Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Bible Stories for Grown-Ups - A Review







A Review

Many of us grew up with Bible Story Books.  Wilson Harp has re-created that experience for adults.  It was fun to read the stories without the trappings of  chapters, verses, and headings that break of the original Biblical text in ways never suggested by the original authors.  

Was this a new translation - no.  It is a paraphrase of 40 familiar stories that can grab the adult mind - in much the same way that the child based stories challenged me and others at an earlier time.  What is missing are the pictures that brought the text alive to us as children - a set of real life (rather than cartoonish) or classic art images could easily be used to illustrate the stories.  The addition of these to the stories would add value to the book.

In seminary, in order to prepare for the Bible content exam, we were encouraged to read children’s Bible stories to (re-) familiarize ourselves with the most common stories in scripture.  The presence of this kind of book - covering these 40 stories and others - would have given another option for those of us who were not brought up in the church.   

Now, 40 years later, it was fun reread stories that have become more familiar - it was true for me, I hope that it will true for you as well.
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This review is based on a free electronic copy of this book provided by the publisher for the purpose of creating this review.  The opinions expressed are mine alone.  

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