Looking NE from St. Peter’s to the old city and Mt. of Olives
This post of recommendations focuses on the history and culture of the Old Testament. I’ve bolded my simple choices for those who don’t want lots of detailed options. Continue reading
Category: books
A Christmas Plug
The Real St. Nicholas
One of the best ways for laypeople to learn about the history, text, interpretation, archaeology, and lands of the Bible is through reading Biblical Archaeology Review. In spite of the name, it’s not just about archaeology. It used to have a sister magazine called Bible Review which was more focused on text and interpretation, but they’ve been combined. BAR (the frequent acronym) contains writings by scholars (Jewish, Christian, LDS, nothing particular) written for laypeople, so it’s meant to be accessible and up-to-date. It also means that you’ll see things that challenge, things written from different worldviews or religious presuppositions, and, often, rejoinders by other scholars who disagree. So you’ll also learn to recognize good scholarship and quality argument.
I’ve pulled out three Christmas-y articles to show the kind of thing they do. First, Hebrew Bible scholar William H.C. Propp writes a tongue-in-cheek piece about relating Christmas and Santa Clause to asherah, the ancient mother goddess/tree/grove that Israel sometimes worshipped. The title riffs off an ancient inscription which some read as “Jahweh and his asherah.”
As it turns out, Propp was also “principal bassoonist of the North Coast Symphony Orchestra of Southern California and conductor of the La Jolla Renaissance Singers.” His musical life (and Jewish upbringing) contributed to another Christmas piece, with some history and critique of Handel’s use and abuse of the Hebrew Bible in writing The Messiah. This is article two.
Article three focuses on the how December 25th came to be celebrated as Christmas.
All three can be downloaded from here. Check out BAR. And if you’re interested in St. Nicholas, read this post.
As always, you can help me pay my tuition here. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.
Old Testament Resources Part 3: Paradigm Changers
George Cattermole, “The Scribe” public domain.
I’ve put together a collection of samples from these books.
First, note that LDS Perspectives is beginning a string of Old Testament-related podcasts, today with Philip Barlow (author of the excellent Mormons and the Bible), Cory Crawford the following week, and then me talking about what’s going on in Genesis 1, Moses, and Abraham. Continue reading
Old Testament Resources Part 2: Bible, Translation, and LDS Tradition
Public domain
This is the second in a series of posts about resources for study and teaching the Old Testament in 2018. If you feel overwhelmed by the information below, I recommend going back to the first post, a shortlist of five books to give you a leg up, without lots of discussion to cut through. Future posts will provide resources on “paradigm changers,” the JST, history/culture of the Old Testament, the early chapters of Genesis, creation/evolution, how to profitably study, take notes, teach, etc. Continue reading
Old Testament Resources Part 1: The Short List and Elder Ballard
My old bookshelf
In this post, I’m not going to go into justifications of this vs. that, just recommendations of five basic books that will make anyone’s Old Testament experience much more rewarding. If you do want more detail, options, and justifications, look at the more detailed posts linked at the bottom.
(Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links) Continue reading
Fireside books and references
These are books/authors I quote or allude to in the slides of my fireside/Sperry Symposium presentation. The actual paper has many more references, of course. I’ll be posting it in entirety, first in chunks as posts, and then as a complete pdf file. What is listed below will also overlap with my Recommended Resource for the Old Testament posts, coming in November.
Becoming “Competent Readers,” Learning the “Rules of the Game,” Reading with Ancient Eyes
- Richards/O’Brian, Misreading the Bible with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible
- Brettler, How to Read the (Jewish) Bible (This is very basic, short, and accessible.)
- Barton, Reading the Old Testament (Still accessible, but longer and more complex.)
- Relevant excerpts from the last two here. Highly recommended.
The Bible is Weird
- Matthew Schlimm, This Strange and Sacred Scripture: Wrestling with the Old Testament and Its Oddities and
- Robin Parry, The Biblical Cosmos: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Weird and Wonderful World of the Bible
Study Bibles
- Harper-Collins Study Bible– Based on the New Revised Standard Version, this is often assigned for New Testament 101, or Hebrew Bible 101 at colleges. The publisher is the Society of Biblical Literature, and translation and notes are done by a variety of scholars, so there’s little religious bias.
NIVCultural Backgrounds Study Bible– Based on the conservative Evangelical translation New International Version, this translation is demonstrably quite biased; it cheats. However, the notes (at least, the OT notes I’ve checked) are great. As you might guess from the title, the notes and essays focus on the cultural backgrounds, those things ancient audiences (likely) knew which moderns don’t. Review here. It’s edited by John Walton, an Evangelical scholar I like, and my understanding is that the notes and essays are derived or shortened from this stand-alone series. EDIT: I just learned that you can get these notes with the New King James Version (NKJV) translation, instead of the NIV. I strongly recommend that over the NIV. The NKJV is basically an update to the English of the KJV, so it retains most of the archaicness and problems of the KJV text. But that’s preferable over the deceptiveness of the NIV’s modern (but strongly biased) translation.- Jewish Study Bible– This translation and notes/essays are all written by Jewish scholars, which means it only covers the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. It’s a fantastic resource that will enlighten and challenge (since, for example, Jews are unlikely to interpret Isaiah as messianic prophecies of Jesus.) I enjoy contrasting its views with those of the NIV.
- NET Bible-The advantage of this is it’s entirely free and online at http://Netbible.org, and in free App form, called Lumina. There are thousands and thousands of footnotes, often about translation or background.
Hebrew-focused translations with notes.
- Robert Alter (no title to his series)
- Everett Fox, The Schocken Bible
On Bible translations, and using Free Greek and Hebrew tools, see
- my article here in Religious Educator (skip to the Application section for Bibles/tools)
- my two blogposts here and here showing how to use free tools in Logos.
On genre, listen/read my podcast here.
Others Quoted/alluded to–
- Nahum Sarna, a Rabbi with a PhD in Semitics who has written about Genesis.
- Kenton Sparks, an Evangelical Bible scholar who does some fantastic work about faith, scholarship, and the nature of scripture, especially this one and this one.
- V. Philips Long, Art of Biblical History.
- Kevin Barney, “Understanding Old Testament Poetry” Ensign, June 1990.
- Moberly’s article in Reading Genesis After Darwin
- Thomas Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Church from 1890-1930. This book, originally commissioned by the Church, contains the discussion of the 1922 FP letter about Jonah and Job.
- C.S. Lewis, various.
- Raymond Brown, I think it’s 101 Questions on the Bible,
- Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon
- Elder Ballard’s blockbuster discourse to Seminary/Institute teachers, and then the edited version in the Ensign.
As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through this Amazon link. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.
Evolution and the Fall
I received a trio of books recently, so I’m providing some brief thoughts on what I’ve read so far.
First, Evolution and the Fall is an anthology of essays edited by William Cavanaugh and James Smith. The latter was featured on the MI Podcast talking about secularism and his book How Not to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Of course, I had just submitted the final version of an article on the nature and translation of Adam in Genesis 2-3 from the 2013 Mormon Theology Seminar on Genesis 2-3. And of course, that meant there was great material in this book I wish I had seen earlier. The problem, as the evangelical editors state, is this. Continue reading
FairMormon, Some Papers, and Books
My image.
My FairMormon presentation reiterated parts of two previous papers I have presented. That text should be online soon (as I understand.) Below I offer the very rough presentation text from the two previous papers. Continue reading
Kenton Sparks on Genre
Public domain, http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=8577&picture=old-books
In the LDS Perspectives podcast, I alluded to this passage from Kenton Sparks’ section in Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?: Three Views on the Bible’s Earliest Chapters. (This post contains Amazon Affiliate links)
I think he captures very concisely and clearly the nature of genre; A genre is a pattern, established by identifying the characteristics it has in common with other similar things. This is why it’s so important to study ancient Near Eastern literature outside the Bible. By putting the Bible in conversation with texts from roughly the same time and place, we gain more examples and are better able to identify shared characteristics. (Sparks does this here in a more academic handbook style.) Notably, many of these texts were undiscovered or unable to be read and understood until the last century. (See my screencast on the rediscovery of the ancient Near East.) Continue reading
My LDS Perspectives Podcast on Genre
Ben contemplates his words, at Petra.
I was interviewed last year for the LDS Perspectives podcast, which I recommend. Therein, I allude to a lot of different books and papers, linked below. I also cited John Widtsoe on genre, from his 1930 book In Search of Truth available online here. Widtsoe said,
“As in all good books every literary device is used in the Bible that will drive the lesson home. It contains history, poetry and allegory. These are not always distinguishable, now that the centuries have passed away since the original writing.”
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