms’!”), I think Enns’s seminal work is going to influence biblical scholarship and theology permanently from now ’till Kingdom-come.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of the compatibility of science and faith, and Enns’s work was similarly my first introduction to synthesizing critical biblical scholarship with an evangelical authoritative view of the Bible as God’s word.  I genuinely believe that the work of Enns and others in this field will demand a complete reevaluation of our theology, in the same way that Dunn, Sanders, and Wright are doing in the New Testament with the New Perspective on Paul. Very, very exciting!

5. The Bible.

This entry is a little cheeky on my part, but I have a point to make.  What I want to highlight is the chronological order of where the Bible falls on my list: dead last.  I propose that in order to best understand the Bible, we should read the Bible itself last.

I think that in the same way that we would read an ancient text like Plato, we should read the Bible.  You don’t just pick up Plato and read it, and expect to necessarily understand every detail of what he’s talking about.  Sure, you will probably get the main gist of it, but the details are going to go way over your head. You should read an “Introduction to Plato,” or a study guide or something.

So it is with the Bible.  I think that the central message of redemption in the Bible can be read and understood by all.  However, when it comes to details and other peripheral issues, a lot is lost on the everyday Christian: why is Paul always going on about circumcision, etc.  A proper reading of the Bible should be preceded by first studying the Bible the way we would any ancient text: Who wrote it, where, and when?  What is the subject matter, and why was it composed?  This is why study Bibles are so important.  If you want to understand the Bible in a more detailed, thorough, and rigorous way, you have to first read about the Bible. And then only afterward, when you have a handle on the issues, read the Bible itself.

(Of course, this advice only applies to the non-specialist.  For an actual biblical scholar, the only way to ascertain such details as authorship, date of composition, etc., is to study the text itself.)

Okay, I had begun to write an additional point here (and one that is significantly more relevant), but I am getting ahead of myself for what I’m writing in my next blog post.  So I’ll write more on this subject very shortly, on my next article to be hosted at the collaborative blog, Dust and Light.

I’ll tag: Scot McKnight, Daniel Story, Tony Jones, Scott Lencke, Michael Bird, Simon Ravenscroft, and Mark Goodacre.

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