The Background to the Bible

I was a Teaching Assistant to Dr. John H. Walton at my time at Wheaton. He is a great professor and teacher as well as mentor. While I was at Wheaton, he made a big impression in the way I thought about scholarship and the church, and how to go about doing it. While I was working for him, he was making the finishing touches on a five volume commentary series published by Zondervan. The series is out now, and it looks beautiful! It has all kinds of wonderful pictures and is really good at dealing with the cultural context in which the Bible was written and what the people who originally heard the text would have thought about it.

We live in a very different world from the ancient Near East, and often we don't understand what the Old Testament is all about. This is exactly where this commentary will come into use. It helps to explain and show what the world of the Bible was really like. And with all the pictures in it, who could pass it up?

You should all buy a copy just for the beautiful pictures, but don't take my word for it, you can preview (for the next month) one of the books on Scribd. Here is the book of Daniel. Even if you don't really think you can slog through a commentary, if you have ever wondered what exactly I want to do, you should read the introductory essay by John Walton "Methodology: An Introductory Essay."

And if you need more of an incentive you should watch the following videos:



On a more serious note you should also watch this video:


So in summary, you need to watch the videos and then look through the commentary on Daniel in the series (once again found here) and then read the introductory essay on methodology.
(On page 539 there is a beautiful picture of the East India House inscription and I read portions of it this semester, and will read the rest of it next semester!)