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A Non-Churchgoer's Guide to the Bible
This book is written primarily for persons who may have interest in the Bible but have little knowledge of it. It provides a fresh, succinct introduction to any reader.
- GenresReligion
184 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 7, 2019
Reviewer context: Lapsed catholic who has a detached interest in religion (including the indigenous ones of the country he was born in) but isn't particular devout in any of them.
The book's overall thrust is to a) provide a framework for the reader so that they will not be scared off reading the bible and to b) provide a high-level summary of what one will find in any of the bible's books.
The main gists that I took out of this book are a) that the bible is not a book but an anthology of work, that every book in the bible has a particular context of why it is written, and that one should feel free to read the book in an order that facilitates the reader. The author also goes through the structure and common features of modern bibles (such as chapters, verses, and conventional stylistic conventions) to show which are modern reading aids and how to use them.
The second thrust of the book (b) is to prep you with the context and overview of each book in the bible, so that as you choose to engage with it on your own terms, you will be able to know what you will get out of each book (at face-value). Along the way there are some tips about whether certain books facilitate the or depend on other books, so that one doesn't read a book and become disoriented through lack of familiarity with other texts.
An important thing this book showed me is that the bible has way more organization than I would have given it credit for ... the books are arranged in ways that make sense to divide the books, and that out of context some books (Job and Revelations come to mind in particular) are way easier to read when you look at the books adjacent to them and how those books are more straight-forwardly read.
So for example, coming out of this, you will know which books are very short reads, or are self-contained, or if they have a subject matter that will interest the reader (so that one doesn't feel stalled by say the cosmology or genealogies of Genesis) when one might first reach for the stories of Ruth or Esther, or the poetry of the Psalms or Proverbs or the Song of Solmon if that is the content that would best draw you into a work.
Also, for example, while Genesis is in many ways a prologue setting up the tale of Moses and exodus of the people of Israel that the rest of the books of the Torah focus on, there are contextual reasons why the books would fill so many pages with genealogies (these are the people of Abraham so how do future characters in the bible descend from him) or census/ritual details (very important for setting up the customs of a nation centred around the temple of Jerusalem + ark), but in modern times those aren't as relevant to the lay reader so the lay reader shouldn't feel ashamed at skipping over them if they drag from the momentum of the rest of the subject matter.
You will also get _some_ context about the purpose of the books, their place in the history of biblical Israel, how they relate to other books, which may or may not be taken for granted by the content of the texts themselves.
This makes it a very good reference to keep even as one is reading the bible.
While I say that this book is a guide, the author has done their best effort to minimize the amount of subject interpretation. The author is not interested in pushing a particular interpretation of the bible or apply some kind of ranking of importance to the different books, although I'm sure he has conveyed some of himself in the descriptions. In this way the book is not trying to guide you towards particular readings, but is hoping to give you enough orientation to pull whatever you will out of the books.
The author presupposes an interest in reading it and approaches it from the framework that the major obstacle is the bible's length and strangeness in relation to modern bookwriting.
The nice thing is that the author is is fairly inclusive about the motivations one might have for appreciating the bible, but the book's presupposition that the reader is Christian leads to some minor flavour in the text that could have been more inclusive to the nonreligious reader, but that's a quibble that doesn't impact the benefit of the book.
While the book seems to stick to the Protestant curation of the books, it does go into some of the difference between this form of scripture and curations of the bible by other Christian (and Jewish apparently) sects.
I would recommend this book as a bible primer, especially to people who are not interested in more religiously-invested forms that imbue a particular spiritual teaching. It's a short read and I appreciate that it values the reader engaging genuinely with the book more than pushing a kind of religiousness or particular reading. It's an interesting form of mindfulness applied to a particular goal (reading the bible).
I'd love to see if this is an approach I can find for other difficult religious of philosophical or even literary texts.
The book's overall thrust is to a) provide a framework for the reader so that they will not be scared off reading the bible and to b) provide a high-level summary of what one will find in any of the bible's books.
The main gists that I took out of this book are a) that the bible is not a book but an anthology of work, that every book in the bible has a particular context of why it is written, and that one should feel free to read the book in an order that facilitates the reader. The author also goes through the structure and common features of modern bibles (such as chapters, verses, and conventional stylistic conventions) to show which are modern reading aids and how to use them.
The second thrust of the book (b) is to prep you with the context and overview of each book in the bible, so that as you choose to engage with it on your own terms, you will be able to know what you will get out of each book (at face-value). Along the way there are some tips about whether certain books facilitate the or depend on other books, so that one doesn't read a book and become disoriented through lack of familiarity with other texts.
An important thing this book showed me is that the bible has way more organization than I would have given it credit for ... the books are arranged in ways that make sense to divide the books, and that out of context some books (Job and Revelations come to mind in particular) are way easier to read when you look at the books adjacent to them and how those books are more straight-forwardly read.
So for example, coming out of this, you will know which books are very short reads, or are self-contained, or if they have a subject matter that will interest the reader (so that one doesn't feel stalled by say the cosmology or genealogies of Genesis) when one might first reach for the stories of Ruth or Esther, or the poetry of the Psalms or Proverbs or the Song of Solmon if that is the content that would best draw you into a work.
Also, for example, while Genesis is in many ways a prologue setting up the tale of Moses and exodus of the people of Israel that the rest of the books of the Torah focus on, there are contextual reasons why the books would fill so many pages with genealogies (these are the people of Abraham so how do future characters in the bible descend from him) or census/ritual details (very important for setting up the customs of a nation centred around the temple of Jerusalem + ark), but in modern times those aren't as relevant to the lay reader so the lay reader shouldn't feel ashamed at skipping over them if they drag from the momentum of the rest of the subject matter.
You will also get _some_ context about the purpose of the books, their place in the history of biblical Israel, how they relate to other books, which may or may not be taken for granted by the content of the texts themselves.
This makes it a very good reference to keep even as one is reading the bible.
While I say that this book is a guide, the author has done their best effort to minimize the amount of subject interpretation. The author is not interested in pushing a particular interpretation of the bible or apply some kind of ranking of importance to the different books, although I'm sure he has conveyed some of himself in the descriptions. In this way the book is not trying to guide you towards particular readings, but is hoping to give you enough orientation to pull whatever you will out of the books.
The author presupposes an interest in reading it and approaches it from the framework that the major obstacle is the bible's length and strangeness in relation to modern bookwriting.
The nice thing is that the author is is fairly inclusive about the motivations one might have for appreciating the bible, but the book's presupposition that the reader is Christian leads to some minor flavour in the text that could have been more inclusive to the nonreligious reader, but that's a quibble that doesn't impact the benefit of the book.
While the book seems to stick to the Protestant curation of the books, it does go into some of the difference between this form of scripture and curations of the bible by other Christian (and Jewish apparently) sects.
I would recommend this book as a bible primer, especially to people who are not interested in more religiously-invested forms that imbue a particular spiritual teaching. It's a short read and I appreciate that it values the reader engaging genuinely with the book more than pushing a kind of religiousness or particular reading. It's an interesting form of mindfulness applied to a particular goal (reading the bible).
I'd love to see if this is an approach I can find for other difficult religious of philosophical or even literary texts.
June 16, 2021
I thought it did an excellent job of what it was trying to do - provide a high-level look at the Bible for someone who's heard about it but never read it.
August 10, 2011
Read this book years ago before I started doing in-depth studies. Great for someone new to Bible or needing a refresher.
July 19, 2019
While elements of this book are useful, it omits quite a lot of important information and context. It is clearly written from a Christian perspective, and repeats non-scholarly opinions on the authorship of books, the intent of the messages, and more.
March 1, 2016
This book is a succinct and, I would say, simplistic overview of the Bible for persons who have little knowledge of the Bible or who, as in my case, have not read or studied the Bible on a regular basis for a long time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews