The Bible Tells Me So

Book Review: The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It by Peter Enns - Very good popular level book on biblical hermeneutics (how we read and interpret the bible.) It is well worth reading and at least today (March 24, 2015) it is on sale for $1.99 on kindle (blog link below has link to kindle).

The main point of the book is that the modern understanding of Scripture as rule book or guide-book or science book actually changes scripture to something that is different from what early Christians understood and how the writers seem to have intended. Some of the book is simply insight into biblical authors/reader's understanding and culture. Other parts are exploring difficult ideas (like Canaanite genocide) or New Testament author's use of the Old Testament.

Enns conclusion is that we need to allow the bible to be a collection of different voices and resist the impulse to harmonize and clean up scripture. God choose to give us a book written by many with a number of different voices and stories and attitudes and we need to deal with the bible we were given, not try to make it into something that is cleaner or more cohesive.


My full (nearly 1400 word) review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-bible-tells-me-so-why-defending-scripture-has-made-us-unable-to-read-it-by-peter-enns/