Reading the Bible Well: Getting Started

No matter how zealous you might be, it’s difficult to know where to begin or what resources to even use for study. So here I have listed some books that I have found helpful in my journey. They are readable and yet I think they will definitely tell you something you haven’t heard before. If you read something and don't catch it all that's okay. That sort of thing happens to everyone. The important things is that you're in the process of learning and being introduced to new ways of thinking about stuff. Enjoy how these resources can help you understand God and his mission so that you can live that mission. Much of our confusion about God and his ways in the world come from a confused reading of the Bible. The books listed here address three main issues in reading the Bible well: 1) confusion about cultural practices, 2) confusion about what exactly applies to us and 3) confusion about how the books ‘fit’ together in one coherent story. So here are the resources in a ghetto bibliographic form:

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart) 3rd Edition
This is the one that started it all for me. Definitely an accessible book by two hardcore scholars who love God. It may be a bit of a challenge to read at first, but it is definitely worth it. How to 1 views the Bible as real literature written by real people in real history (can anybody say incarnational?). This means that the Bible is made up of different kinds of literature: poetry (Psalms), story (Genesis, Judges, etc), biography (gospels), letters (Romans-Jude), apocalyptic (Daniel, Revelation). Each of these different types of literature requires different types of approaches for understanding them. Have you ever wanted to know what to do with those Old Testament laws in Exodus and Leviticus? Wondered what to do with Revelation? What about the prophetic books like Joel? This book will help you understand how they apply.

How to Read the Bible Book by Book (Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart)
Makes it evident that the bible is a story and not some blob of impersonal commandments by a distant god. Like the title suggests, the book walks you through each book of the Bible giving you themes, outlines and comments. What does the gospel of Mark teach us about Jesus? How does it fit with the book of Isaiah? Why does the book of Luke begin like the book of 1 Samuel? What is Luke saying about Jesus? Book by Book looks not only at the uniqueness of each book, but also at the connections between each book of the bible. A must for catching the mission and message.

Eerdmans’ Dictionary of the Bible (David Noel Freedman, ed.)
Do not confuse it with Eerdmans’ Bible Dictionary. This guy Freedman edited the hardcore six volume end-all dictionary, Anchor Bible Dictionary. Why Eerdmans’ Dictionary of the Bible? I'll have to leave that for another blog. Have you ever come across a term, concept, word that you didn’t quite understand? For example, 'Pharisee'. Who were the Pharisees and what did they believe? How would that change the way we read Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus in John 3? If you’d like to know, then this is the resource to get.

Holman Bible Altas (Thomas V. Brisco)
A very comprehesive collection of maps and easy to read articles. Organizes the maps in chapters for a story-like reading of the bible.

IVP Bible Background Commentary to the New Testament (Craig S. Keener)
The one stop for all the crazy cultural background in the New Testament. Its verse-by-verse/passage-by-passage organization makes it very helpful for reading along side your bible. Have you ever been confused by the whole bridegroom and wineskins talk in Mark 2:18-22? This resource explains it and many other cultural things that we don’t get.

IVP Bible Background Commentary to the Old Testament (Mark Chavalas, Victor Matthews, John Walton)
Old Testament version of the above.