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neilrcoulter's review
2.0
I had read Peter Enns's The Evolution of Adam and found it extremely challenging and intriguing. Enns's reading of the Bible was considerably more open than I was comfortable with, but I agreed with a lot of what he wrote and have kept his interpretation in my mind as a kind of parallel way of understanding the Bible. I think he would be happy with that stance, since he advocates for being in conversation with diverse traditions of biblical interpretation. With that background in Enns's work, I was very much looking forward to reading his latest book, The Bible Tells Me So.
And as I read it, I was extremely disappointed and frustrated. Much of my frustration came from the thoroughly obnoxious voice Enns uses in the book. I don't remember The Evolution of Adam being this way, but in The Bible Tells Me So, Enns writes in a slangy, sarcastic, juvenile voice more appropriate for a blog than a book (if it's ever appropriate). I felt embarrassed for Enns as he tried so, so hard to be cool and funny. After reading a little bit of the book, I began to feel insulted by the way Enns seems to be talking down to his readers, treating us like children. I understand that he's trying to put off the impression that theology and biblical studies has to be reverent and dry. But when I read a book in this area, I want to feel that the author is someone I can respect and learn from. Enns is not that author.
This is a shame, because the questions that motivate Enns throughout the book are many of the same questions that I have struggled with in my Christian journey, such as: Why does God in the Bible sometimes seem to be a bloodthirsty, unforgiving, genocidal war-king? Why are parts of the Bible contradictory? Why do New Testament writers, and even Jesus himself, interpret the Old Testament in ways that seem to make no sense? For Enns, for me, and for many Christians, questions like these have caused a lot of stress, as we try to force the Bible to make sense, and to be the holy guidebook that we think it's meant to be. I'm so glad that these questions are being raised, because they can inhibit the love for and enjoyment of the Bible that I want to have. I don't want to be embarrassed of the book that we regard as the Word of God.
What I wanted from The Bible Tells Me So is some answers to these questions, from a person who has blazed a trail for me and spent time researching and thinking about the Bible. Unfortunately, Enns seems to be a child who can't take us much further than simply stating and re-stating the questions, but without exploring the answers very deeply. He expects the reader to be continually shocked to learn that *gasp* the Bible sometimes contradicts itself! The gospels *gasp* don't all tell exactly the same stories about Jesus in exactly the same way! and so forth. But this isn't news to me. I've spent a lot of time with the Bible and I know what confuses me about it. I don't want more repetitions of the questions, as though I've never thought about it before. I want fruitful avenues for answers, further research and contemplation. Enns's book is very repetitive, and much more gleeful about shocking the reader with questions than about leading the reader to deeper understandings. This is really disappointing to me, because now that such a well-known author has written a popular book on this topic, it may be harder for a real book on this topic to be published--and such a book needs to be published.
The solution Enns has settled on for these questions about the Bible is a rather extreme concept of the Bible being a set of stories and other writings that follow the conventions and needs of the people who wrote them. This is not altogether new, of course, and I've greatly enjoyed scholarship that sets the Bible in its cultural context and reveal aspects of the writings that I wouldn't otherwise understand--Kenneth Bailey's work on Jesus's parables, for example, or John Walton's writing about the first chapters of Genesis. What's more extreme in Enns's perspective is that very little of the Bible is grounded in anything more solid and enduring than the needs of a particular author at a particular place and time in history. Thus, the exodus from Egypt probably didn't actually happen, but the people who wrote about it needed something like that to have happened, so they wrote it into their history. Likewise, the period of warfare as the Israelites conquered the Canaanites also probably didn't happen; but, again, the exiled Israelites needed their history to affirm them in this way, so the writers inserted it (or at least greatly exaggerated what actually did happen). Enns has no problem with this continual reinterpretation, and he believes the biblical writers didn't, either. This is what he sees Jesus doing as he reinterprets the scriptures in his teaching, and what Paul does as he refashions the scriptures to affirm Jesus and usher in the new understanding of the kingdom of God as open to Gentiles as well as Jews.
This idea was at the core of The Evolution of Adam, as Enns suggested that Jesus and Paul and others were bound by their context, saying some things that we now look back on as technically incorrect, but correct in their time because that's the only way they could communicate. That was a challenging and troubling idea, but somehow in that book it was easier to take. I feel like Enns has now progressed to a point where it's difficult to see why any of the Bible is actually true. Did Jesus rise from the dead, or did the gospel writers agree together that they needed a saviour who returned from death, and so they embellished "reality" with what the religion needed? I find in Enns a near-idolatry of the idea of Story, and while I can affirm the importance of reading the Bible as story and of understanding the cultural context of the scriptures, I don't feel I can follow Enns to the extreme place that he has gone. If another author, with a better writer's voice, shows me this point of view, I may in fact move closer to where Enns is. But Enns's annoying tone keeps me at a distance from everything he advocates. It's such a lost opportunity, because his tone has kept the real discussion from happening. It's like trying to talk about human origins with either a young-earth creationist or a Dawkins-style atheist: true dialogue is impossible.
I also felt in this book that Enns imagines a modern Western idea of what ancient near-eastern cultures were like. What I mean by that is that even though Enns strives to view the Bible within the cultural contexts in which it was originally written, I don't feel he understands what oral cultures (even today) are like. He's viewing biblical cultures as a Westerner. Some more experience with other parts of our world that continue to be primarily oral in transmission of knowledge and information would really help Enns in imagining cultural contexts of the Bible's writers. It's hard for me to put into words exactly what I mean by this, but my years of living in an oral-culture society make me feel that Enns is missing something.
In addition, I wonder if Enns is too quick to assume that so much of the Bible is culturally relative, created at a particular time in order to convey a particular idea or truth. Is this perspective blinding him to the many ways that human life cycles through various patterns? For example, Enns makes much of how Mary's Magnificat in the New Testament is obviously (to him) referencing Hannah's song in the Old Testament, which is highlighting a parallel between Jesus and David. But isn't a song of praise simply a typical human response to a significant event? Is there a reason to assume that those writers were doing anything other than telling the story of what happened? In more recent history, we look back at the Puritans' destruction of much Christian artwork in churches in the 17th century, which they did lest visually beautiful artifacts become idolatry that leads worshipers away from Christ; today, we see ISIS doing the same thing, and for similar reasons, to great Islamic artifacts and structures. These events are not connected to each other, except insofar as they demonstrate a human tendency that has been repeated at various times throughout history. Some events that appear in the Bible are likely the same as this: similar, but not related; and not necessarily the narrative impulse of a writer who needs that relation to exist in order to make a point. I fear Enns is taking a valid point way too far, and therefore missing other helpful and worthy avenues for understanding what the Bible has to teach us.
I hope others will take up the questions Enns has raised and share more reasonable thoughts and conclusions. We need more open dialogue and wide guidance about these hard questions, but Enns is not the person to lead us there.
sabrinarcb's review
4.0
nrt43's review
3.0
This book certainly would have rocked my world 15 years ago. And yet, it might have hastened the growth process. Today after wrestling with these questions for 15 years, most of the book was a helpful summary of similar conclusions.
That said, Peter Enns is my go-to for understanding how to think about the Bible. He's a Harvard educated Old Testament professor who was fired for questioning the conservative presuppositions on scripture (for a little more, see his Wikipedia article). And, he remains solidly a Jesus follower through and through. I look forward to reading his other books. (His podcast - The Bible for Normal People - is also good. It seems to take what he writes here for granted and move on to next steps.)
My one complaint would have to be the tone. Get ready for some Dad jokes. Even for this new dad, it was a bit much. Okay, a second complaint (which might asking too much from one book and might be answered by his other books) is where to go from here. Sure, defending scripture skews our perspective, but where do we go from here? How does scripture relate to other literature?
All that said, if you are coming from a conservative background and struggle to understand how to deal with scripture, this is an excellent resource. It's fun and accessible, critical and honest, and yet still remains committed to Jesus.
emilyrowellbrown's review
4.0
allisonjpmiller's review
4.0
Karen Armstrong also sums it up well:
"Before the modern period, Jews, Christians and Muslims all relished highly allegorical interpretations of Scripture. The word of God was infinite and could not be tied down to a single interpretation. Preoccupation with literal truth is a product of the scientific revolution, when reason achieved such spectacular results that mythology was no longer regarded as a valid path to knowledge."
Trying to understand the Bible without understanding this is like clipping the flight feathers off a bird and shoving it into a cage that doesn't allow it room to even twitch. Creative interpretation of Scripture was an essential part of Judaism; it's why (most) people were delighted to hear Jesus play "free association" with the Torah. The way he drew new depths of meaning out of Scripture was right in line with Jewish tradition, which saw God's word as a living thing that was constantly revealing new insights to those who wrestled with it. (The thing people weren't so charmed by was Jesus's claim to be God.)
On a larger scale, Peter Enns argues, that's how exactly how we should engage with the Bible. Asking it to be a rulebook is asking it to be something its writers never intended it to be. The Bible is best understood as a story, one that is told through many different genres (poetry, prophecy, law, epistles/letters, parables, eyewitness accounts, and yes: history). The New Testament itself presents a brand new interpretation of the Old; it re-casts the same story in a new light, with a new lens, all in an effort to better understand the God people thought they knew.
For all intents and purposes, God appears to be cool with that. He lets his children tell the story as they understand it. So... why aren't we cool with that? Especially when Jesus almost exclusively used parables to make important points. He could have just spoken in statements and facts, but considering 96% of the universe remains scientifically unknown to us even today, God dropping facts would no doubt sound like pure gibberish (kind of like how the sheer irrationality of quantum physics makes the best scientists flail in frustration).
Besides... that's just not how human beings are wired. We're wired for story. Story is the language we use to understand ourselves and the world around us. It always has been, and it always will be. Just as people today use memoir to re-shape their messy, amorphous past into a coherent narrative that informs their present, the Bible is the spiritual history of a nation written to help that nation better understand who they are, and how their relationship with God has evolved. That was the priority for ancient writers.
While I don't agree with absolutely every conclusion Enns draws here, I think his overall thesis is a sound one, and incredibly important for Christians (as well as atheists) to grasp. This is not a black-and-white historical document, and trying to make it into one is not only disingenuous, it also ensures we sail past the point so fast we never even notice it.
vncavalcanti's review
4.0
libbysjoutnal's review
5.0
brneely's review against another edition
3.5
At the same time, however, some of his arguments stray away from Biblical analysis into somewhat empty discussions of God/Jesus being *bigger* than something. Often, Enns' best points are in the middle of his argument, and his final charge is lacking.
More importantly, and what will really define whether a reader enjoys or despises this book (beyond tolerance of the notion of Biblical errancy) is Enns' voice. The book is written in an informal, conversational, humorous tone, with lots of jokes and irreverent comments throughout. I didn't love this style, but I didn't have a problem with it, and I did genuinely laugh at a few jokes throughout. Those who are used to the denser, drier language of biblical criticism may have a hard time with this, but it makes it far more accessible to people like my mom or brother. I'll accept that tradeoff.
Overall, a good book I'd recommend to my dad, Abby, and my friend Greg. I would not recommend this to biblical traditionalists or many of the people I went to church with growing up.