Review: The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority

The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority by John H. Walton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The two or three months took to finish this book is a relatively long time (I usually read books in a single sitting). If reading a popular level book is like wading along the seashore, going through this book was like going deep sea diving. The immense depth of content often left me amazed as I realised how naive my presuppositions were and how so far removed I am from the context of the world that Scripture was written in.

Walton and Sandy have indeed done a fine job in "not to deconstruct inerrancy but to put on surer footing by carefully accounting for the worldview of the biblical world, which is different from the worldview of modern Western culture" (p303). In contrast to my snobbish attitude of how written was superior to oral communication, I have a new found appreciation for the latter. The brilliant final chapter summary was like a scoop of refreshing ice cream, an exhilarating reward to the persistent readers who had fought hard to journey through the dense jungle of the book - it helped to remind me of what I had read through and saw how they all fit together.

While the more scholarly reviewers probably give it a no-brainer 5 stars, I found that the book would reach a much larger audience if it weighed in at 200 (rather than 300 pages). That would mean the omission or shortening of much of the book, and maybe a new version of the book could be released to cater to a larger audience. While brevity is a luxury when we deal with such an important topic, I struggled to retain interest in the content, especially at the beginning and towards the end.

I received this book from InterVarsity Press for the purposes of providing an unbiased review. All views are my own.

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