LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
BOOK CRITIQUE
AN ASSIGNMENT SUBMITTED TO DR. WAECHTER
NBST610-B01
BY
PAUL HORNE
SUFFOLK, VA
June 8, 2014
Introduction
This author cannot think of
one Christian who would not like to know how to read the Bible better and have
a deeper understanding of what it is they are reading. There are many great
books out there on the subject, but the book we are going to be taking a closer
look at is one of the best on the topic. This book is so good that when I was a
new Christian I asked my pastor what books would he recommend that I read and
this work was at the top of that list. After reading it myself I have to concur
with my Pastor’s suggestion that this is one of the best books for a young
believer to read, so that they can learn how to read the Bible and understand
it for themselves more clearly. Without further ado we will take a closer look
at How to Read the Bible for All Its
Worth.
Summary
In this book you will find
thirteen chapters, taking up 250+ pages. Chapter one is a very important
chapter because it starts off with the need of interpretation. On the very
first page of chapter one, Fee and Stuart make a point that bears repeating,
they say, “Let it be said at the outset—and repeated throughout—that the aim of
good interpretation is not uniqueness; one is not trying to discover what no
one else has ever seen before.”
There are many different reasons why we should avoid uniqueness but the biggest
reason is that “unique interpretations are usually wrong.”
One of the strongest comments made by these two men in this chapter comes from
near the end, they say, “A text cannot mean what it never meant”
That is a deeply profound thing to say, it is simple yet so important to
remember. We often will want to read more into a text than what was originaly
there. Chapter one reminds us that we must pay careful attention to the
historical and literary context of whatever text we are reading.
Now we move forward to
chapter two and deal with the importance of a good translation when we are
doing Bible study. This section of the book handles some rather important
things that are easily overlooked. For instance, “how often do we consider the
background of the text that was translated to create our modern translation?”
The answer for must of us is we don’t. Something that the authors spent a
little bit of time on was textual criticism, looking at the internal and external
evidences. The external evidence has to do with the quality and age of the
manuscript that supports a certain variant.
And the internal evidence has to do with the copyists and authors.
In chapter three we start
learning how to interpret the epistles. It is often assumed that these letters
are going to be easy to interpret. According to Fee and Stuart, “On the other
hand, the “ease” of interpreting epistles can be quite deceptive. This is
especially true at the level of hermeneutics.”
Something that should be noted is that an epistle is different than a regular
letter in that epistles are meant to be read out loud in the public.
The authors did a good job in letting the reader understand how the letters are
usually formed. There is one letter (1 John) that has none of the formal
elements of a letter.
While we do not know all of the authors of the NT we can tell most of the
occasions for the letters written. “Almost all of the New Testament letters
were occasioned from the reader’s side (Philemon and perhaps James and Romans
are exceptions.)”
There are many different things that need to be done in order to properly
understand how to read the epistles. However, “The first thing one must try to
do with any of the epistles is to form a tentative but informed reconstruction
of the situation that the author is speaking to.”
Chapter four continues on
the path of the epistles. Fee and Stuart
have what they refer to as the basic rule, which we have mentioned earlier,
that a text cannot mean what it was unable to mean to the original hearers.
There are several different things that take place when attempting to find the
principal of a passage; again we have to remember that we cannot make a
principal timeless when it was meant for a specific time. In order for a
principle to work it must be “applied to a genuinely comparable situations.”
This chapter was very rich with material
that the author could not put into this paper. One last thing that seemed very
important was the need “to be able to distinguish within the New Testament
itself between principle and specific application.”
Old Testament narrative is
the topic of chapter five, and we are told, “over 40 percent of the Old
Testament is narrative…”
This author appreciates how the authors of this work spell out the intent of
this chapter from the beginning of it. Our concern in this chapter is to guide
you toward a good understanding of how Hebrew narrative “works,” so that you
may read your Bibles more knowledgeably with greater appreciation for God’s
story. You may be asking yourself “What exactly is a narrative?” According to
the authors, “Narratives are stories—purposeful stories retelling the
historical events of the past that are
intended to give meaning and direction for a given people
in the present.”
There are multiple levels in which narrative takes place all the way from the
global down to the individual. There are several things to keep in mind that
narratives are not. They are not allegories, nor are they intended to be used
for moral lessons. There are four main
characteristics to Hebrew narrative: there is the narrator, the scene, the
characters, and the dialogue. On page 106 we are given ten principals for
interpreting narratives.
In the essence of space the
author is going to scale back the chapter-by-chapter review. And give more of a
general overview of the last several chapters. Chapter six deals with the book
of Acts and tells us to handle it in similar fashion of the narrative, well not
completely the same way. The next two chapters deal with the Gospels and the
parables that take place in those Gospels. In the final chapters of the book
there is dealt with the prophets, the law, wisdom, poetry, and the book of
Revelation.
Critique
In this section it is this
authors intention to cover very briefly some of the different points that arise
throughout this book. One of the first statements that stood out to me had to
do with the use of the King James Bible (KJV). Fee and Stuart suggest that,
“…for study
you should use almost any
modern translation rather than the KJV or NKJV”
For some people I know this statement would seem heretical, but I fully
appreciate it because I have been saying for years that we have better
translations available to us than that which was written in 1611.
Also, we struggle with many
different texts because they were not written for us. Fee and Stuart say, “In
many cases the reason the texts are so difficult for us is that, frankly, they
were not written for us.”
This is a very powerful statement, especially since many Americans often have
the mentality that the Bible and all it has to say were written specifically
for us. The bigger question we should be asking ourselves, “is why do we tend
to think that way?” However, once we come to Scripture with the proper
understanding we can then begin to apply things in a more biblical manner.
Earlier in this paper there
was mention of a basic rule of hermeneutics, now we come across their second
rule; “Whenever we share comparable particulars (i.e., similar specific life
situations) with the first-century hearers, God’s Word to us is the same as his
Word to them.”
This
is hard to fully understand like Scripture when taken out of context. The
authors go on to explain how certain texts give a certain immediacy. But we
must beg the question of what things do we have in common with people from the
first century?
Something that goes along
similar lines shows up just a few pages
away in dealing with problems of particulars that are not comparable. “The problem here has to do with two kinds of
texts in the Epistles: those that speak to first-century issues that for the
most part are without twenty-first-century counterparts, and those texts that
speak to problems that could happen also in the twenty-first century but are
highly unlikely to do so.”
As was previously stated there are challenges that lie in trying to understand
what exactly the authors are trying to say. For what can be grasped is that not
every verse is going to have a twenty-first century counterpart especially in
principal. One of those things that we
do not run into has to do with the argument over circumcision. I guess you
could say that the modern day equivalent would be the mode of baptism. One
thing that stood out in my reading that seemed to be of little importance but
the authors focused on was the priority of who wrote what Gospel first. And if
we are giving opinions this author believes in Matthean priority.
Conclusion
This work is a great work.
It covers many different aspects of the Bible and what it takes to understand
them, it does not sugar coat thing. It takes its time and gives the reader a
fair and balanced understanding of the challenges one will face when reading
Scripture. While this work has its fair share of things that need to be
interpreted it is one of the better works read on the subject. This is a book I
would recommend to a new believer as well as a seasoned Christian looking for
ways to freshen up their time in the Word. One nice thing about this work is that it can
be used as a reference work, first one should read the first two chapters and
then whichever chapter(s) they feel necessary for the work at hand.
Bibliography
Fee, Gordon
D., and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All its Worth. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.
Gordon D.Fee, and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All its Worth.
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003)17.
