Currently Reading: "How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth"

I do not read as much as I should.  That is probably true for a large part of my demographic... I am easily distracted by technology and blogs.  I can devote over an hour to a good sermon, sure.  But blocking out time to read is very difficult.  It is also troublesome for me to retain what I read.  Most of what I learn I do get from podcasts and sermons.... but I KNOW that I'd be able to retain MORE if I could retain from what I read.  

That's outa the way.

I was recently listening to an episode of Fighting For The Faith in which Rosebrough was playing a lecture from respected New Testament scholar Gordon Fee.  The lecture was on studying the Bible and how to do so properly.  It was a very well done lecture and I knew rather quickly I would want to read Fee's book:  How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.

And I must say, so far, I am very pleased with my experience in the book.

I am only on chapter 4... but I am already learning a lot.  (Though since I am in accounting class now, and I don't have my clicker to get points for being here today, I cannot really go in-depth as to what I've learned so far at this time.)  

The second chapter was a bit difficult.  Why?  Because it was basically a love story to a particular version of the Bible.  It isn't difficult to figure out which one.  Fee is on which translation committee?  The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT).  What translation(s) have CBT pushed out recently?  Oh... and who published this book? (Zondervan!)  So... it is easy to see that the first chapters would be a ... a love story to Today's New International Version - the TNIV.  (I have mentioned the TNIV a lot recently on this blog... And I really need to write a compact "My thoughts on the TNIV" blog.  But not today.)

It is interesting the authors spend so much time in the beginning on using a moderate functional equivalence translation... such as the TNIV (surprise surprise!)... when the book is concerned with proper exegesis.  Now while it has been a while since I've taken REL 321 - Paul (which I took with my brother in Spring '06), I seem to remember the importance of words from the original Greek (or Hebrew).  How can I properly exegete a passage as to the original meaning of the text, when I have a functional translation which gives me a meaning that may or may not reflect the translation committee's bias as to what the meaning of a text is??  

This is where a faithful dynamic translation is necessary  - preferably the English Standard Version (ESV) in my opinion.  Sure, the ESV may not be as easy to understand as some sentences in the TNIV, but why do we think the Bible will read as easily as something in the Twilight Saga??  I'm not saying you need to be a scholar to have to understand the Bible.  But even Peter tells his audience in 2 Peter that Paul has written some things that are rather difficult to understand.  The Bible does take some work to understand.  But many things worth doing are not the easiest things to do.  But once we learn how to read the Bible correctly and interpret the Bible using the three rules of interpretation:  1) Context 2) Context 3) Context, the rewards of knowing the Word of God are incredibly beneficial to his people.