I loved this little book. I heard the song before I saw and read the book and I thought ,what a great thought for a song and then I found the book and I believe it is something anyone would enjoy.

I've been looking for a book to use in an adult sunday school class on biblical interpretation and have read half a dozen books on the subject within the past six months, all targeting the layman. This is the best of the lot so far, but that is faint praise.

Fee and Stuart focus on the different types of literature that make up the canon and the different ways in which they must be approached. Many of their insights are very helpful and useful. Generally, the chapters written by Stuart (those dealing with the Old Testament) are markedly superior in quality to those written by Fee.

Some significant things are missing entirely. The first is any discussion of basic exegetical skills apart from application to a specific type of literature. Fee directs the reader to Sproul's Knowing Scripture and a few other books for this sort of thing. Also, any discussion of a redemptive historical approach to interpretation is missing. This is a crucial omission in that later books of the Bible develop themes and reuse imagery introduced in earlier books.

A chapter on selecting a translation is provided. Sadly, Fee is very committed to the dynamic equivalence method of translation. A student following his advice will to a large degree be held hostage to the prejudices of interpreters masquerading as translators.

Some specific comments on the books treatment of the various types of literature:

1. Epistles
Fee wisely emphasises the occasional nature of the epistles, and that the text cannot mean something that it did not mean to its original recipients. However, he makes much of cultural relativity (e.g. arguing that 2 Tim 2:11-12 are culturally relative, ignoring the context of verses 13-15). Fee is also a committed non-cessationist and rides this hobby horse till it falls over and dies. Almost every example of alleged poor exegesis is tied to cessationism.

2.Gospels
Fee offers some good advice on reading each Gospel both in the context of the parallels in the other gospels and conversely in light of its own particular audience and themes. His treatment of the Sermon on the Mount is exceptionally poor, however. On page 130, he implicitly says that the Old Testament law was capable of justifying. One hopes that this is due to sloppy phrasing.

His treatment of the parables is fairly conventional in that it treats the parables as a unified genre, which to my mind they are not. The parables in many cases are just as occasional as the epistles. The rules for interpreting them are not completely uniform (for instance, the parable of the sower comes very close to allegory, while the parables describing the Father's joy over repentant sinners in Luke 15 much more closely follow the pattern of communicating one central thought. The interpretive approach is often indicated by the question or situation that occasions the parable, and this goes overlooked.

3.Law
Stuart's treatment of the law in terms of exegesis is pretty good. He gives the student a good guide to understanding the difference between apodictic law and case law and to understanding the law in the context of the antithesis between the Israelites and the people they were to displace. He does not do so well in giving guidelines to the modern believer to apply the Law. He says for instance (p. 163) - "don't see the Old Testament law as binding on Christians in the New Covenant except where specifically renewed". As North has pointed out, this is not a sound guide, because there is no New Testament renewal of the prohibition on bestiality, for instance.

Stuart also omits any discussion of the division of the law into moral, civil, and ceremonial law. The above problem is perhaps an outgrowth of that.

4. The Prophets
This section is pretty good. Stuart points out that the prophets must be read as the enforcers (prosecutors would have been a more accurate analogy) of the covenant. This section would have been especially helped by a discussion of the redemptive-historical aspect of biblical prophecy.

5. The Psalms
This is the best chapter in the book. Stuart gives very solid advice for understanding Hebrew poetry. A couple of pages are devoted to the imprecatory psalms (e.g. Ps 137)

6. Wisdom literature
Stuart very astutely observes that the wisdom corpus of the Bible includes James, but then he ignores it. His treatment of Ecclesiastes is appalling. He suggests that the purpose of Ecclesiastes is to *contradict* the rest of the Bible, and that only two verses properly coincide with the biblical message (pg 214). This is tantamount to a denial of the infallibility of a portion of scripture. One hopes that Dr. Stuart will do a little hard work on this before the next edition.

7. Revelation
This chapter is worth skipping. Fee gives some good advice in the 5 principles he outlines, but his examples turn out to mostly be examples of how not to apply those principles.

I would recommend this book cautiously to individual readers, but I won't be using it for my class.

This is a book on interpreting the Bible and applying it to your life. My seven-member Bible study group (from an Evangelical Free church) did a 13-week study/discussion of this book. Thirteen weeks may sound like a long time, but it worked well for us for two reasons: First, the book is not light reading. You need time to read, struggle, re-read, and come to grips with each chapter. Second, the authors often ask the reader to read large portions of scripture as part of studying a particular chapter in their book. In their chapter on the epistles, for example, the authors ask the reader to read through all of I Corinthians in one sitting, then study it *again* using techniques that they teach in the book.

We believe that this book is not a "basic primer"--it is not a book for beginning students of the Bible. For new Christians, let me suggest a book recommended by the authors themselves: "Knowing Scripture," by R. C. Sproul.

OUR FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THE BOOK: 1) The book is written by two seminary professors who tell us, in the book's preface, that they are "believers, who think we should obey the biblical texts, not merely read or study them." 2) The emphasis of the book is on helping readers struggle with the questions of applying the Bible to their own lives. 3) The book eases the reader into the subject matter by giving some general principles of interpretation and by discussing the relative strengths of different Bible translations. 4) The book then divides the Bible into different types of literature (e.g., parables, law, epistles, prophets, and so forth); this approach helps to clarify the "rules of the road" in interpretation. As one example, the authors lay down some rules for understanding proverbial wisdom, and from these rules, we understand that Proverbs are not legal guarantees from God.

OUR NOT-SO-FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THE BOOK: 1) Even in the most recently printed version, there are some curious typographical errors. 2) A couple of members of our Bible study felt the book was "difficult reading" in some places. 3) If you want exposure to *several* viewpoints about how Old Testament Law does or does not apply (or applies in part) to New Testament Christians, you'll need to look elsewhere.

FINAL THOUGHT: If you are looking for more than a basic primer on reading and applying the Bible to your life, we commend this book to you. This book changed the way we study scripture--for the better. All members of my Bible study group rated the book at 4.5 stars or higher.

A member of our small group Bible study who has been a Christian for a short while asked, "How do you know what's right when it comes to interpreting a Bible passage? I mean, can it just mean whatever you want it to?" We ordered copies of this book and we proceeded to read it aloud to one another for the next 5 weeks, skipping a few chapters, but covering most of it. The resulting discussion was just great! Fee/Stuart show how the mere fact of reading a translation plunges you into the middle of a tradition of interpretation. The key is to recognize that the text operates on multiple levels, each of which we grasp clearly only by Divine inspiration. Everyone in the group remarked on how learning about the need to do exegesis before doing hermeneutics was so critical. People who've been Christians for a long time said they wished they'd had this book years before. Personally, if I'd had this book in seminary years ago I'd have been helped along greatly. The book is aimed at intelligent laypeople. Very readable and covers some very technical stuff with ease and clarity. Definitely 5 stars!