Claims the Bible as a collection of documents recording this one tribe's revolutionarily new, progressive, and continually developing understanding of their relationship to God. The Judeo-Christian relationship to God as recorded in the Bible's stories was a huge leap forward in human consciousness, an expansion beyond the narrow limitation of concern for your particular tribe to a goal (often failed, sure) of blessing all humanity with love and goodwill. That relationship is not static, but an arc, moving forward in greater fulfillment - and, implied, is the question of why should that human development into greater levels of understanding have stopped?

Best question to ask when reading a story from the Bible: "Why did people find this important to write down?" Then, "Why did this story survive?" The worst way to approach the Bible: "Why did God say/do..." Illustrates with some specifics how a deeper understanding of the historical context in which books of the Bible were written illuminates their meaning and purpose, what the writers were trying to communicate to their audience of that time, and how it was a progressive step forward - and how a literalist interpretation that ignores context misses the point.

Written in a chatty style of quite low reading complexity. ( )

I enjoyed another twist on a similar POV of scripture. I took a lot of notes and now I have a ton to meditate on and muse over. ( )

For me, this book helped to revitalize a curiosity and desire for reading the Bible. Rob Bell is an incredible communicator. He is an excellent preacher - the book felt like an extended sermon because he's able to take complex, scholarly aspects of scripture and make it not only accessible but fun! And by fun, I really mean relevant. The best sermons make scripture relevant, which he excels at.

A short critique: in being concise, Bell makes some sweeping generalizations about the Bible in general and specific books, which can easily be disputed. And in thinking about interpretations, Bell offers plenty, which are always interesting, but are still interpretations.

I recommend it to all who have been in church and are burned out on reading the Bible. Or, I recommend it to folks in evangelicalism trying to get their bearings on how to read scripture when it doesn't seem to fit with everything else you're learning in the college or the world. Good book!

( )

This just did not do it for me. Bell brings up some interesting ideas in the beginning and then skates over them to exclaim how cool and interesting something else is. His writing style is conversational, which is fine, but the liberal italics and bolded phrases become exhausting.

And here's what I as a Christian am really concerned about: Bell continually emphasizes the Bible's being written by humans. Again and again, with very little discussion on the Divine that causes us to read and form doctrines from it. That's true, yes, but it was also inspired by God. That's why we read it in the first place. I feel like this is only going to confirm secular bias about the Bible being a book of fairy stories.

Ultimately, Bell is entertaining and brings up a few salient points, but this is not spiritually meaty. ( )

What is the Bible? is my second foray into Rob Bell's writing, after having read Love Wins a year or so ago. I have several issues with both books, though I don't believe What is the Bible? is without some merit. Hence, two stars.

Bell is not a scholar, and this book appears to be intended for a popular, non-academic audience (I do not believe that "popular" and "academic" have to be mutually exclusive; N.T. Wright and Bart Ehrman are two authors writing about Christianity that manage to have their feet in both worlds). I say "intended" for a popular audience because frankly, it's hard to tell: Bell's Bible feels more like a YouTube video than an actual book, with fast talk, pithy soundbites, funky camera angles, and an ADHD storyline. To be fair, Bell is completely cognizant of this fact: "...this book is all over the place. Seriously, we're going to jump from topic to topic and story to story and theme to theme, moving from poetry to history to parable to questions and rants. I did this on purpose...I've arranged the book this way because this is how the Bible is" (p. 5).

The book is structured as 43 breezy chapters in 4 parts ("There's Something More Going On Here"; "The Nature of That Something"; "Where That Something Takes Us"; and "The Questions That Always Come Up"). Part Five, "Endnotes", is either an editorial error, a gross perversion of the term, a spontaneous neologistic creative act, or all three. There are no footnotes or endnotes per se.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the book is that the title question is immediately answered with the subtitle. The 322 pages that follow are just variations on the explication of that theme. For Bell, yes, the Bible is ancient; yes, it is a library; and yes, it contains poems, letters, and stories. This is a point which, if Bell didn't have you convinced on the cover, he reiterates again (p. 4) and again (p. 12) and again (p. 16) and again (p. 19) and again (pp. 21, 41, 53, 77, 114, 266, etc.).

One thing the Bible isn't, for Bell, is the (exclusive) Word of God. He devotes an entire "chapter" (36: "Is It the Word of God?") to this very question. In four and a half pages of liberally spaced type--a quarter of which is spent on a tangential seminary anecdote--Bell manages to distill two thousand years of discourse into a few glib lines (bold text and quasi-poetic structure as in the original):

__________

So the Bible is the word of God?
Yes. Lots of things are.

Wait--lots of things are the word of God?
That's what you find in the Bible--
from the heavens and the stars (the Psalms)
to
the mouth of a baby (again, the Psalms)
to
your conscience (Romans)
to
the poets and philosophers of the day (Paul quotes a number of them in Acts 17).
...
So how would you define the word of God?
The creative action of God speaking in and through the world, bringing new creation and new life into being.
...
So one of the main points of the library of books that some refer to as the word of God is that there are lots of words of God and you can and should listen to them all?
Exactly.
(pp. 266-267)

__________

If we set aside the theological ramifications and substitute "word of God" with cheese or bluegrass music or video games, we are led to new frontiers in definitional vacuousness.

In chapter 37 ("Is It Authoritative?), Bell reminds us that following, obeying, or submitting to the Bible "cannot be done without interpretation" (p. 271), which requires someone, typically an "authority figure" like a parent or pastor, to do the interpreting. But wait! Bell insists that submitting to the authority of the Bible is "impossible to do without submitting first to whoever is deciding what the Bible is even saying" (Ibid.).

Which, by the way, is precisely what Rob Bell himself is doing.

Rob Bell is a popular Christian author, and Christians of any persuasion should at least be familiar with his work; it is for this reason that I have read and will continue to read his books. ( )