Musings of a Snickerdoodle

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...

Jefferson's America: The President, The Purchase and the Explorers Who Transformed A Nation by Julie M. Fenster is well written and very interesting.  I have heard of Lewis and Clark and knew a tiny bit about their exploration but I have never heard of others who were equally important at the time such as: Dunbar, Hunter, Forest or Pike.  And yet perhaps I had heard of them in school but I didn't keep any memory of them or their expeditions in my head.  This book is a very intriguing account of how and why Jefferson initiated the exploration westward of what was then a comparatively small U.S., how he made the Louisiana Purchase (and the controversy around the purchase)and how he made it secure and justified his purchase by courting public interest in the expeditions he had sent out.  It mainly focuses on the men whom Jefferson sent out to do the exploring, and their adventures are quite intriguing. Most of the men Jefferson picked for the task of exploring and f...

Understanding the Congregation's Authority by Jonathan Leeman is a short and yet quite thorough explanation and defense of what Leeman calls, "Elder-Led Congregationalism".  He does not advocate congregationalism nor Elder-Rule, rather he presents the concepts of 'congregational authority' as 'responsibilities' and the role of the pastors/Elders he presents as the God-given 'trainers/councilors' of the congregation.  Each member of the congregation is responsible to prod one another to love and good works, building and discipling their brothers and sisters in Christ (which may involve correction) and coming to be discipled as well, to attend church regularly not making a habit of forsaking the assembling of their church family, and the congregation is also responsible to submit themselves to the elders of the church(the Elders do not make them submit), which Elders are to train up the congregation to fulfill their responsibilities by preachi...

This edition of the  Chronological Study Bible NKJV  is a nicely bound chronological Bible.  It has a simple, studious looking  'Leathersoft' cover, brown in color with a big dark blue stripe across its center.  This Bible is full of extra content, almost to the point of being  distractingly  cluttered.  It has charts and 'timepanels', background notes,  full color illustrations (some are very neat looking while others are not very decent), and maps throughout.  I have some problems with it though, besides some indecent works of art,  some of the notes and commentary seem rather eisegetical.   For instance, some of the notes dealing with wives being submissive to their husbands make it more of a concession to the culture of the time rather than God ordained. They say things like,   "Paul's command 'Wives, submit to your own husbands' (Eph. 5:22) is at least partly ...

The NLT GuysSlimline Holy Bible is nicely bound, very slim and lightweight. The cover has some of the 'leather-touch' material that feels very nice (not that boys will care that much), and the bright blue lines intermixed with the black should make it very easy to spot if misplaced and also catches the attention which would hopefully be a reminder for young guys to read it each day.   The letter font on the inside is small but not too small, I found it quite easy to read.  At the back of the book, Bible includes a dictionary/concordance, a list of suggested memory verses on various topics, a Bible reading plan and of course the usual maps of the Holy land and Europe. The translation itself is very readable, the translation notes say that they were trying for a mix of formal equivalence and dynamic, I think this translation leans a bit more to the latter, a 'thought for thought' type of translation which then necessarily has some heavily imposed biased interpreta...

I am disappointed with many of the 'study' Bibles of our day but the Apply the Word Study Bible is quite refreshing in its commitment to prompting one think to about the text one is studying.  he Bible has many "application notes" and also includes maps,  charts and little character profile boxes throughout.    It really is more of an application type of study Bible, not a linguistic study Bible but the application used seems to be mostly exegetically based.  I think that the application notes are quite good, none of them really seem forced onto any text they're commenting on, even the ones found throughout the books of the law, and prophets, are quite good and don't seem as though someone was grasping at straws (as some study Bibles seem to do) to find an application of those seemingly tedious parts of Scripture and so they come up with some  eisegetical way to get some personal-meaning out of them. For example, toward middle of Ezekiel one...