How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: Fourth Edition

by Gordon D. Fee

Paperback, 2014

Status

Available

Description

Understanding the Bible isn't for the few, the gifted, the scholarly. The Bible is accessible. It's meant to be read and comprehended by everyone from armchair readers to seminary students. A few essential insights into the Bible can clear up a lot of misconceptions and help you grasp the meaning of Scripture and its application to your twenty-first-century life. More than three quarters of a million people have turned to How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth to inform their reading of the Bible. This fourth edition features revisions that keep pace with current scholarship, resources, and culture. Changes include: - Updated language for better readability - Scripture references now appear only in brackets at the end of a sentence or paragraph, helping you read the Bible as you would read any book-without the numbers - A new authors' preface - Redesigned and updated diagrams - Updated list of recommended commentaries and resources. Covering everything from translational concerns to different genres of biblical writing, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth is used all around the world. In clear, simple language, it helps you accurately understand the different parts of the Bible-their meaning for ancient audiences and their implications for you today-so you can uncover the inexhaustible worth that is in God's Word.… (more)

Publication

Zondervan Academic (2014), Edition: Fourth, 304 pages

Rating

½ (321 ratings; 4)

User reviews

LibraryThing member BriaNicklaus
The chapters deal with issues related to the different genres of the Bible: epistles, OT narratives, Acts, gospels, parables, law, prophets, psalms, wisdom, and the Revelation. It contains good information on how and why we need to interpret the Scriptures, including the need to use a good Bible
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translation.

There is a lot of scripture abuse going on and much of it comes from not understanding that the Bible contains different types of writings. Each chapter is useful for any reading or study for that particular genre. The book will help you and you members get past the "well, I think it means..." mentality of Bible study.

In the back of the book is a section worth the price of the book. The authors discuss what makes a good commentary. One criterion is the need for a commentary that gives different options for the difficult verses, showing the evidence for each view instead of forcing one interpretation and presenting one as the only one. They give their recommendations for good, objective, conservative (people who believe in inspiration) commentaries for each book of the Bible.
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LibraryThing member lt999
It's easy to forget that the bible is a collection of books. Each book belongs to a genre. This book shows you how to interpret each book correctly. I think the author did a fairly good job explaining how to do exegesis and hermeneutics in a concise manner.
LibraryThing member HGButchWalker
Good overview of the topic of interpreting Scripture. They lay out the fundamentals well in pretty accessible language.
LibraryThing member cartledge777
My favorite book for understanding the different genres of literature in the Bible
LibraryThing member shdawson
A must for the deep study of the Word. Reading this first will help with considering the position of other academic authors on the Word.
LibraryThing member temsmail
What you CAN'T read into the text of the Bible. Some of the things we want the Bible to say cannot be supported by honest intellectual investigation, this helps sort out the aceptable methodology from rejected ones.
With Carson's "Exegetical Fallacies," it is a good introduction to the process of
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exegesis and hermeneutics.
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LibraryThing member pbs17
Best book around for learning HOW to read and understand the Bible. Anything by Gordon Fee is great, but this book is accessible for anyone to read.
LibraryThing member PopeLinus
I've taught on this book a number of times, and I still don't get sick of it. It's so essential to understand that the Bible is made up of a number of kinds of literature, and because of this, it's essential to know how to approach each kind on its own (while plugging it into the broad
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metanarrative of Scripture). Fee and Stuart help navigate these issues for the eager student of the Bible.
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LibraryThing member jd234512
Great overview by two scholars that are very respected in their fields yet are still able to write for larger audiences than academia. This is a book I wish I would have read early on in college as I think it would have helped speed up my interest in studying the Bible and wanting to learn more
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about the context. We are given broad brush strokes into the OT and the NT which allows us to get a better sense of the big picture and story of God and His relation to us. Fee and Stuart leave with much to think about and a helpful hand to explore texts that one otherwise might avoid. Truly something that is helpful for any member of a church to study and learn from.
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LibraryThing member serbook
Quite an eye opener in terms of the various versions of the Holy scriptures available. A must read for bible scholars
LibraryThing member aevaughn
An excellent overview of how to read the Bible that is very readable. He also gives many recommendations of how to continue into deeper study.
LibraryThing member ronjawdi
I have read this book several times and I highly recommend it as essential reading for all Christians out there. Though I disagree with some of the conclusions Fee and Stuart may have arrived it over their time in ministry (see introduction, ch. 1), this is a treasure trove of principles for genre
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interpretation scripture.

Though at first it may be slightly heavy (especially the discussion about translation theory), everything in this book is vital for the Christian who loves God's word. Take your time reading it and practice the principles as you read the Bible. It is definitely a title I will use for a long time to come.
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LibraryThing member keithhamblen
GOSPELS (113-134): Jesus spoke in Aramaic and the authors wrote in Greek and that they wrote for different audiences (and as they were moved by the Holy Spirit), so they retold the stories and reworded the teachings (rather chose different words and different points of emphasis) to fit their
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(hermeneutical) purpose--this is what preachers are supposed to do.
...two levels of interest in Jesus: the historical facts and "the existential concern of retelling the story for the needs of later communities" 115
"In a certain sense, therefore, the Gospels are already functioning as hermeneutical models for us, insisting by their very nature that we, too, retell the same story in our own 20th -century contexts." 115
Exegesis of the Gospels, therefore, requires us to think both in terms of the historical setting of Jesus and in terms of the historical setting of the authors. ...know the historical context in general, but also [to] form a tentative, but informed, reconstruction of the situation that the author is addressing. 116
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LibraryThing member NGood
This book, as it is stated in the beginning, does not so much reveal things about the Bible as it reveals how the Bible should be studied. I think that it is a very helpful guide that can and should be used frequently in Bible study. It was nicely split into sections/categories so that it can be
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used as a sort of reference book if one were to need to only know the guidelines set forth for understanding the Epistles, or the Gospels, etc.
While reading through I wrote down sections that I found to be particularly new or helpful so that in the future I can go back and reference this book. However, as they said in the beginning, most of the ideas presented in the book are actually common sense and the book more or less just organizes these common practices so as to make them more common and more concrete, or understandable.
The one thing that this book was a good reminder of was to think about what the text meant to the original recipient. Sometimes it is easy to just read the Bible and to forget that some of the expressions or illustrations might not mean the same thing now as they used to. Or it's easy to read a story and forget to think about what impact it would have had on people in that time period. Even though I already knew that it is important to look at these things it is always good to be reminded and to see them in a little different light. This may be a book that I get a copy of to use in years to come.
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LibraryThing member OCMCCP
Understanding the Bible isn’t for the few, the gifted, the scholarly. The Bible is accessible. It’s meant to be read and comprehended by everyone from armchair readers to seminary students. A few essential insights into the Bible can clear up a lot of misconceptions and help you grasp the
Show More
meaning of Scripture and its application to your twenty-first-century life.

More than three quarters of a million people have turned to How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth to inform their reading of the Bible. This fourth edition features revisions that keep pace with current scholarship, resources, and culture. Changes include:

Updated language for better readability
Scripture references now appear only in brackets at the end of a sentence or paragraph, helping you read the Bible as you would read any book—without the numbers
A new authors’ preface
Redesigned and updated diagrams
Updated list of recommended commentaries and resources

Covering everything from translational concerns to different genres of biblical writing, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth is used all around the world. In clear, simple language, it helps you accurately understand the different parts of the Bible—their meaning for ancient audiences and their implications for you today—so you can uncover the inexhaustible worth that is in God’s Word.
Show Less
LibraryThing member thornton37814
The authors provides suggestions on reading and studying the Bible, including chapters discussing how to approach the various genres of writing in the Bible. Their efforts, however, were a bit marred by the authors' own personal biases when it comes to matters such as Bible translations and even
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theological biases. Persons who disagree with specific parts of the faith of the authors will have issues with the authors' approach to certain things. Still, it is overall a good work on how to study the Bible that will be enjoyed by many persons wanting to improve their comprehension of Biblical texts.
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LibraryThing member lmathews
The best work on Bible study methods and hermeneutics I have read thus far. Fee is incredible in this book and it really helps in showing you how to read different types of literature. I have read about 4 books on this subject thus far, with 2 more on the list, but this by far exceeds the other
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ones I have read.
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LibraryThing member stilibrary
This book is a how-to guide for interpreting the Bible. It gives some general principles for interpretation, but the bulk of the book walks chapter-by-chapter through the major literary genres of the Bible and explains the challenges of each genre and the necessary principles to study and teach
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from such texts. A few of the chapters are lacking, especially the one on the Gospels, which focuses too much on the Synoptic Problem, and the one on Revelation, which gives helpful general principles but is lacking in specificity. -JPS
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