Customer Reviews

Understanding The Bible

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book has been required reading in my Bible as Literature class for 15 years. It provides a good, basic introduction not only to each book of the Bible, but also to such topics as the formation of the cannon, the Documentary Hypothesis, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Harris quite sensibly has little to say about theological matters. His concerns are literary, historical, and archaeological.
I do agree with a previous reviewer that Harris has packed a bit too much into the most recent editions -- but that is my only complaint.

Harris' book has much to recommend it. He is a competent scholar who writes clearly, and the book fairly represents the scholarly consensus on most issues without loosing sight of the real-life concerns of most readers of the biblical texts. Each edition of the book has become more detialed, and the major problem with this current edition is precisely this: it is overly detailed for a freshman level college class. Earlier editions worked well at this level, but too many students struggled to complete assigned readings in this edition.

As a Harvard-Divinity-School-trained professor of Biblical Literature, I am constantly amazed by Harris's detailed, precise, and cogent analysis of the Bible. Those misguided Christians who believe the Bible to be the literal word of God will find the text very threatening. But for those of us who believe in studying the Bible from an academic or scholarly perspective, one that is secular and nonsectarian, and one based on "scientific method," the text is thrilling.

Engaging in an academic-scholarly-secular-scientific study of the Bible means that Harris views the Bible as a collection of written texts produced by the human imagination, within a historical, philosophical, and political context. Harris's study is admirably based primarily on the great European and American biblical scholarship of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (known as "higher criticism"), such as Wellhausen's "Documentary Hypothesis" and the great archeological and linguistic discoveries in the Near East.

Anyone interested in learning about the Bible in an academic and secular way will be pleased by the way Harris assumes in general the superior accuracy of modern historic and scientific method (including the fact of evolution), compared to science and history as they are represented in the Bible. As such, anyone reading the text must be willing to maintain a scholarly and academic objectivity throughout; indeed, Harris tries his best to reject all supernatural claims made in the Bible itself, and find scientific/anthropological/sociological explanations instead. Modern science rejects the supernatural, and embraces only natural phenomena and proof. This means that anyone reading the text must be ready to suspend supernatural religious beliefs they may now hold, and agree to read an interpretation of the Bible that may be difficult or uncomfortable for them, especially fundamentalists, evangelicals, and others anti-rationalists.

Literary scholars attempting to study the Bible for the first time should refer to this book. Chronologically ordered, the chapters in this book allow for easy reference, as they coincide with the order in which the books of the Bible are placed. Also, as it is fairly easy reading, I find that the insight and background information (such as the literary history) Harris presents for each work of the Bible is truly an asset to my studies.

Harris's _Understand the Bible_ is thorough, extremely well documented, and much more digestible than the cumbersome textbook I'm using in Bible as Literature now. It's nicely laid out and contains great illustrations. I doubt readers who are secure in their beliefs would find such sound scholarship threatening. My only complaint is that, with our school's pre-set spending limits, I can't require this book and the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard bible at the same time--though the book is a bargain for what it contains.

Harris combines the best modern scholarship with a detailed analysis of the text to provide a reasonably clear picture of The Bible and its origins. Practicing Christians and others owe it to themselves to become familiar with the The Bible outside of the bounds of the strongly biased presentations that are more readily available.

Folks here who criticize this as "liberal" or "not respecting the alternative viewpoints" are simply reacting to the fact that Harris is seeking to approach the topic with an objectivity and degree of scholarship that is uncommon. If someone's cherished misconceptions about The Bible turn out to be simply incorrect then we shouldn't blame Harris for revealing that fact. Don't shoot the messenger.

Harris's book was not the easiest thing to read. However, the reason for this is that nearly every sentence in the entire book was something new to me! I describe the book as "dense," therefore, not to insult it, but to marvel at the sheer amount of information contained within.

The book is not theological, though there are places where the author's own biases shine through slightly. This isn't a huge deal to me, because I'm not sure I've ever read a book where the author's beliefs didn't in some way affect the text. Just read carefully. If there's something you don't understand or agree with, read the text yourself and try to "see it from his point of view." It's not important at all that you AGREE with his reading of the Bible, but you SHOULD be able to UNDERSTAND his reading of the Bible.

this is a great book. Harris gives a clear sighted view of the development of the bible put in its historical context. One can clearly see how the historical and mythological backdrops that existed at the time helped to create the stories that the bible tells. the stories about jesus and his comparison with dionoysis is very good and bound to shake the foundations of fundamentalists. anyone who really wants to learn about the bible for real needs this book.

In studying the Bible, it is difficult to find credible sources that are not too colored with biases. This textbook approaches the study the way one would approach any work of literature: analyzing the historical contexts and the textual contexts to gain a better understanding of the work. While this is a nonsectarian publication, it does have a slight bias from a nonreligious standpoint. It is a good balance to all the religious perspectives out there though. The information is detailed though occasionally I wanted more. But this is a good starting point for those looking to study the Bible seriously.

The book answered many of questions about bible. In the past I studied the bible to learn what it said, and many times I came away perplexed. The book comes at the interpretation issue from a different direction by covering how the book was written, by whom and when. The information I gained will help me.