What Are You Reading Currently, 2.0

[Scott Pitta]

Invitation to the Septuagint by Jobes and Silva.

[Amanah]

Bro Esaias, thank you for recommending this book. I am really enjoying it, though I have to read it very slowly because he packs so much information into each sentence. Are there any other books that you consider essential reading?

New Testament History
F. F. Bruce
This book recounts the Roman and Jewish context of New Testament times...the lives of John and Jesus, and the history of the first two generations of the Church.

[votivesoul]

I am reading 2 Peter in the NKJV and Hosea in the NLT as I make my way through the Minor Prophets. I am about to finish Reimagining Church by Frank Viola.

[Esaias]

Originally Posted by Amanah

Bro Esaias, thank you for recommending this book. I am really enjoying it, though I have to read it very slowly because he packs so much information into each sentence. Are there any other books that you consider essential reading?

New Testament History
F. F. Bruce
This book recounts the Roman and Jewish context of New Testament times...the lives of John and Jesus, and the history of the first two generations of the Church.

Other "must reads"? Well, depends on the subject.

I believe Charles Finney's Systematic Theology is close to being a "must read", as is his Lectures On Revivals Of Religion.

James Dunn's Christology In The Making is another one.

Both of those authors are pretty heavy reading, although the Lectures on Revival isn't too complex. The other two though are very academic theological texts.

I also think several Apocryphal books are must reads:

Judith
Wisdom
Ecclesiasticus
1 and 2 Maccabees

As for prophecy (specifically, Revelation), E. B. Elliott's Horae Apocalypticae is the king of commentaries. It's four volumes, reprints are available on Amazon, some of the volumes are online as pdf's.

Augustine's Confessions is one of my favorite books (my kids hated it though, said it was way too wordy lol). I also really like Montaigne's Essays, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (might be kind of dry), Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks, The Epistles of Clement, and those of Irenaeus, and Foxe's Acts and Monuments (aka Book of Martyrs). Pilgrim's Progress, and The Holy War, both by John Bunyon, are excellent. I couldn't make it through Milton's Paradise Lost, though, it was toooooo wordy for me.

From the pagan side, I love Plato's Dialogues, Cicero's De Oratore (about the art of public speaking), just about anything else by Cicero, Epictetus' Discourses (on Stoic philosophy), and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (Stoic maxims, proverbs, and random thoughts), and Plutarch's Lives (biographies of famous Greeks and Romans).

A good contemporary (then-current) history of the early Roman emperors is Seutonius' Twelve Caesars (warning - the emperors were filthy and disgusting).

[votivesoul]

Currently reading 1 John in the NKJV. Nearly finished with Hoshea in my NLT.

I also just finished Reimagining Church by Frank Viola. There is a lot of good in there, but also, way too many attempts at trying to compare the church as a community and family to the doctrine of the Trinity and the alleged Persons of the Godhead as a community and family.

So, in conclusion, while his conclusions and explanations of what the church can and should be are quite accurate, in my opinion, his premises for reaching those conclusions are sometimes way off, again, in my opinion.

Otherwise, I'm back at reading A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and A Great War. I decided to start it over, since I couldn't remember where I had left off.

Not sure what I'm going to read next. I'm thinking either A Crime So Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner, or The Apostles and Their Times by Mike Aquilina.

[votivesoul]

A recommendation:

Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Day Plagues by Dr. Martin J. Blaser.

See here: http://martinblaser.com

Here is a link from the same site with an excerpt from the book:

http://martinblaser.com/excerpt.html

A quote from the link:

In today’s world, children grow up without the deformed bones caused by lack of vitamin D or “cloudy” sinuses from infections. Nearly all women survive childbirth. Eighty-year-olds, once consigned to the veranda, are swatting tennis balls, often with the help of a metal hip joint.

Yet recently, just within the past few decades, amid all of these medical advances, something has gone terribly wrong. In many different ways we appear to be getting sicker. You can see the headlines every day. We are suffering from a mysterious array of what I call “modern plagues”: obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, hay fever, food allergies, esophageal reflux and cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism, eczema. In all likelihood you or someone in your family or someone you know is afflicted. Unlike most lethal plagues of the past that struck relatively fast and hard, these are chronic conditions that diminish and degrade their victims’ quality of life for decades.

[votivesoul]

I've progressed through 1, 2, 3 John, and Jude, and have just begun Revelation, in the NKJV. While reading, I've realized I haven't read Revelation all the way through in a very long time. I'm excited to read it once more, in a different translation.

Two recommendations:

Night by Eliezer Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten-Boom. Both are true historical accounts of someone who endured the death camps of Nazi Germany, and survived to tell the tale. The first book will haunt and terrify you, the second will convict and uplift you.

It's kind of amazing how these two disparate but related stories each come from a different place, the first, a place of great sorrow and horror, the second, a place of hope and comfort in the midst of great sorrow and horror. What explains the difference?

In a word: Jesus.

For Wiesel, Jesus was an absent, distrusted illusion, and is never once mentioned. For ten-Boom, Jesus is the Head and Center of all that she is and was. They both survived, but Mr. Wiesel came out a distraught shadow of his former self, who literally couldn't even speak for years after being rescued. Conversely, Sister Corrie not only survived, she survived intact and made use of her experience as a testimony to bless others and give God glory. All because of Jesus.

[Scott Pitta]

The Hobbit and the Lord of the the Rings is fantastic literature.

Dunn's books on christology are very interesting, but it has been a while since I read any of Dunn's works.

Still working on Invitation to the LXX.

[votivesoul]

I finished A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and A Great War by Joseph Loconte, last night.

It was a very good read. It was a bit strange, but after I finished it, I felt a strong sense of gratitude to God for allowing me the chance to read it. I found it very rewarding, even spiritually edifying, especially the last chapter called "Return of the King".

I highly recommend it to all, although if you aren't familiar with Tolkien's or Lewis' works, it may be hard to navigate at times, since the author quotes from them many times.

But the overall context is WWI and what it was like for these two authors to have served in and survived it.

After I finished it late last night, I took a look through my bookcases to see what I wanted to read next. Nothing struck me overly much, but I began looking at Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Dr. Jack Weatherford. I read through the introduction only. It held my attention well, but I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with it or move to something else for now.

https://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-...STPAMT12R1AKJC

[votivesoul]

I've put Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World aside for now, and have begun reading The Apostles and Their Times: Archeology, History, and Scripture Unveil What Life Was Really Like During the Apostolic Age by Michael Aquilina.

See here:

https://www.sophiainstitute.com/prod...nd-their-times

It's a short book, and I think I will cruise through it pretty quickly, and then, on to other books.