I have a young child and, as a result, I don't get around to reading my Bible much. Recently, however, I have recently been reading 'The Book of God' by Walter Wangerin which is the Bible as a novel. What a good read!
The Bible is actually a collection of books written in different styles over many centuries and this can make it hard to read as a whole, even if you use a modern translation. In this book, the author aims to make the Bible flow like it would if you were reading a novel. He starts with Abram and works his way through sections of the Bible: The Ancestors; The Covenant; The Wars of the Lord; Kings; Prophets; Letters from Exile; The Yearning; The Messiah, and The Epilogue. Each section is told in an easy-to-read way, giving insight into different Bible characters and what they may have been feeling as they interacted with God and his people. For example, Wangerin tells the stories of Samson as a series of ‘once upon a time’ tales that I can imagine families telling each other and passing down through generations before they were written down to read.
There are also interesting historical facts dropped in to give context which I found useful for seeing why some things happened as they did such as the insight into Luke 13 v 1. In the Bible, Jesus is told that Pilate had mixed Galilean blood with Jewish sacrifices. In his book, Wangerin describes the temple and the channels for taking sacrifice blood away from the altar, and how this is the way the blood got mingled - a detail I hadn’t previously appreciated.
This book brought to life stories from the Bible that I've read many times and yet seemed to have lost their impact. In reading them in a new format, they were zinging and gripping and emotional and amazing again! I would recommend, if you have a spare moment, get this book and give it a try!
By Jo
Image: Amazon.