William Tyndale is a hero of mine. If you have read this site for any length of time, you already know this, for just a few weeks ago I reviewed a DVD that featured an interview with David Daniell, a prominent Tyndale expert. Having watched this DVD presentation, and being intruiged by Daniell’s knowledge of his subject, I knew I would have to read his biography of William Tyndale.

Considering the importance of his contribution, both to Christianity and to the English language, there are surprisingly few biographies written about William Tyndale. In the introduction to this biography, Daniell claims that “there has not been a full-scale study of him for nearly sixty years, since J.F. Mozley’s biography of 1937.” This leads him to conclude that “there is need for something more modern, especially as the quincentenary of Tyndale’s birth in 1494 is widely celebrated.” Of course this date passed some twelve years ago, for this volume was printed in 1994. Daniell fills this need with William Tyndale: A Biography.

The Pocket Guide to the Bible is, according to the subtitle, “a little book about the big book.” It is the third in a series of pocket guides written by Jason Boyett, the first two being The Pocket Guide to Adulthood and The Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse (my review). Like its predecessors, this is a book that is intended both to convey information and provide entertainment (if by entertainment we understand puerile, frat-boy humor, which reminds me that this is as good a time as any to note that if you disliked my review of Mark Driscoll’s Confessions of a Reformission Rev. you may just want to take a pass on this review).

The Bible has long been the world’s best-selling book. While it does not appear on the bestseller lists, year after year, generation after generation, it continues to sell more copies than any other book. While the Bible continues to sell, it does not appear that many more people are reading it now than in previous generations. Rather, knowledge of the Bible is reaching what is surely the lowest point since the years following the Reformation when it first became widely available. Even many who profess to be Christians know the Bible only moderately better than their unbelieving friends and neighbors.

Within our society there is a growing belief that the Bible is a book of intolerance. People regard the Bible as a book of moral lessons that are relevant only within particular situations and often fixed within a particular cultural context. The Bible is regarded as a book that is increasingly irrelevant.

Bart Ehrman is a highly-regarded New Testament scholar and chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has both an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary where he studied under Bruce Metzger. Much of Ehrman’s career has been dedicated to proving a rather unorthodox thesis: that history has been incorrect in suggesting that it was heretics such as Marcion who were responsible for tampering with the texts of the Bible. Rather, he suggests and attempts to prove, it was those who professed faith in Christ who sought to change the Scripture to force it to adapt to their beliefs. In the past decade he was written extensively, though the bulk of his work has been directed at the academy, as shown by such intimidating titles as The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament.

Eugene Peterson believes that the way we read the Bible is as important as the very fact that we read the Bible. “Do we read the Bible for information about God and salvation, for principles and ‘truths’ that we can use to live better? Or do we read it in order to listen to God and respond in prayer and obedience?” To address these questions, Peterson brings us Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. It is a rather strange and wandering book in which Peterson meanders through a wide variety of topics having to do with the theme of Scripture. At heart, though, the book is an attempt to convince the reader of the importance of reading Scripture in order to promote life change. Peterson feels this is best done through the ancient practice of lectio divina. In many respects, then, this book is a beginner’s guide to that practice.

Time magazine got it right, “For those who choke too easily on God and his rules…angels are the handy compromise, all fluff and meringue, kind, nonjudgemental. They are available to everyone, like aspirin. Only in the New Age would it be possible to invent an angel so mellow that it can be ignored.” My local newspaper contains constant advertisements for guides who can help any sufficiently gullible person to get in touch with angels. A Time poll found that 69 percent of respondants confirmed their belief in the existence of angels, 46 percent acknowledged their belief in a personal guardian angel and 32 percent claimed to have felt an angelic presence at some time in their lives. As the magazine says, many people who have no use for God and for His rules, have an obsession with angels, which they deem to be much more loving and gentle.

I do believe that this will be the last book I read, at least for the next little while, on the subject of Bible translations. This is not to say that it is a bad book, nor is it to say that it is the final word on the subject. Rather, I have read several books about translating Scripture in the past weeks and am tiring of the topic.

One of Satan’s greatest triumphs must surely be in convincing Christians to abandon the Bible, or at least keeping them from really mining its depths. He tries to convince us that the Bible is outdated, unimportant or less important than many other things. He tries to convince us that it is difficult to understand and that we should rely on others to interpret it for us.

R.C. Sproul wrote Knowing Scripture early in his career to address these concerns and out of a desire to see Christians dedicate themselves to a systematic study of the Bible. Written in 1977, this is one of Sproul’s earliest but most important and highly recommended books.

Richard Mayhue is Dean of Studies at the Master’s Seminary and has sufficient credibility to write a volume about how to properly interpret the Bible. Writing in a simple and straightforward manner, he describes the process of “cutting it straight,” a term he borrows from Paul’s message to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15. Though the passage is most often translated “handling accurately the word of truth” the literal sense is “cutting it straight.” This book is thus divided into three sections. The first deals with how to make straight cuts, the second with avoiding crooked cuts, and the third with living out your cuts.

In the first several chapters Mayhue lays out the proper methods for studying Scripture. He speaks about presuppositions, methodology and rules for interpretation. A significant portion of the section is devoted to recommended study tools - concordances, dictionaries, commentaries and so on.

Choosing a Bible used to be an easy task. Only a few decades ago there were only two or three translations to choose from, giving a person very little in the way of options. The situation today is far different. We are inundated with translations of Scripture and it seems that a major new translation hits the store shelves every couple of years. Terms like “dynamic equivalent,” “formal equivalent,” and “paraphrase” are tossed around but few people have any real sense of what they mean. Christians purchase Bibles expecting that what they are reading is truly the Word of God. But is it?