Wednesday, May 5, 2004

Daily Bible Study Series

I didn't really mean to drag everyone along with me through my study of Luke, but I'm coming across some amazing facts about life and times back then. First I must stop for a moment to qualify a few things about William Barclay, who is the source of a lot of this "wow!" material in his Daily Bible Study Series. He was recommended by my friend, Mary G., who is a Bible study veteran. On Amazon I repeatedly saw reviewers mention that he was really great as long as you watched out for his theology. No kidding. My jaw literally dropped when reading about the Nativity and seeing how many alternatives Barclay offered that would allow Jesus' birth to be called "virgin" but yet really have Joseph as his fully natural father.

So why use his commentary? Barclay's strengths are his phenomenal knowledge of the Greek language, the Jewish culture and religion, and the Roman occupation during the New Testament era. He is wonderful at conveying this knowledge in a way that simple and easily understandable. He puts it in context so that you can understand what events meant to the people to whom Jesus spoke to 2,000 years ago.

His application of those events to modern lives is less successful. Sometimes it works, as we saw with Jesus' temptation in the wilderness (May 3), and sometimes it doesn't. Regardless, the historical context is so wonderful that I am willing to suffer the other parts of his writing.

No comments:

Post a Comment