September 23 2013

Brown Book Review

Part One:

What They Don't Tell You A Survivor's Guide to Biblical Studies by Michael Joseph

Brown and published by Westminster John Know Press is a book that provides basic information

about biblical criticism. Ultimately, it tries to motivate students to engage with the biblical text and

contemporary biblical studies by illustrating how to approach academic biblical studies in a

different way than which one would approach normal bible study. The book seems to be aimed at

students beginning their journey of academic biblical studies and is supposed to be used as a guide

to get the most out of one's studies.

Part Two:

The first …show more content…

Chapter 5 basically just sums up the book. It gives a great perspective on why Brown wrote this

book. He wrote this book because when he took his first bible class, he was surprised by how

vigorous of a class it was and how much the right mindset can really contribute to one's success in

the course.

Part Three:

One of my favorite things about this book is how Brown often backs up his points with

hard evidence from the bible with direct quotes or stories like in Chapter two when he uses two

different accounts of Jesus' Resurrection to prove his point that when reading the bible, one needs

to be aware of discrepancies between different accounts of the same situation and that just because

it is the bible, it does not mean that differences in accounts should be ignored( Brown 2000, 43). I

also really liked Chapter five. Even though it was unnecessary, I liked how it kind of explained

why Brown wrote this book and it gave a nice background to how his first experience in a bible

class was. I really think this book did exactly what it's purpose was and I really would recommend

this book to anyone taking a bible class for the first time. I feel like it made me aware of some

things I need to be careful about during my bible classes and I feel like it will help make me be

more successful in my bible classes. Overall I really liked this book and I am