A review by ben_smitty
The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It by Peter Enns

4.0

Peter Enns did a fantastic job at portraying his views on how we should view the Bible. Enns sees the Bible as a book of stories told by the Israelites to explain how they got to where they are rather than a concrete historical book (which would mean a later date for the Pentateuch since he believed it was written after they have already taken over Canaan.)

I disagree with a lot of his views on the destruction of the Canaanites (he believed it didn't actually happen) and how some of these stories were made up by the Israelites to explain how they got to the present that I almost threw the book across the room at one point. But in the end I could see where he is coming from in regards to his belief as he presented the case for the messiah being completely different than what the Jews thought the messiah would be and paralleling that to how we should read the Bible loosely with the use of creative interpretation rather than a strict read-through of accurate history.

Enns ended with how the Bible is not supposed to be about the accuracy of history. It is about the developing plot that will lead to the story of Christ.

The writing could have been a little better, but it was easy to read through nonetheless.