How to Study the Bible
One of the things that I’ve noticed in some “Orthodox literature” is that it seems to assume one of two things (or both): first, the readers are “Bible savvy ex-protestants” and second, that the readers are more interested in patristics and canons than the Bible. From the email we get from our listeners, there is a whole middle ground of Orthodox Christians who didn’t graduate from a Protestant seminary, attend Sunday School for 12 years and remember it all, can’t quote the Bible in two languages and would like to know what people mean by phrases like “the Pentateuch, the Minor Prophets, the Pastoral Epistles”, exactly what is the difference between the “Old Testament” and “New Testament”, and more importantly, what is in them. Unfortunately I’ve not found a good, simple and relatively complete introduction to the entire Bible for Orthodox Christians…until now.
Fr. John Peck has written “Called to Serve”, a short, very readable, very informative and non-scholarly (in the best sense of that word) introduction to the Bible from an Orthodox perspective. If you have always wanted to begin to study the Bible but have no idea where to start, if you are home schooling and are looking for a curriculum for an overview of the Bible for your kids, if you are a Bible study leader in a parish that want a good introduction to the Bible for an adult class or a teen group, this is your book. For those who want to begin to read and understand the Bible from an Orthodox perspective, “Called to Serve” will be an excellent companion to the long awaited Orthodox Study Bible (Old and New Testament) that will be released by Conciliar Press in February 2008.
Click this: Called to Serve for the book.
Click this: Called to Serve, Leader’s Edition for the teacher’s manual.
At the website there are sample pages from both books you can look at. While you are at it check out some of Fr. John’s other titles, especially his book on the Divine Liturgy.
Enjoy!
-Steve