I have some problems
with it though, besides some indecent works of art, some of the notes and commentary seem rather
eisegetical. For instance, some of the
notes dealing with wives being submissive to their husbands make it more of a
concession to the culture of the time rather than God ordained. They say things
like, "Paul's
command 'Wives, submit to your own husbands' (Eph. 5:22) is at least partly
related to concern for Christian witness within the surrounding culture, and is
quite mild in comparison to the rest of his culture. What is significant is
that Paul modified the culture's values, calling on all believers to
submit…Wives were to submit 'as to the Lord' (Eph. 522), and husbands were to
love their wives 'as Christ also loved the church"(5:25) and, "…the
structure of these traditional codes was adopted in Christian letters,".
But the reasons given in the New Testament for
wives submitting to their husbands was because of the structure that God had
set up, not one man had set up. It's not
that the apostles were adopting and then modifying cultural authority
structures in the family and that the headship of a husband over a wife and her
submission to him were just necessary cultural evils, rather they were
explaining how to correctly implement the authority structure set up by God
(husbands loving their wives, wives submitting to their husbands and children
obeying their parents. Ironically, the
commentators in this Bible are imposing modern cultural family-structure
(equality of husbands and wives = no submission required) views on the
Scriptures.
And of course, you
can presume, based upon the hermeneutical method used in interpreting the above
concepts in the Bible there are other things that are probably erroneously
interpreted as well. One hint of it is
in their use of dates, the numbers they use (like 26,000 years ago) hint at an
'old earth' or theistic evolutionist perspective.
Oh, and I didn't
like some of the chronological arrangement.
For instance, they have some prophecies from Isaiah being read after the
fall of Jerusalem. Part of their
reasoning is that, "Other prophetic
passages speak of times later than the traditional date of composition for the
passage itself. For example, parts of
the Book of Isaiah refer to events that took place centuries after the prophet
Isaiah lived. Though Isaiah prophesied
in Jerusalem during the 8th century B. C., the passage of Isa 44:28; 45:1
refers by name to Cyrus, a Persian king who lived in the 6th century . For this reason , some chapters form the Book
of Isaiah appear in the time of Cyrus…"
Umm… didn't God have the prophets prophecy LOTS of things that
hadn't happened yet? It would hardly be
unthinkable for God to have the prophets give out a particular name of someone
in the future. Besides, right before God
starts prophetically addressing Cyrus He states,
"I am the Lord, the maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens,
who spreads out the earth by myself, who foils the signs of false prophets and
makes fools of diviners, who overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense, who carries out the words
of his servants and fulfills the predictions of his messengers."
Overall, this Bible
is very nice looking inside and out (excepting the indecent pictures), but
several of the above mentioned aspects keep me from recommending this Bible
highly, though there are several redeeming factors, like the timelines, charts,
and even other study notes that aren't so biased. I had reviewed the NIV version of this Bible
a while back but seem to have forgotten about several of the problems that I
had with it.
I am grateful to
have received a free review copy of this book from the Book Look Blogger
program(My review did not have to be favorable)
No comments:
Post a Comment