The Most Brilliant Book Ever Written
Foul-mouthed sometime comedienne Janeane Garofalo recently commented that the Bible was a “work of fiction” for a “child-like audience.” The problem with moderns, including most modern evangelical Christians, is that they think the Bible is primitive. Hah! They’re like a man from the industrial revolution classifying a printed circuit board as a pretty (if eccentric) Mayan artifact. Providentially, the Bible is easier to understand than a circuit board.[1] It was designed for discipleship, so we need to be taught how to read it.
Here’s another review of Bible Matrix, this time from Travis Finley:
Most people would read the Bible more if they knew how to do it. It’s not as simple as one might think and the old adage from Bible college that “even without a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek the Bible is readily accessible to anyone who will read it” is too simplistic. The Bible is a hard book to read primarily because it’s the most brilliant book ever written. Its full meaning is not always immediately apparent.
However, the “code” for reading the Bible is nothing like the fantastical, random and “hidden” Bible codes that delight mystics, numerologists and readers of Dan Brown’s shallow fictions. The Bible Matrix takes the Bible at its word, by its word, through its word, and under its word; knowing how the words are used by the authors of its early books is the key to unlocking the rest of the Bible when one gets there.
It has been my desire to write a book much like the one Mike Bull has penned, a book that would have been a help to me when I was a younger man studying the Bible. So I am thrilled that Mike has beaten me to the punch. He has done for the typical Christian what no one has ever done in any of the churches I have attended: he has made the Bible readable.
Had I written my book, I would have wanted my work to accomplish what Mike Bull has achieved. It is this: to enable a reader to pick a book from the Bible, any book, and read it with the ease, familiarity, and dexterity as any other for this simple reason: the reader not only knows what the Bible says, but why it says what it says in the way it says it and what it means by what it says.
Most believers do not read the “totus textus” because the Bible’s patterns and styles are not taught to us. Bible Matrix is written for everyman, and it gives the reader the tools to wield the sword of the Spirit with a familiarity and enthusiasm rare in modern churches.
Photo: Fragile Future (Lonneke Gordijn)
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[1] In a left-handed way, Garofalo is right about the child-like audience. My children have a better grip on how to read the Bible than many celebrated theologians.
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