Scott Hayden's Reviews > The Bible Story Handbook: A Resource for Teaching 175 Stories from the Bible

Good reference book. I like one of his emphases: that God is the main character of every Bible story. I also like that he insists we arrive at an interpretation by looking closely at what the text says. He warns against the common errors of importing our favorite theologies into the text. He warns against psychoanalyzing Bible characters. He warns against preaching from between the lines instead of from the lines. Then the bulk of the handbook is a story-by-story guide through the big ideas, interpretive issues, and common mistakes. Very useful.

Cautions: Walton makes so much of "God is the main character" that he gives the impression that there is little to learn from the about human nature, or human history, or natural history, and other aspects of our world. I would argue that a truth is true even if it's not the main truth of a Bible story. Yes, the original author likely had a main truth in mind that he wanted to impress on his original readers, but that does not mean the "minor truths" in the story are less reliable. Simply by virtue of it being true, we should believe it whether it was the main truth or minor. Now, Walton may be just over-correcting our contemporary interpretational sloppiness. I'd like to cut him that slack. But his emphasis leads to some quirky handling of Genesis 1. He hacks the story into odd pieces, re-stitching them in a different order. From his "The Lost World of Genesis One", I know where he's coming from on this, but I think he errs.

Yes, God gave the Bible so that we might understand Him - and, that we might understand ourselves. We are, after all, made in His image.