09 January 2024
Someone asked me about the sources of my education.
It started with an evangelical college. It turned out we had some very sharp professors who alerted me to things like Hebrew symbolism and the Jewish Messianic Expectations. We had visiting speakers who said things like, "The Bible is an eastern book, not western." I had a couple of professors who were clearly not Dispensationalist at a time when evangelicals were being herded into it. I can recall as a child when Dispensationalism was a new thing being promoted in churches. Thus, it's not just the educational institution that mattered so much as the timing of my education.
My family was poor, but I went to college when grants were easy to get. When I tried to go to seminary, they had evaporated for me. Some of my college buddies went and nearly starved; I never got there. Despite being called to the ministry very early in life, I ended up working a lot of secular jobs to pay bills and feed my children. However, over the decades since then, I kept bumping into seminary graduates who shared their books, and some who told me what kind of stuff I should read.
During my adult life, there were 3 times when I had to move on terms that forced me to surrender my library. I quit collecting so many books after the last time. But twenty years ago I stumbled across a series of sources online that duplicated my libraries many times over. In the past two decades I've read as much of that online library as I could. I'm still quite fond of Christian Thinktank (you can download their database of articles for free).
I haven't kept footnotes. I cannot tell you what authors did me the most good. Some of them weren't even Christian. A significant part of my understanding of Hebrew language, culture and the broader Ancient Near East came from secular sources. But if you want a good starting point, I still have my hands on a few key books.
The Wycliffe Bible Commentary (Moody Press)
Unger's Bible Handbook (Moody Press)
Eerdman's Handbook to the Bible
Old Testament Survey (by LaSor, Hubbard, Bush; Eerdmans Publishing)
New Testament Survey (by Tenney; Eerdmans Publishing)
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (by Edersheim; available free online)
Obviously, some of this stuff (like Unger) is heavily Dispensational. You should expect that from anything published by Moody Press. Not so much from Eerdmans. I was after the history, archaeology and cultural stuff. I read the Apocrypha a few times. As noted, I've also read a lot of philosophical surveys of the Ancient Near East, emphasizing Babylon, Egypt and Persia. I didn't spend too much time digging into source materials for Egypt and Persia, but benefited a lot from scholarly surveys of their metaphysics. The thing with Babylon is that her rulers collected literature from other civilizations, so talking about Babylonian sources does not indicate it was from Babylon itself, but I read some of that.
The thing you run into is that, without a lot of preparation in the philosophical assumptions, reading the source materials won't do you much good. I don't recall seeing a copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh that came with an adequate explanation that the whole thing was symbolic, not meant to be taken as an actual story of real events.
When it comes to the biblical text, I learned that the Masoretic Text so popular with evangelicals was intentionally perverted by Jews fighting Christian faith. This was all part of the Judaizer agenda, as is Dispensationalism. When I started running into this stuff, that's when I abandoned my Dispie associations. I never hated Jews; I simply don't trust them. Edersheim wrote several books that warn us about them, and he was a rabbi before his conversion to Christ.
Yes, I have also studied Western Civilization in depth. When I critique the Aristotelian orientation, I know what I'm talking about. I've read plenty of stuff from the big trio (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle). I took courses in western history. A handful of college professors once tried to get me to apply for a masters degree fellowship in history at their university. I didn't want to get lost in academia.
That's not to toot any horns, but to indicate how I got where I am now. Almost nobody in evangelical scholarship promotes an in-depth understanding of the Hebrew frame of mind. When someone told me about Heiser, I was stunned. You'll find out he wasn't very popular with evangelicals, either. I suppose we can blame the modern Judaizers for inflaming evangelical ire at the idea that Judaism bears only a superficial resemblance to the ancient Hebrew religion. We can certainly blame Judaizers for Zionism; the history of that is too easy to find online. A key figure was Untermeier and his funding of Scofield's Bible notes (using Rothschilds money).
Let me say this: I recommend that, whatever you find online that helps you follow the Lord, get a copy for yourself. Maybe invest in the means to print hard copies on paper. Put that stuff in notebooks and save it, if you can. This coming year could see dramatic changes in what we can find online.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
Some good books to add to the list.
I do need to dig into that OT Survey book soon.
Jay DiNitto
I just ordered the Wycliffe Commentary. That is one big boy.
CatRez
I'm not sure how I managed to hang onto that for so many years, but I bought it back when Zondervan had a bookstore in an old mall where I live. It's still in one piece.
Dan D.
It is indeed. I have my parents' copy from 1976. Mom wrote "A Mother's Prayer" on one of the inner pages. I would have been 7-ish so may God bless her for patiently explaining the love of Jesus to me. I still remember us sitting together. The military loves force multiplication -- my mom was a force multiplier is the most quiet of ways.
John Providence
Thank you so much for this, it will keep me busy for a while!
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