Five books on the Bible meme

Karyn Traphagen tagged me earlier this week with a meme.  I was asked to “Name 5 books or scholars that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible.”  I delayed due to a busy week and, something for which she understands, the need for exclusive writing time.  So better late than never, I’m going to finally respond.

I’m not easily able to reduce books down to a top five list.  This list is in constant flux.  If I like a book it is because something in it rang true with something else in other books, and in this way I see them as working together for me.  They become part of my web of belief and are not always simply on the subject to which they are relevant.  I’ll do my best to keep it to the subject here.

1. Pete Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005).

I’ve never been happy with the standard Evangelical approach of “see no evil, hear no evil” when it comes to Scripture and its relationship to its sources, culture, and context, so I fully appreciate Pete’s honesty with Scriptural difficulties and his ability to allow for nuancing a position, rather than arguing for an all-or-nothing approach. He seeks to keep the text sacred while recognizing the issues involved.  Pete took a huge blow for this book, even by his colleagues.  He allows for the place of myth and borrowing in Scripture that made many entirely uncomfortable.  Information regarding the controversy over his book can be found at Art Boulet’s blog.

2. C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

Speaking of myth, Lewis introduced me (and so many others) to a better view of myth (and so many other things)—rather than the idea of myth equaling “untrue”—and to the idea of just letting Scripture be what it is, rather than trying to harmonize and modernize it. I’d recommend his essay, “Myth Became Fact,” which appears in God in the Dock.  I would also recommend Michael J. Christensen’s C.S. Lewis on Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002).  Christensen’s book is short (largely because Lewis’ ideas on Scripture were not found in a single volume).  It also includes some helpful letters from Lewis on the subject.

3. James L. Kugel, The Bible as it Was (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999).

I’d recommend everything Kugel’s written and I particularly enjoyed his The Bible as it Was.  Kugel gives one a glimpse into Scripture’s connection with its existing context. Scripture looks less like a book that suddenly fell out of heaven in one piece without reference to the world around it.  There is a lot to get from this book, but perhaps the most obvious is that there are interpretive trajectories which pre-exist the New Testament and which inform the perspective of the New Testament writers and early Christians.  To pick up on Lewis’ view—that one needs to let the Bible be what it is—this book helps get the “what it is” part.

4. Miguel A. De La Torre, Reading the Bible from the Margins, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002).

Not only should the Bible be understood for what it was when written, readers should be understood for who they are when they read it.  Most recently, my interest is in areas of the phenomenology of reading and the marginalized.  I found Miguel A. De La Torre’s book, Reading the Bible from the Margins, to be very interesting and good at making the point of how readers understand the text from the margins.  Try reading the Jesus’ parable of the vineyard owner in Matthew 20 from the perspective of a day laborer, particularly the undocumented.  Understanding reader response and what we bring to the text is paramount in reading the Bible and for understanding why others disagree over the meaning of the text.

5. Mark Allen Powell, Chasing the Eastern Star (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).

Where Torre spends time on marginal readings, Powell’s text is interested in the idea of Reader-Response Criticism in general.  Last year in my hermeneutics course, I required this text.  In this book, Powell makes an important case for never underestimating the baggage of the reader.  After introducing the subject, Powell takes a very familiar story, the biblical story of the magi, and uses it as a case study for how readers can approach the text differently.  What I like about this book, besides its very practical nature, is the way he also brings in Narrative Criticism.  The age old idea of authorial intent really isn’t possible.

There you go, 5 books.  If I were to add more I’d put N.T. Wright in there or more specific texts on the ancient near east, but these represent the kinds of shifts in my thinking over the last few years.  For Karyn’s list, see her blog.  The others tagged include Art Boulet, Daniel Kirk, Ben Byerly, and Ros Clark.