Understanding Scripture

This book was another from the budget bookstall at UCCF Forum. It's a collection of short essays, edited by Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins and Thomas R. Schreiner, about approaches to considering and studying the Bible. The topics broadly cover:

• How the range of texts included in the Bible originated and were collected together to form the book's canon.
• How the languages these texts were written in work translated into contemporary English.
• Archaeological evidence supporting for the historical claims of these texts.
• The coherence and variation of the thousands of pre-printing copies made of these texts.
• How older (Old Testament) texts share huge amounts of depth and meaning with newer (New Testament) ones. 
• How these texts collectively (i.e. the Bible) have been interpreted throughout history.
• How we as modern individuals can return to the Bible and read it to glean literary, theological and personally applicable insights, and how this can enable us to better proclaim textual messages to others and grow in prayerful communion with its main character (God).

If this doesn't sound rivetingly exciting it's because it isn't (this probably won't be a long post because most of the book is dry fact that fills mental gaps for dry facts instead of provoking further thought). Read something else if you want something juicy or stimulating. I'm not being irreverent in saying this - the book fulfils its purpose excellently, and that purpose is to inform one about the Bible's origin and reliability, and give a few vague pointers as to how one might adopt an appropriate mindset to go about reading it. It's sort of like the Bible's unwritten instruction-manual-cum-background-info compendium. I didn't read it for amusement or even interest, but to help shed some light on some questions that had been prickling my beliefs, and for that it did somewhat alleviate my doubts* and so while barely enjoying it I'm very glad indeed that I read it.

   If you are keen to know about how ancient Greek pronouns can be tricky, or be surprised at the inerrant transcribing skills of 1st century C.E. Mediterranean Christians (the statistics for meaningful variations in the texts are almost negligible, and there are literally thousands of surviving transcripts, which in ancient-document terms is a goldmine of historical surety), or how various councils decided against including the apocrypha in the final canon, or many other facets of the Bible's journey from being written to being read, then there are probably far better books out there covering the topic of your interest in more detail. This is still a fairly decent place to get a broad introduction though.

   The best section is the second one, with five approaches to reading the Bible; as theology, as literature, for personal application, for prayer and communion with God, and for public preaching and worship. As with the more factual sections, this is worth skipping if you'd rather read a whole book about the particular section of interest, but I still found this section an encouragement as it is the section of the book most imbued with a sense of the Bible's purpose, which is overwhelmingly positive; and when read properly engenders love, thoughtfulness, generosity, wisdom, gentleness, faithfulness, humility and such.

   This book then does what it says on the tin; it won't change your life, but scripture ostensibly does and this book helps you understand and approach it to bring you toward better facilitating that.

*asterisks are a great way of avoiding too-long parenthetical statements. Anyway; I mentioned in the last post about the challenge of being a christian and a philosophy student, you have to think very hard and run to a great many helpful books to retain a firmish belief in your beliefs. This most recent surge of doubt was brought about by the Philip Pullman novel discussed last post - not a great story but an interesting provocative point about how stories become stories, including histories, including Jesus' life as the centre of christian theological truth. I realised I didn't have enough of an understanding of the Bible's origins to ensure my confidence about its legitimacy, and this was the book I turned to to alleviate those doubts. Somewhat effectively. This footnote has way too many hyperlinks in it, I'm sorry.