Musings of a Snickerdoodle

"A fellow lecturer told his Bible class that it did not matter whether the biblical character Job was real or fictional.  For him, the point off Job's book is to teach us about suffering, and the historicity of Job is immaterial to that lesson.  I cannot disagree more strongly, and hopefully this illustration will help clarify why.  Suppose you are going through a difficult time in your life.  Perhaps it is from the death of a close relative or you struggle with debilitating illness. Just like the psalmist who felt abandoned by God in his deepest time of need, you feel lost and adrift in your suffering, with no sense of God's care.  In this state, you ask me to bring you wise counsel and comfort. I tell you a story about a man who built a spaceship to travel to Venus.  Due to a technological breakthrough, he was able to equip his vessel with heat-resistant panels, making it safe to venture close to the sun.  Unfortunately, along the way the panels ...

The Worldview Study Bible seeks to remind Christians that the Bible is not just a book that we read to feel more religious, we are changed by it, our thinking, our worldview, our perspective of everything is changed when we use it to renew our mind. This Bible has many articles in it, scattered throughout and dealing with various 'worldview' topics, articles like: "Biblical Models for Business", "Engaging LGBT Advocates", "Emperor and King Worship in Biblical Times", "Animal Rights" , "A Biblical Assessment of Abortion", and so on.   Some of the articles are quite interesting and helpful.   Others, I had some trouble with some of the content.   For instance, in the article on "Biblical Formation",   dealing with various ways one can utilize the Scriptures, it says, "Praying through the Bible flows naturally from Scripture meditation.   Giants of the faith, such as Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, and e...

This book,"Christ: Chronological" is a sort of chronological parallel Bible.  Using the Christian Standard Bible translation the Gospel accounts, written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are arranged in a chronological order and they are placed alongside each other in parallel columns when dealing with the same account. The text from each Gospel is in a different color, blue for Matthew, Green for Mark, a reddish color for Luke and purple for John.  Along the very bottom of each page is a 'color code' key as it were, reminding you which color represents each Gospel. Very nicely bound (a hardcover book, and wider than a typical Bible - it's in a square shape), the book lies quite flat when opened, so you can easily lay it down on a table while reading it without keeping one hand on it to make sure that the pages won't turn on their own.   The font is easy to read, a good size, and also, despite the font being various colors, they are bold colors and ...

The Spurgeon Study Bible is a very neat idea.  As most people somewhat acquainted with Mr. Spurgeon know, he was not a verse-by-verse through a book of the Bible kind of preacher.  He usually would choose a verse (or portion of verses) for one Sunday and would preach on that and then preach on another (non-related, often from a whole different book)verse the next week. And also, some may also notice that his preaching was not always very exegetical. That being said, this  commentary is a great compilation!  It sort of gives a glimpse of how it would have been if Spurgeon went by a more verse by verse preaching style, and it focuses on snippets from his sermons that are more exegetical. The version that I have is the brown and tan cloth over board Bible.  It is very nicely bound and seems quite durable.  The spine has some fancy looking ridges on it and the front has Spurgeon's signature printed on the bottom left. There is a lot ...

I became interested in reviewing this book when I saw a preview of it online.  365 Classic Bedtime Bible Stories (inspired by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut's Story of the Bible) illustrated by Alessia Girasole is geared towards children ages 3 and up and, from what I saw in the preview text online, it looked like it might be a pretty good resource to have for teaching kids.  Upon first examining the book I was very pleased to see that they didn't seem to be trying to cut out the more gruesome and sad parts of the Bible.  Some of it struck me as sadly amusing, mainly because of the illustrations.  To give an example, one of the 'stories' gives the account of the 'scoffing' nobleman who didn't believe Elisha when he said that food would be sold at extremely low prices the following day (there was a severe famine in the land).  The nobleman died the following day from being trampled by people rushing toward the food.  This is illustrated (bloodlessly) in the pi...

The CSB Reader's Bible is designed to make it easy to sit down and just read each individual book. It is more along the lines of how it would have been read by the early Christians whose Bibles (or sections of the Bible/individual letters) were not divided into chapters and verses until many, many years after the Apostles had died. The text of this "Reader's Bible" is in a single column, like a regular book, instead being placed in two columns.  It has no chapter numbers and no verse numbers.   This edition is a nice looking grey cloth over board volume, and includes an attached ribbon marker.  The font is a nice size and seems about the size of a regular book's font and is a very readable edition. I do want to note that the pages are very thin and quite flimsy, much like, or exactly like, a regular Bible's pages. I think that the edition would be nicer if the pages were the same thickness as a regular book's.  But perhaps they would have to divide it...

I was talking with one of my uncles some months ago and he was lamenting the lack of good Christian books out there, pointing out that the only good 'Christian' books are the ones that lead you to read the Bible itself instead of more books about the Bible.  God with Us: Exploring God's Personal Interactions with His People Throughout the Bible by Glenn R. Kreider is one such book.  I don't believe that I had heard of this book before, or at least if I had it didn't catch my attention at the time.  A friend gave it to me and I ended up being very pleased with it. In the book, Kreider focuses upon the humility of God.  He goes through the different periods of Biblical history pointing out many instances of God's graciousness towards mankind.  I'll list some particular snippets that I found fascinating: First, in his section on Abraham Kreider points out that God could have responded in anger for Abraham's asking how he would know that he w...

The Christian Standard Bible is a new revision of the Holman Christian Standard Bible.  They have made some changes, and it seems to me that many of those changes are toward a more literal translation, which is a good thing.  Here are some samples: In Matthew 19:28 the HCSB renders it: "Jesus said to them, 'I assure you: in the Messianic Age, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne…"  This new revision has it as,  "Jesus said to them, 'Truly I tell you, In the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne…'" - CSB Not that I'm disputing that the renewal of all things references the Messianic age, it's just that "the renewal of all things"  is a more literal rendition of what Christ said, more toward a formal equivalence rather than a dynamic one - which I believe is a safer route. To some degree the same holds true with the following: Daniel 9:25: "Know and understand this:  F...

Looking for a book that will give you good guidelines for studying the Bible well? Inductive Bible Study by Richard Alan Fuhr Jr. and Andreas J. Kostenberger is a good resource on the topic. As the authors of this book explain, God chose to reveal His will to us through His written Word, rather than through personal revelation/new revelation.  He chose that it would be learned progressively with effort rather than instantly without any work on our part. We should revere God's choice method of conveying the knowledge of Him that He wants us to have and His will that is revealed through this collection of holy documents.  Fuhr and Kostenberger take you through a series of steps that will assist you in reverently discovering and handling what God's Word says with accuracy and reverence. The steps you are taken through range from: comparing English Bible translations, Asking the right questions of the text, using commentaries, word studies, practicing discernment and of cou...

The Reader's Bible (this one is the NKJV) is designed as a single column, "paragraph style" Bible, with no verse or chapter numbers, just the names of the Books.  This makes it so that you read the Bible more along the lines of how it was originally put together in a codex, which did not have all of the numbered chapter divisions in the books of the Bible that we have today. This Bible is definitely reader friendly, it is easy to read through without the potential distraction of verse numbers (though they are handy) and it is a unique experience to have the historical narrative filling the whole page as one column rather than as two, more like how a regular book of history book or biography is put together.  You can keep a general track of where you are in any given book by looking at the bottom corners of the pages which tell you which chapter is on the page you are reading.  The only thing that I don't like is that they kept the chapter breaks (without ...

The Illustrator's Notetaking Bible has a nicely bound bible, with a very handy lay-flat design, making it easy to write or color in it.  On the inside each page has only one column of text with large margins on either side.  Some of the margins have lines for writing in, many of them have pictures that one may color in (the Illustrator part).  I like to doodle sometimes while listening to sermons, sometimes it helps me think and stay focused, so I thought that this was an interesting concept.  But upon examination it was rather disappointing.  In a way, it is reminiscent of the illuminated manuscripts of the past, except that in the illuminated manuscripts I've noticed that the text didn't seem to have as dwarfed by the illustrations as this one appears to me to do on many of the pages (perhaps they did, I just don't remember).  If the text of the Bible itself weren't so small or if it were more…I don't know, 'fancy' I guess, it would seem more fitt...

I often sense a tendency in myself to take having an English translation of the Old and New Testaments for granted.  But, as Harry Freedman demonstrates in his book, The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning, I shouldn't take it for granted and should appreciate all the more the effort and sacrifice that went in to getting the written Word of God into a book that ordinary people could read.  In this book Freedman does an excellent job at writing, he grasps and keeps one's attention, and it flows nicely.  He takes you through history, beginning with the translation of the Old Testament and then including the New in the focus as well.   Translating God's Word into the common vernacular of any people was often very tumultuous and controversial, and we see this down the passage of time that the author examines, and through many different translators who often took many risks to make the translation.  Thou...

Saving the Bible From Ourselves by Glenn R. Pauuw is a book about people's misuse of the Bible, how it has  come to be used as a book that is a collection of isolated propositional statements that are written specifically for me and for my special encouragement.  Overall this book is argument against those views of the Bible (it critiques  other views as well) and I believe it is a rather good argument.  I mainly listed those two things because they are the things that captivated me most in this book. Then I will give my critique. First, Pauuw does an excellent job at attacking the rather modern approach to the Bible that takes the form of hunting for individual verses that seem relevant to us, "…find the fragments you need at the moment.  If you are looking for your daily inspiration, then find a devotional fragment.  If you are arguing with the local heretic, find a doctrinal fragment.  If you are facing an ethical question, find a moral fra...

The Knight's Map by R. C. Sproul is an allegory for children and is very much like the Pilgrim's Progress.  Its focus is on the tale of a Knight without loyalties to any king who receives a mysterious letter, and also a map, from a King (whose existence is doubted by people), the King invites the Knight to follow the map to find a Treasure that will not fade away.  The Knight encounters many obstacles along the way, mainly these obstacles take the form  of the Knight being misled by other people like Mr. Skeptic and Mr. Liberal who try to draw the Knight's attention away from trying to read the map correctly (and even discouraging any attempt to read it at all).  The book has many nicely drawn (or rather, painted) pictures that I am sure would have captured my interest as a child. The story is well-written and would hold the interest of adults as well as children.  There is a question and answer section at the back that could be helpful to parents in pr...