The Bible is the world’s best selling book! We own tons of them. Most folks that will read this will most likely own more than one Bible. Why do we own so many Bibles but read so little of it? Unlike other books that we often read, the Bible needs special care in reading. Below is a small bibliography that can help you get the help you may need to read the text of Scripture itself for both enjoyment and spiritual life. Living in God’s Grand Narrative as his new creation brings new meaning to why we live. Just move your mouse over the book to see more information about it.

• The Art of Reading Scripture
• The Beauty Behind the Mask: Rediscovering the Books of the Bible
• The Bible: A History: The Making and Impact of the Bible
• The Bible As Literature: An Introduction
• The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity (The Bible in Early Christianity , So3)
• Birth of the New Testament
• The Book: A History of the Bible
• Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts
• The Cambridge History of the Bible
• The Canon of Scripture
• The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
• Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
• Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Second Edition (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities)
• The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations
• The Formation of Christian Biblical Canon: Revised and Expanded Edition
• A History of the Bible as Literature
• How the Bible Became a Book: The Amazing Story Behind the All-Time Best-Seller
• How the Bible Came to Be
• How the Bible Was Built
• How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book)
• How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour
• How We Got the Bible,
• The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford Bible Series)
• The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible
• The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible
• How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
• The Literary Guide to the Bible
• The Literature and Meaning of Scripture
• The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
• The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text & Canon
• The Making of the New Testament Documents
• Making Sense of the Bible: Literary Type As an Approach to Understanding
• The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning
• The New Testament in Its Literary Environment
• The New Testament in Literary Criticism (Library of Literary Criticism)
• The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism
• The Origin of the Bible
• The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible (Oxford Illustrated Histories)
• The Septuagint (Understanding the Bible and Its World)
• Studies in Early Christianity

Have fun reading and learning!

I have been working on putting the finishing touches on my book when I ran across The Books of the Bible project from International Bible Society. I was Googling a phrase something like “without additives,” when I saw the .info site listed and took a look. I wrote a post here about it.

Today, I called to inquire if I could get an advanced copy so I could key the pages of this Bible to my book. I met John Dunham, a WordWright at International Bible Society, via phone. I think we are kindred spirits. You should take a moment and read two post he wrote about this project: High Fructose Scripture and The Organic Bible. Don’t forget to read the comments as well.

I highly recommend this new publication from International Bible Society. It will enhance your reading of the Story of Scripture and it might even be the avenue through which you discover what your part his God’s EPIC Adventure is.

It is not often that one senses vindication of a belief that seems for most folks like swimming up stream. But, it does happen. For years I have been sharing with folks that their reading experience of the Bible would be far improved if they would read the text without any additives such as the chapters and verses and all the other stuff that publishers like to throw into the text.

Before it was easy to produce a personal copy with a computer and a Bible program of such an adventure, I handed out small portions of Scripture where I had removed all the chapters and verses. I was thrilled when The Message came along and rejoiced that a publisher would take the chance of moving Bible reading in the right direction. Kudos to Eugene Peterson.

Recently, I finished a second Doctor of Ministry degree in which a portion of it dealt with the fragmentation of reading Scripture which was aided and abetted by those “pesky littler verses.” I called it the disease of versitis. Reading Scripture through the lens of verses has kept the reading public from being aware of the overall Story that is presented in Scripture. Today, (07.07.07), I ran across a project that has been in the making for several years, it’s called The Books of the Bible. It will be released on August 1, 2007 by International Bible Society and is a Bible without chapters and verses. Here’s what they say about their product.

• chapter and verse numbers have been removed from the text;
• the books are presented according to the internal divisions that we believe their authors have indicated;
• a single-column setting is used to present the text more clearly and naturally, and to avoid disrupting the intended line breaks in poetic sections;
• footnotes, section headings and other supplementary materials have been removed from the pages of the sacred text;
• individual books that later tradition divided into two or more books are made whole again; and
• the books have been placed in an order that we hope will help readers understand them better. (From the Preface. vi).

Bravo for IBS. Yep! I feel vindicated! This will go a long way in helping the faithful readers of Scripture to comprehend the Story of God and live within its drama. Here’s their web site where you can get a sneak preview and download a sample or two. Who knows, you might even purchase a copy and have the reading experience of your life.

I’m in SoCal for a conference. While visiting my mother-in-law with my wife, I was listening to a DVD that was running kinda in the background. It was someone preaching and what he was saying hooked my attention for a moment. He was dealing with interpreting a “verse” by defining the words. He had come across a verse that began with the word “gather” but after reading it he said God spoke to him and told him that the word there wasn’t “gather” but “assemble.” So he was off to discover how that could be. He told his listeners that he checked out Strong’s concordance and on other word study tool only to find that the original word in the passage could be translated by “gather” or “assemble.” But, as he exclaimed to his congregation, “I heard God say it means “assemble.” He searched and searched to discover what God had told him. Then he found Webster’s Dictionary 1828 where he found that gather meant one thing while assemble meant something and because Webster’s Dictionary 1828, according to him, had been created based on the Bible, meaning on the KJV, he had found a way to confirm what he had heard God say.

It is this form of exegesis, or in my opinion, non-exegesis, that causes such anemic followers of Jesus. Think about it. The original language did not inform his conclusion, but an English Dictionary based on and English translation, which was translated in 1611. I used to tell folks “bad theology makes a cruel taskmaster.” Later, to be clearer I changed the saying to “bad theology makes you stupid,” or “bad interpretation makes you stupid.” I know that is “in your face,” language and surely not “politically correct, but there it is.

What always amazes me, it looks like I would get over this after a while, is that the folks listening to the speaker interpreting Scripture from an ancient English Dictionary were all cheering at his ability to confirm what God had told him. Suggesting that God has said something that he has not said doesn’t seem to bother these teachers. Keeping people ignorant of what God has said often gives them “authority to rule.” The picture that comes to mind when I hear this kind of stuff is God sticking his finger down his throat. I surely wouldn’t want to be in God’s faced when this event happens. I’m sure that I may have caused the same “picture” on some things I have said. Well there are just a few thoughts from a moment of watching a DVD and having a renewal moment to help folks get out of the “stupid” moments that comes with reading and interpreting Scripture.

It is easy and dangerous to distort the telling of the story of Jesus. Within American Conservative Christianity we have come to think of Jesus in one of two ways. First, an embodiment of divinity like a computer avatar rather than the unique incarnate son. We think of his death as an example of great sacrifice and his resurrection becomes a way of thinking and talking about God’s continuing work in the present world. Second, we think in a dualistic way. Jesus is someone who is from the outside of our world, a superman of sorts who has come from another sphere to tell us that our true home is someplace else, namely heaven. His coming was to teach us how to follow him to that distant and unearthly destination.

There is something wrong with that picture. Neither way of thinking comes close to the Story of Jesus as presented in the Gospels of the New Testament. American Conservative Christianity, served up on a regular basis in America and exported to the global world, simply ignores what the Bible actually says about Jesus in favor another story that has been created out of bits and pieces of perception and refracted through various biblical passage which misreads the text of the Biblical Story.

This brand of Christianity passes itself off as authentic because it believes the items that have come to be thought of as orthodox, namely incarnation, atonement, resurrection, spirit, and second coming. But, what has happen is that all these beliefs have been joined together into the wrong narrative sorta like a kid who is drawing a “draw by numbers” picture but decides to follow another sequence rather than following the numbers. The result of this activity: of not following the right sequence, is drawing a picture other than the one intended. If you put all the elements of Conservative Christianity within a story of a deist God who sent his superman son to undergo some redemptive violence in order to satisfy his primal vengeance, then raise this dead body to life in order to show followers a way back to heaven and away from earth only to come again and snatch them away from earth as earth finally rolls toward rotting in hell. If that is the narrative that one sets incarnation, atonement, resurrection, spirit, and second coming into, then that production produces a violently distorted parody of biblical Christianity. Alas, this is the story of American Conservative Christianity.

So What Biblical Story?
A fresh way of understanding the Story of Scripture is to understand it as a story where humankind, though created good, became radically flawed by sin. Into this flawed world, Jesus came as the long awaited King of the Jews, who themselves had been the redemptive promise of God for some two thousands years. Jesus came to do what Israel had failed to do. Jesus took on the weight of sin and exhausted it, not so those following him could escape this world because it was bad or evil, but because of his resurrection could become part of the project of new creation, a new heaven and earth, or one might say a new garden. This project started after the first created beings chose to follow themselves and not God. The second coming then, is not a day in which Jesus will snatch away his bride from this evil earth and take them to heaven forever, but a time when the rule of Jesus which was already established in his first coming: birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, will finally be established in peace and justice in a transformed heaven and earth. It is this Biblical narrative that should replace the present conservative Christian narrative, so that this narrative can make a fresh impact on the world in this present time. N. T. Wright was influencial in these thoughts.

Well, I decided not to blog live but to link to the actual talks that were given at the conference. It was a great time of inspirational learning about being missional. So take a listen. I’m not sure how long these feeds will be here.

Click on the Right Arrow to stream. Click on the link to open in a player.

Enjoy and make any comments you would like to make.

Friday Evening
The Meaning of Missional: Scot McKnight

The Meaning of Missional - Part 1: Todd Hunter

The Meaning of Missional - Part 2: Todd Hunter

Saturday
Reflection: Todd Hunter

Morphing the Missional: Rose Swetman

What Shall I Call This Presentation?: Scot McKnight

Interview with a Missional Minded Atheist: Jim Henderson

Going Missional without Getting Mean: Todd Hunter