Though it is a late in coming, I was previously busy with my grand translation project earlier. So, here’s my stab at the five books meme begun and cataloged by Ken Brown. I was tagged by Kevin Scull and kind of unofficially by John Hobbins, so it’s time to live up to my tagged responsibilities. Here are the rules:

1. Name the five books (or scholars) that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible. Note that these need not be your five favorite books, or even the five with which you most strongly agree. Instead, I want to know what five books have permanently changed the way you think.
2. Tag five others.

I appreciate Ken’s first rule. These are not my favorite books per se, but books that have changed the way I think about the Bible. Most of these go back to my foundational years, just as I was beginning to discover what it might mean to become a scholar of the Bible.

1. Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in I Peter by David L. Balch. This is the first piece of critical scholarship I ever read. I was a freshman at Messiah College and it was for a paper on the household codes. I probably only understand about 30% of it at the time (and that’s generous), but this was probably the single biggest push for me to go into critical scholarship. This book helped me realize the difference it makes to work deeply with the historical context of biblical texts. I have been a fan of Balch ever since.
2. Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation by Willard M. Swartley. I read this book as a junior at Messiah College in Brian Smith’s course on Biblical Interpretation and Criticism. The class itself had a profound and foundational impact on my reading of the Bible–and another required book for the course, To Each Its Own Meaning, is nearly worthy of this list. If Balch’s book stoked the flames of historical-critical work for me, Swartley’s started another fire for me: the history of interpretation. The chapter on slavery is worth buying by itself. Reading the actual words of the pro-slavery and anti-slavery interpreters from 19th century America simply blew my mind.
3. Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition by Stuart Murray. In line with my interest with the history of interpretation, Murray’s book offers a glance into the way 16th century Anabaptists read the Bible. With its chapter on “congregational hermeneutics,” I am encouraged to struggle with the “elitism” of biblical scholarship in a congregational context (on congregational hermeneutics, check out Chris Spinks’ dissertation). With Murray’s account of the “hermeneutic of obedience,” I am reminded of the importance of the biblical texts intended to transform the daily lives of obedient followers. In other words, I suppose this book contributes to my desire to “stay grounded” as a biblical scholar. For more on this topic, see an early post of mine: The Baptism Hermeneutic. See a survey of the book here. All of this said, I seek to have balanced and solid scholarship grounded in the historical facts before considering an “Anabaptist perspective” on a particular text–though I may begin that scholarship with a kind of “Anabaptist question,” I suppose. Thomas Yoder Neufeld is my idea of a solid Anabaptist scholar of the Bible.
4. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. This may be the most beautiful piece of fiction I have ever read. Beyond its beauty, however, it punctured my perspective on the Bible in two ways: (1) the use of a kind of realistic imagination when searching the texts and (2) paying attention to the stories of women who do not receive much notation in the texts.
5. 1 Enoch: A New Translation by George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam. My interest in social concerns and social history can be seen to some extent in all the previous books, but my interest in apocalyptic thought needs some introduction. If you take a glance at the sorts of posts that I put up on my blog, you may think that I have always been interested in apocalyptic literature. Not so. Up until I read 1 Enoch, I pretty much ignored apocalyptic themes like many (most?) New Testament scholars. I read this edition of 1 Enoch when James VanderKam came to teach “Introduction to Early Judaism” at Fuller as a visiting summer professor. Simply reading 1 Enoch lit me up and that was enough to set me on the path toward apocalyptic research. Other than that, my reading into apocalyptic thought has been more recent and hasn’t had time to show fruits of true impact in my biblical interpretation.

A couple runners up include Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes by Robert McAfee Brown (I had a bout with liberation theology, which still lingers with me to some extent… it also often frustrates me when it comes to biblical interpretation) and The Story We Find Ourselves in by Brian McLaren (I’m not totally gung ho with everything emergent, nor was this book super literature, but it pushed me to consider what the overall story or “metanarrative” of the Bible might be). I’m sure there are others that escape me at the moment.

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

Oh, and as for the tagging others thing… if you haven’t been, then consider youself tagged