Book Review: Journey to God’s Word

I just finished a fascinating read: ‘Journey to God’s Word: Your Guide to Understanding and Applying the Bible’ by J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, published by Zondervan in 2008. I purchased this through a bookstore based on Internet in preparation for a theology course I am just starting out on. It’s a slim volume packed with (for me) new ideas.

I have become familiar with a good deal of the Bible during my quarter-century as a Christian, but more as a casual friend than the family member God wants us to be: I happen to have been skimming, picking and choosing, taking the fruit within easy reach, and guilty of the disadvantages that follow familiarity.

Duvall and Hays teach the reader to follow an ‘interpretative journey’ when studying the Bible, forensically examining God’s Word down to individual written words. It’s quite a challenge! The authors propose a ‘journey’ of four points in any passage (five in the New Testament) when interpreting any passage of Scripture, taking into account the type of writing/literature we are looking at (for example: is it a piece of poetry , a letter, a narrative, a gospel?), as well as its historical and cultural context. First, what did the writing mean to the people to/for whom it was written? then recognizing that there is a difference between those people and times and our own and trying to establish what those differences are (the authors call this a ‘river’ of differences); third, to cross the river use a ‘principal bridge’ – using the theological principle of the text, what about God applies to both sides of the river; and finally apply that principle to our own time and situation. In the study of the Old Testament a fifth step is inserted after crossing the bridge: to ask how the teaching of the New Testament could modify or qualify that of the Old.

The book can be used as a study guide and contains group discussion questions and written exercises that encourage the reader to apply the techniques taught. I found the layout easy to follow, parsing the ‘careful reading’ process from the sentence structure (“Work hard! Dig deep! The party awaits!”) to the context of a particular passage within surrounding passages, chapter, book, testament and word. The authors discuss the different translations that are available and the effect that choice can have on our understanding (they suggest that one uses more than one ‘version’ when studying the Word, as well as suggesting the use of commentaries and manuals/dictionaries throughout). throughout the ‘interpretative journey’.

The book focuses on ‘author’s intent’ rather than ‘reader response’ as the correct approach to the Bible: the writer (God) determines what the Word means, not the reader (in which case we can make say what we want to hear). instead of what God is telling us). With this in mind, the authors take us through a series of chapters describing key parts of the Bible through the tool of their suggested ‘interpretative journey’. We are encouraged to look at the New Testament letters as windows into the ‘struggles and victories of the early church’, as well as being personal instructional messages between friends and between shepherds and their flocks. As we read the gospels, we are told that ‘we must reflect on how to apply its message to our lives’. Jesus is the central figure throughout, as this book covers Acts and Revelation, ending with chapters covering the interpretation of the Law, the Psalms, and the Old Testament Prophets.

I really enjoyed and was really challenged by the approach outlined in this little book, and I look forward to applying the principles when I begin a formal course of theological study.