Review: Unlocking the Bible: What It Is, How We Got It, and Why We Can Trust It

Unlocking the Bible: What It Is, How We Got It, and Why We Can Trust It by Jeff Lasseigne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lasseigne is a master storyteller - I found myself looking forward to the anecdote that would come with every new chapter (only 1 out of the so many was average and uninteresting; the rest were brilliant in reeling the reader's attention to the topic at hand!). From what I can infer, the primary audience for this book would be lay readers, and therefore most of the material did not have scholarly citations. The downside of this would be that readers who are interested in studying further into any topic covered in the book would have to consult other similar titles for advice/direction. The scholarship however was excellent - a lifetime of research was probably involved in the compiling of material for this title, with few controversial assertions observed by this reviewer (to be discussed in a while).

One section that perhaps best illustrates Lasseigne's amazing ability to digest a ton of material and present it in an easy-to-understand summary, would be the section about the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenees and Sanhedrin (p81-83). First year Bible school students and small group leaders would find sections like these very useful, but as mentioned previously, the lack of citations leaves one with not much guidance for further reading. And when a statement like "there are at least a thousand prophecies in the bible, half of which have already been fulfilled," (p65) it is almost a crime not to provide references and more information about such a claim.

While Lasseigne toed the line of safety when declaring that he was unsure of who the author of the book of Hebrews was, he strangely affirmed that Solomon was the author of the book of Ecclesiastes (p64). His short points (and scholarly citations) in support of this substantive I felt were insufficient for such a bold claim.

Nevertheless, I felt that the concept of the book was actually quite brilliant - establishing all the whys before the whats. But it is a pity the second half - the survey/summary of each book of the bible - was too short to be of much use. Perhaps a better idea would have been to publish the two sections as separate books, and to elaborate further on the surveys/summaries. Weighing in at 300 pages, the book could also deter potential occasional-readers (people who not usually read) from picking it up.

I received this book from the Baker Publishing Group's Blogger Review Program for the purposes of providing an unbiased review. All views are my own.

View all my reviews