Transcription
Hey everybody, Dr. Carmen Imes here. I'm excited to launch a new video series this summer on my top two resources on various categories of books in biblical studies. These are for people who want to dig deeper into the Bible and they want to know where to get started. The goal is reading and responding to God's word more faithfully.
I'll be highlighting books that were important in my own journey and growth as a biblical scholar, as well as more recent books that have come out that I have read and found helpful and worth recommending. In the description, you will find a link to my favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore that is offering 20% off on any of the books that I talk about for the next two weeks.
So while this is the top two books, I'm going to actually put them on three different shelves. So I'm going to give you my top two books on the bottom shelf for beginners just getting started, my top two books on the middle shelf for people who want a little deeper dive—they're ready for intermediate reading—and then the top two on my top shelf that would be for doctoral level researchers who want to know the best book to read on this topic.
People sometimes ask me how I learned to read the Bible because they want to learn to read the Bible in the same way. Today I'm sharing my top two books on how to read the Bible, especially biblical narrative. Let's dive in.
My number two book on the bottom shelf for how to read biblical narrative is this great book by Andy Abernathy called Savoring Scripture: A Six-Step Guide to Studying the Bible. Dr. Abernathy teaches at Wheaton College, where he mentors doctoral students and writes books and does all sorts of great work. On the back of this book, I say this about it: Andrew Abernathy puts his academic credentials in service of the church. In this down-to-earth book, beginners will experience the Bible as it was intended—as a true story that changes us and helps us connect with God. This book is not just academic. It also attends to our hearts as we're reading Scripture, and it's a very down-to-earth, easy-to-understand introduction to reading the Bible. It's sensible. It is helpful. I recommend it. So that's my number two book on the bottom shelf.
People sometimes ask me how I learned to read the Bible, and the clearest way to answer that question is that I studied under Dr. Ray Lubeck at Multnomah University. He taught a class called Bible Study Methods that was electric. I loved that class. It gave me so many tools for how to engage Scripture as I read it. The first thing we learned is that there are three different types of literature in the Bible—narrative, poetry, and discourse. If that sounds familiar, maybe it's because you've been watching videos from the Bible Project. Well, Tim Mackey and Jon Collins from the Bible Project also learned to study the Bible from Dr. Ray Lubeck.
So how can you get a piece of this pie? Well, the good news is instead of going through all these notebooks that are on the bottom shelf full of all my notes and ideas from his classes that I took so many years ago—almost thirty years ago now—Dr. Ray Lubeck has put all of his best teaching on how to read the Bible into a book, and it's right here: Reading the Bible for a Change. This is the second edition. Subtitle is Understanding and Responding to God's Word. I had the opportunity to endorse this book. I'm going to read you what I said about it: "Reading this book took me back twenty-five years to the transformative experience I had sitting under Ray Lubeck's teaching. He opened a whole new world to me, equipping me to read the Bible and igniting my desire to do so. Ray has continued to develop and hone his approach to Bible study since then. What you hold in your hands, if put into practice, has the potential to revolutionize your understanding of Scripture." This book is very engaging. It's got lots of helpful diagrams and charts and lists, helping you put Scripture into practice as well as read it well. I highly recommend this book. It's a little bit fatter than the first one, so depending on how much reading you're up for and how much study you're willing to do, those are my top two recommendations on the bottom shelf for beginners who want to learn to read the Bible well.
That brings us to the middle shelf. What are my top two recommendations for intermediate learners? This would be a Bible major who's nearing the end of their undergraduate degree, a seminary student, maybe a pastor who wants to refresh their skills and dig deeper. I have two resources. The first one is a book that I read when I was an undergraduate because I really wanted to get more out of the Bible, and it's this classic book by Shimon Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible. A lot of people talk about Robert Alter's book on how to read biblical narrative—it's also good. I think this one's better. It has tons of examples and it walks you through all of the different aspects of narrative—character, setting, and plot—and how these tools, the author's tools, get used in biblical narrative, how to pay attention to all the small details. It's super helpful and it will give you an inside look at the kind of insights that a biblical scholar sees when they read the Bible.
My second recommendation for the middle shelf is this newer book by Steven Mathewson called The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative. So this is a book that would be especially useful to pastors who want to preach narrative or preach sermons on narrative. I'll read you what Tim Mackey has to say about it. I also endorsed this book, but I really love what Tim had to say about it. He says: "The challenges of preaching from Old Testament narratives are significant. When the cultural gap between us and the biblical world is so great, how do we make sure that the message we're passing on to our congregations is what the stories are designed to communicate? Mathewson has combined the best of Old Testament literary scholarship with his many years of homiletical experience, and he's given us a guidebook on how to faithfully preach from these most important parts of the Bible." I totally agree with what Tim has said, and I recommend this book. Those are my top two books on the middle shelf.
And now, for those of you who are lifelong learners, lifelong academics—maybe you're a doctoral student or you want to be one—and you want to know how to really up your game in terms of sensitivity to biblical narrative, here are my last top two books. These are on the top shelf. The first is one I read in seminary. It's Hans Frei's The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics. Hans Frei is a very astute historian and biblical scholar, and he explains why people stopped paying attention to narrative in the Bible, why it got eclipsed by other concerns, and he helps you to see where this turn happened in critical scholarship.
Lastly, my last recommendation for this video is Michael Fishbane's Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Michael Fishbane is a Jewish scholar. This is an extraordinarily detailed and careful read of the Hebrew Bible. He shows all of the places where the Bible interprets the Bible, or the biblical text refers to other biblical texts in a way that shows development and change. It's a dense read, but it's super helpful because of how carefully he notices the details. That's what I loved about it—is how carefully he notices the details. He talks about, in part one, scribal comments and corrections in the text. Part two is about legal exegesis—so biblical law. Part three is aggadic exegesis—that part is probably the most fun to read. And then part four is metaleptic exegesis. So you can tell just from the titles, this is a deep dive. I read it in seminary in preparation for my PhD program, because it was on the comprehensive reading list for the PhD at Wheaton College. And I'm really glad I read it. It helped me to pay much closer attention to the details in the text.
I hope that was helpful. This is just the beginning of this series. I would love to know if there are topics that you want me to pick my top two books about to talk about in this series. If you have an idea, please comment below. We're going to be doing this throughout the summer before I resume my Torah Tuesday series on Exodus in the fall. Let's get reading.