Five Important Books

I’ve been tagged by Nick Norelli on this five important books meme. I suppose my five are as follows:

1. N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God. This was one of the first books I read when I began studying the New Testament and it was invaluable.

2. Brant Pitre’s Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of Exile. Though this is a very recent read (just this year), it has provided clarity to issues that were previously unclear to me. Pitre’s book has all that is good about Wright’s thesis in the above book, but corrects the things that Wright didn’t have quite right.

3. Bart Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Though I disagree with a lot of Ehrman’s popular books, I really enjoyed this book and it made me really think about the history of the transmission of the NT. This book is probably what sparked my interest in textual criticism.

4. Mark Goodacre’s The Case Against Q. I was very fortunate to stumble across this book early in my studies. As I was just being introduced to the Synoptic Problem, I went hunting for books in our library. Dr. Goodacre’s book was there with its provocative title, so I read it. It was a vaccination against the wild theories that are espoused concerning Q.

5. Mike Aquilina’s The Fathers of the Church. Aquilina’s book was one of the books that introduced me to my new love: Patristics. His book is short enough to not seem daunting (vs. Drobner’s Introduction which is fairly big), but still provides great information about and readings from various fathers.

~ by jmcmanaway on June 18, 2009.