Why are you reading that!?

If you look on the margin you’ll notice I’m reading some odd stuff. I try to read stuff that deepens my knowledge of NT backgrounds each year. Sometimes it is ancient literature like the Odyssey or Illiad. Other times it is NT backgrounds. Noncanonical… by Craig Evans is a survey of ancient literature that has some connection to understanding the Bible – some more than others. I don’t know how helpful it is, but it is getting me more exposed to all that literature in the footnotes of the commentary. I even read some of the actual literature from each chapter. Wading through a little Philo right now. Talk about a different way of looking at things!

I also just finished House Made of Dawn. Why? No idea. I have a book called The Book of Great Books to help me choose my reading wisely, but this guy has lost a little credibility with me on this one. As far as I can tell it is a tragic tale of a Native American who has come back from war and just can’t seem to find his way, either on the reservation or in the big city. I’m not much of a literary critic, though, so take this with a grain of salt – it did win a Pulitzer, though. It seems a little like the Vonnegut I read in high school, kind of stream of consciousness at times, but not as weird as Vonnegut. Still weird, though. Glad it was a shorter novel.

The Problem with Evangelical Theology is a challenging book that I’ll probably do several posts on down the line to help clarify my understanding of what Witherington is saying. But it is basically challenging the exegetical foundations of some popular evangelical systems. Pretty interesting, but since I hold a hybrid of some of these systems, it is challenging my thinking by giving me different paradigms. It will be helpful to explain them so I understand them a little better – the main reason I blog to begin with.