The Bible Archive

BOOK: Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley

REVIEW SUMMARY: Decent overview in very easy language.

MY RATING: Rating:

OVERVIEW: A basic overview of church history in readable English, good to read and helpful but only a primer on a very complicated subject. Definitely pick it up if you’re looking to do research or plan to teach and need some refreshers.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Perfect introduction to church history, easily accessible with plenty of references to introduce the reader to further study.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: Biblically strong, a perfect reference tool for those who want to categorize Paul’s teaching methods and apply to their own methods.

MY RATING: Rating:

OVERVIEW: Roy Zuck follows his classic Teaching as Jesus Taught with a focus on St. Paul ( Teach ing as Paul Taught). Zuck makes sure to focus on Scripture and from there draw any and all conclusions.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Biblically focused to draw any conclusions about Paul’s teaching, the book is an excellent resource and deserves a place on a teacher’s shelf if he/she needs Paul’s teaching labeled and categorized. Otherwise, the long lists might make some weary in reading. Definitely recommended, but know what you’re buying.

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The Point of the book: Horton went into this critical examination to prove that there was a connection between the Qumran Community and the Book of Hebrews in regards to the Melchizedek Tradition. Wanting to show the point of overlap and perhaps their dependence on source material, he traces the development of Melchizedekian thought from the Genesis account, through Psalms, over to Qumran, through the early Church and Rabbinical sources and finally the Gnostics before heading back to the book of Hebrews. What’s great about the book is that when he gets to the end, his point was negatively proven. Not only did he not establish a connection between Qumran and Hebrews but he reversed his position to show that the author of Hebrews cares very little for Melchizedek at all.

The Good: The book deals with the material fairly and whenever there is a question as to the author’s reconstruction, he sagely points out the fact that his conclusion is possible but maybe not probable. The Author deals with each of the sources as they stand (for example examining the Genesis account on its own and seeing how a possible interpretation is that Abraham received tithes from Melchizedek). There are a ton of footnotes and the bibliography section is extensive to allow further personal research.

The Bad: It’s difficult to place any of the book in a Bad category on account that its bad for a person who doesn’t have the technical know-how of a more scholarly professional. For example, there are many sections of the book that delve into untranslated Greek, Hebrew, German, Latin and Coptic. Dealing with those sections requires lots of contextual reading but sometimes he really doesn’t aim to enforce the meaning of those words with the context. But that, like I said, is not necessarily bad since you don’t want to spend a lot of time establishing the contextual meaning of relatively easy Greek concepts like kurios and kosmos. The Hebrew is a bit more difficult on account that, well its Hebrews.

The Ugly: The footnotes in the 1976 edition are a mess, condensing several footnotes onto one line to save page space and I guess page count.

Conclusion: The book is a good read for folks who want to see how the Melchizedekian thought progresses through the first five centuries; it’s helpful for the Biblical scholar and finally its extremely helpful for a person who wants a solid backing for Christ’s own Priesthood: but more info on that on my detailed overview of the book below.

Overview (or the part you don’t have to read): Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: genesis, melchizedek
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I finished Harry Potter and it was awesome. On my other blog, I wrote a short post on it but here I want to put down some thoughts (with tons of spoilers) I’ve had banging around my head for the last week. Once again, I AM going to post spoilers with wild and callous abandon so you’ve been duly warned.

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Rey Review in a Word: A decent mystery book that adds some dimension to the whole Lost Experience that’s fine for a relax read and if you’re not hoping for a book you wrestle with

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I’m not a movie expert because I like Netflix. All of the people on my Netflix friend’s list can attest to the fact that I have some, um, interesting taste. It’s just that the last couple of years I’ve been seeing this funny tune pop up in movies touting the proper way to measure a worthwhile life.

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This review is on the Second Edition of the book, copyright
1988. The fourth edition
does include a major update (a carry over from the third edition)—an entire section on post-modernism and if
you’re looking to read a copy of the book that would be the one.

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What’s the Point of the Book?
To offer a refreshing commentary on the book of Acts, that doesn’t
follow a verse by verse format but looks more at literary structure. In
so doing, David Gooding aims to establish some facts about the
beginnings of Christianity, highlight features in the text that show a
separation from Judaism and differences with naturalism, differences
with spiritualism and what the Christian attitude should be in this
world. Basically, Luke has a point in writing the letter and it’s not
merely listing the historical beginnings of Christianity.

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I’ll be reviewing this title that is copyrighted 1966. A.P. Gibbs is a
pretty well known writer and teacher within Plymouth Brethren circles
so I wonder how I’ll approach this…

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I have the second edition of this book so my comments are directed at that volume.
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Reading.
I do a bunch of it and I readily admit that I don’t do enough of it. I’m often
upset when I don’t get to read my Bible or if a book sits on my computer or if
I finally do invest some time in reading a book it winds up severely stinking.
Can’t stand that. I need a poll-site for books.
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The movie was amazing. You should probably read no further
if you don’t want to be ruined by my outright plot spoilers, repeated bursts
of praise, my adulations of worthiness and some Scriptural illumination so I’ll
contain my glee and let all three of you readers decide to either click on the
Happy Husband or come in. Honestly there will be spoilers so don’t click if you
haven’t seen the movie.

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