I haven’t done book reviews before on reubenland.com, and perhaps this doesn’t really count. It’s more of a recommendation.

Robert Alter’s “Art of biblical narrative” is a well written and very helpful book for modern readers of the old testament. His aim is to help people read OT biblical narratives with sensitivity to the artistry in their composition. His chapters on type-scene, repetition and knowledge were particularly good.

If you’re at college, I reckon it’s a “must read” if you want to enjoy OT narrative more, learn to read it and to preach it. If you’re an interested reader of the Bible in another situation the writing is not particularly technical and all translations are in english. (no hebrew knowledge required!). You’ll definitely get it, and get a lot out of it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the closing chapter:

…religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the Bible seriously rather than to enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the matter may well be that by learning to enjoy the biblical stories more fully as stories, we shall also come to see more clearly what they mean to tell us about God, man, and the perilously momentous realm of history

I’m a big fan of wordpress, and I know a number of you use it too…

so here are a few plugins which I think you might want to use.

1. Backup wordpress

If you are self-hosting your site (i.e. its not at wordpress.com etc) you should really get this going in case you suffer a crash or get hacked. Set it to back up weekly or similar. It can send the files to a gmail account.

2. Login lock-down

Add some protection against hackers guessing your password.

3. Google analytics plugin

If you like graphs and statistics, this is a lot more detailed than the built in stats. Also you can display them nicely in the dashboard using Analytics360

Which plugins do you recommend?

Not the whole OT, just the Pentateuch (Genesis – Deuteronomy) and the Deuteronomistic History (Deut/Josh – 2 Kings)…and even then just key sections I reckon.

What I imagine would be extremely useful is a 100 or so page reading guide to these two foundational sections of the OT. Something aimed at helping an interested reader discover the structure, themes, important issues and links to the NT.

Having studied them this year I feel like I have a good grasp now on the broad sweep of Israels foundational history and the theological reflection done upon it by the biblical writers.

I guess this idea may not seem overly inspiring to many at a first glance, perhaps even a bit boring? That’s exactly why I reckon a guide like this would be great. Understanding this part of God’s word (for me) has been far from boring. It’s great stuff! And I reckon others could find it to be so too.

Who knows, I might get to writing something myself. Want to help?

• Dolphins
• Meat grown in the lab

[Thanks Arthur for emailing the dolphin link!]