A Reading List for Maria
Maria asked if there was an existing list of books I have recommended. I have posted lists, but I am not sure they would help anyone get into their head what I have in my head. Not that they would want to. As I mentioned to Maria, I might get from an author a particular insight that is meaningful to me, which insight you might not get at all, even if you knew exactly what the author said that I gained insight from.
Many of the books foundational to me I barely remember, as they have either long been given away to friends or ministries or sold to buy new books. I give the authors credit if I happen recall them when I use their information. Other books meaningful to me are long out of print, were privately published, or of generations passed. I am primarily interested in theology, not Christian fluff stuff. To make up a list, I am not going to go through the boxes I have stored in the garage; just the books I keep in the house handy to refer to. Don't worry, though. God is fully capable to form in you exactly what he wants you to get from whatever resources you are led to. He really is a very capable teacher.
I am putting links onto a number of these books simply for reference sake: publisher info, cost, etc.. I get nothing from Bezos. I am sorry some of the books are no longer available in hardcover, and some of my most-loved videos have been taken down for copyright.
For me, it all started well before I had become a Christian Christian. Things happened in my last year of high school that made me even more of an introspective loner. I knew there was spiritual stuff out there: reports of ghosts and visitations, Edgar Cayce, Jean Dixon, Ruth Montgomery, Carlos Castaneda, Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, out of body experiences, Bob Dylan lyrics -- there was a whole world of stuff, spiritual stuff, going on. I virtually absorbed the Whole Earth Catalog in my hippie days.
Probably the most significant book for me in those days was The Teachers of Gurdjieff by Rafael Lefort. Possibly it was the idea that actual experience in the spiritual realm could be attained. I got on my horse and rode off in all directions.
I eventually wound up living in a pickup truck in the Ala Wai harbor in Honolulu (I didn't know living in a vehicle was illegal when I shipped my truck there), reading mystical and metaphysical books at night at the Ilikai and Hilton Hawaiian resorts, and practicing meditation during the days. During a meditation class at the metaphysical bookstore, I encountered what I thought to be a demon. My aunt at the Hilton Hawaiian Village (see, I had a reason to be there) at the same time had an encounter with Jesus. She told me, and I went with her. After Jesus literally, audibly spoke into my brain, I figured he must have also spoken to much bigger, better, more important men who must have written down what he has said. I set off to find more of his words.
God is a lot more economical in what he says than men are. I created many outlines and book reports in seminary, and almost invariably the book's verbiage could be boiled down to one or two God-given ideas simply stated. I've got hundreds of books kept for those one or two ideas from God remembered. And the papers I researched! I can recommend that you learn everything you can of the Christian doctrine of recapitulation from the Ante-Nicene Fathers and other works, but few people really want to read Irenaeus' arguments against heresies. It is really tough stuff to wrestle through. Yet recapitulation is everything Christianity IS. It is everything everything is. Maybe I ought to publish my term paper on it. Limited to three pages, it was the hardest paper I ever had to write, but by it I learned how to wrestle.
Of course you have Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, Complete and Unabridged with dictionaries of Hebrew and Greek words. I recommend the Compact Edition (paperback), as it doesn't need its own desk. Mine is a 1981 reprint from Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Make sure you get the one with the dictionaries. Vic Alexander told me that he finds the dictionaries almost useless. They might be good for getting the “color” of words, their "drift"-- general feel or intention, rather than locked-in exactness. See Douglas-Klotz, below.
In seminary, I much appreciated Ken Scott Latourette’s A History of the Christian Church, Vol. 1. It showed me how the church quickly moved away from Mark's and James' Mosaic Christianity. That might be all that you need to know. So also A History of Christian Thought, Vol. 1 by Justo L. González. These are pretty dry reading unless you are really into church history (I was) and the devolution of theology (I am). Especially interesting was my study of Gnosticism, which I think was more the cause of Christianity than the result of it. I am a theologian: I enjoy digging into this stuff.
Soon after beginning Melodyland School of Theology, I found Open Windows, Swinging Doors by Dr. Frank C. Laubach (1955, Glendale, CA: Regal Books Division, G/L Publications; see alternately Letters By A Modern Mystic, 1937/58, Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, which covers much of the same material). About that time, a pastor happened to read a passage from Laubach's Channels of Spiritual Power (1954, Fleming H. Revell) in one of his sermons, which set me off searching seven years (!) to find a copy for myself. Laubach’s Channels of Spiritual Power and You Are My Friends are among my most-prized possessions. I have ever since considered Frank C. Laubach to be my real pastor (hint: he and his friend Glenn Clark prayed and meditated in the Silence). I have just about everything written by and about Frank Laubach, and a good bit by Clark.
High on my list is Carl F. Rehnborg’s Jesus and the New Age of Faith (1955; published privately by the C. F. Rehnborg Literary Foundation, 5600 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park, California 90620). Rehnborg showed me how to see through modern "Christianity." It is his view of the kingdom of God I have adopted.
Jewish Meditation by Aryeh Kaplan. Best introductory how-to I know of. Pay attention especially to its WARNINGS.
You already know that I recommend everything from Neville Goddard -- his books, texts, and audios. I also recommend T. L. Osborn. Watch YouTube videos of T. L.’s evangelistic campaigns and crusades. Skip ahead to where he starts talking. Listen to his personal testimonies and his lectures. A big guy of faith. This is F. F. Bosworth read; this is Bosworth speaking.
Which reminds me of Smith Wigglesworth. It is worth it to just go ahead and get the biggest collection of his sermons you can find. I got all the little books, and then Roberts Liardon's collection. There are others. I also got Liardon's God's Generals, and books on Wigglesworth like The Secret of His Power. Wigglesworth and Osborn were brave men -- cast-iron eh, nerves, like the "Jesus" who gave himself according to Rehnborg's speculation. They believed, and then they did: “Only BELIEVE!” A pretty good recipe. I have books on missionaries like C. T. Studd, Goforth of China, and Hudson Taylor. Father Bede Griffiths gives us another great video. Unfortunately, they took off his best video due to copyright problem. Oh! I found this. Part of the Story I wanted you to hear.
I always push David A. Cooper's God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism. He gave me the idea of Ein Sof, and of That Greater Than Ein Sof. Cooper had a wonderful website with lots of stories and audios. I enjoy stories about the Baal Shem Tov. Books on Jewish mysticism are always interesting, but pretty deep if you don't understand the association between their symbols and esoteric realities.
You might notice a trend of skepticism toward Christianity in my list. Gerald Massey was among the chiefs of critics. His books and essays can be found on the Internet. He might possibly have been entirely a fraud, but he voiced what I thought were valid criticisms of the church and offered an alternative structure of Biblical interpretation.
On the other hand, Faith Strengthened, by Isaac ben Abraham Troki, presents an entirely logical Jewish criticism of "Christian" illogic and misinterpretation. I got it off the Internet. A bit massive for most people. Ben Abraham demonstrates how much of Christian doctrine is complete nonsense based on complete ignorance of Jewish thought and philosophy. It is based instead on other Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern religions.
Thomas Thompson’s The Mythic Past is worth a look. It is dense, but eye-opening. We have a history presented to us in the Bible, and the archaeological evidences just don't add up. It isn't that they are missing; it is just that something else was happening. The Biblical stories are illustrative STORIES; they are PICTURES that show relationships IN US. Authors often usurped real historical characters' names and histories and presented their own stories as the other guy's. Who was to know? It was good marketing. Applied to the Gospels, the stories are literal spiritually, but not historically.
Freke and Gandy’s The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess shed light on the people’s minds back then. These are two openly Pagan writers with an ax to grind with the church. Well, let them. As a student of their grind, I love their presentation. They suggest that Gnosticism existed well before the advent of Christianity, and that much has been lost of true Christianity due to the hostility of the church's unspiritual leaders toward it.
The best King James study bible I have found is the Companion Bible by Ethelbert Bullinger. Not that I have looked for anything else in the last twenty or thirty years. I have most of the other modern versions, too. The KJV has thousands of mistakes, BUT WE KNOW THEM ALL. As a Pentecostal, I have attended and watched and/or listened to countless preachers and lay workers cast out demons and heal the sick, and ALWAYS, invariably, it is the King James that is quoted as God's all-powerful, effectual Word. THAT is an endorsement! I often hear other versions used in preaching for clarification sake, but when it comes to "Thus sayeth the Lord!" it is always, always the KJV. It's like we can't use any other version and still feel ourselves to be serious. I do not always agree with Bullinger, especially with his ultra-dispensationalism. A product of the Reformation, he is too radical and extreme. There are dispensations, but not like he cuts them up. His is still the best KJV study bible, though, in my opinion. You start reading some little side-note, and he'll send you off looking up other references and appendixes for hours.
The English translations of the Ancient Aramaic Bible by Victor Alexander are what I read to get a better idiomatic sense of what was really said in the ANCIENT Bible. But you have to cut Vic some slack: he has put all these out by himself as a labor of love, and they are not the most polished of productions. There are typos, grammatical errors, missing notes, all sorts of imponderables, and yet things come out that just make you drop to your knees and bow to God in thanks for the revelation. His Old Testament Scriptures: From the Ancient Aramaic Language are just those he has translated, NOT the whole Old Testament. Vic has had some serious health issues, and some of the medicines affected him adversely. He is back on his feet again, but I don't think he can put his website back on the Internet or continue with his translation work unless someone can SUPPORT him. I still think he should get the Nobel Prize.
During my last year of seminary (1999 - I began in 1975 - slow learner), I found The Worship of the Dead, or the origin and nature of Pagan idolatry and its bearing upon the early history of Egypt and Babylonia by Col. J. Garnier. If you are crazy about ancient religions and history and how people and religions spread after the flood, you are going to LOVE this. I also do not agree always with Garnier, but this is a massive, massive and involved work. There is just SO MUCH to consider. It is online, as is everything nowadays, but please order, if you do, Kessinger Publishing's edition (they gave me copies when I pointed out a serious and potentially costly error they had made). Much like this book is George Stanley Farber's The Origin of Pagan Idolatry ascertained from historical testimony and circumstantial evidence (in three volumes). These old guys were amazing!
Worthy is the Lamb by Dr. Ray Summers is one of my favorite spines. It was a five-dollar closeout at a secular bookstore. The first half is dense, scholarly, theological introductory discussion. The second half is commentary on the text; still scholarly, but easier to understand. Less wrestling. Ray works out the Book of Revelation’s one point: Worthy. Is. The. Lamb.
I have recently lifted up Merlin Carother's Prison to Praise and Power In Praise. Still very highly recommended. PDF
Small but salient is The Apostolic Preaching and Its Development by C.H. Dodd. My copy is as underlined and annotated as my Jesus and the New Age of Faith. I'd recommend Dodd's The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, but you have to know enough Greek and Hebrew to understand it -- Dodd doesn't translate. In Apostolic Preaching, Dodd notes that John and Paul came to realize that salvation all happens here, now, inside. It's not a future event.
Something I picked up in a speed-reading class was Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. I cannot imagine Neville not having it. It is psychological therapy. I happened to look through some of the reviews -- GET THE OLD COPY. "New and Improved" means ruined, in my opinion. I got my 1960 edition for a dollar from the used bookstore's clearance bin.
You know what I’d call having to watch A Christmas Carol 365 days in a row? A perfect year. I love the ones with Alistair Sims and Reginald Owens. And after each viewing I say, “Can I watch it again?”
They Found the Secret, by V. Raymond Edman.
God's Transmitters, and Hearing Heart, by Hannah Hurnard
I have several books by George Eldon Ladd. He is required reading in seminaries. The Gospel of the Kingdom is probably his most popular "light" study. In it, he explains how our definition of 'kingdom' is nothing like the biblical meaning of kingdom. We see an expanse of land and/or people ruled over by a sovereign. The ancients saw the qualities and attributes of the sovereign that made him king; those were his king-dom. So "Jesus Christ is returning to establish a kingdom among his saints." In the archaic sense, that means something quite different from what any modern church hears. Boy, are they in for a surprise.
The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament by Norman Snaith, and Synonyms of the Old Testament by Robert Girdlestone were invaluable to my formation years ago. What the ancients meant by what they said -- the ideas they had -- was so very different from what we are told they meant and thought. I have never heard THEIR thought in any church. Something to keep in mind is that the ancients' associations in a word were different than our associations. Neil Douglas-Klotz makes this clear, sort of, in The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus. That and Rocco A. Errico's Setting a Trap for God remind us that the breadth of what the ancients heard was not as limited and precise as the Greek theologists would have us believe. They split linguistic hairs in a field that has deep breadth of meaning and associations, and they do it imposing a language the authors knew, but did not use. Their. Experience. Was. In. Aramaic.
Sometime ago I came across the word Therapeutae. That's its plural. I think it was in The Worship of the Dead, but maybe not. Looking into it, it opened a whole new world of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy I had little knowledge of. In my young hippie days I had read a lot about Zen Buddhism and some Hindu sects, but what was said about them had zero -- nothing -- to do with their adherents’ actual views. Through this investigation I was introduced to Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna, Ashoka and the missionary project which might have produced Marcus, the author of the Gospel of Mark and possibly even the Book of John. That's a mouthful. Grasp the Christian Lindtner Theory. Many suppose that Jesus in his undocumented years went to India to study Buddhism. I think not. I think it was simply a Buddhist who learned true, Mosaic Judaism and presented a Jewish-refined Buddhism as the truth he then saw, using Gautama Buddha as Judaism's anointed teacher, Jesus Christ: God manifest.
Be that as it may, Buddhism has a host of bugs in it. I am sure Marcus thanked God for getting his head straightened out beyond that of both his Jewish and Buddhist peers. He turned the world upside down! Oddly, perhaps, I get a better understanding of what Buddhists actually believe and where they probably are wrong from Yu-lan Fung's A History of Chinese Philosophy (1952; Princeton: Princeton University Press; translated by Derk Bodde). Chinese argument and apology is far superior to Western theology, for they actually discern what each group or philosopher truly MEANS by what they say, and interact with issues of reality instead of their fantasies. At 1300 pages, you have to look for what you are interested in and read what you want. It isn't light reading. Married to a Chinese for 39 years and having lived there - just got back from a visit - I find A History of Chinese Philosophy interesting and enlightening culturally and theologically.
I keep hearing "Sidlow Baxter." I wanted to list just the books I keep in the house I think have informed me in the weird mental state I am theologically. I wasn't going to include survey type books. J. Sidlow Baxter's Explore the Book is a survey of the entire Bible. I have had unnumbered survey classes and books and bible commentaries. Explore the Book is more explanatory than most, and less academic. Baxter presents outlines of THOUGHT, IMAGERY, AND VALUE, and takes nearly 1800 pages to do it. If you don't know what's in the Bible, Baxter's your guy.
Many of the books foundational to me I barely remember, as they have either long been given away to friends or ministries or sold to buy new books. I give the authors credit if I happen recall them when I use their information. Other books meaningful to me are long out of print, were privately published, or of generations passed. I am primarily interested in theology, not Christian fluff stuff. To make up a list, I am not going to go through the boxes I have stored in the garage; just the books I keep in the house handy to refer to. Don't worry, though. God is fully capable to form in you exactly what he wants you to get from whatever resources you are led to. He really is a very capable teacher.
I am putting links onto a number of these books simply for reference sake: publisher info, cost, etc.. I get nothing from Bezos. I am sorry some of the books are no longer available in hardcover, and some of my most-loved videos have been taken down for copyright.
For me, it all started well before I had become a Christian Christian. Things happened in my last year of high school that made me even more of an introspective loner. I knew there was spiritual stuff out there: reports of ghosts and visitations, Edgar Cayce, Jean Dixon, Ruth Montgomery, Carlos Castaneda, Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, out of body experiences, Bob Dylan lyrics -- there was a whole world of stuff, spiritual stuff, going on. I virtually absorbed the Whole Earth Catalog in my hippie days.
Probably the most significant book for me in those days was The Teachers of Gurdjieff by Rafael Lefort. Possibly it was the idea that actual experience in the spiritual realm could be attained. I got on my horse and rode off in all directions.
I eventually wound up living in a pickup truck in the Ala Wai harbor in Honolulu (I didn't know living in a vehicle was illegal when I shipped my truck there), reading mystical and metaphysical books at night at the Ilikai and Hilton Hawaiian resorts, and practicing meditation during the days. During a meditation class at the metaphysical bookstore, I encountered what I thought to be a demon. My aunt at the Hilton Hawaiian Village (see, I had a reason to be there) at the same time had an encounter with Jesus. She told me, and I went with her. After Jesus literally, audibly spoke into my brain, I figured he must have also spoken to much bigger, better, more important men who must have written down what he has said. I set off to find more of his words.
God is a lot more economical in what he says than men are. I created many outlines and book reports in seminary, and almost invariably the book's verbiage could be boiled down to one or two God-given ideas simply stated. I've got hundreds of books kept for those one or two ideas from God remembered. And the papers I researched! I can recommend that you learn everything you can of the Christian doctrine of recapitulation from the Ante-Nicene Fathers and other works, but few people really want to read Irenaeus' arguments against heresies. It is really tough stuff to wrestle through. Yet recapitulation is everything Christianity IS. It is everything everything is. Maybe I ought to publish my term paper on it. Limited to three pages, it was the hardest paper I ever had to write, but by it I learned how to wrestle.
Of course you have Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, Complete and Unabridged with dictionaries of Hebrew and Greek words. I recommend the Compact Edition (paperback), as it doesn't need its own desk. Mine is a 1981 reprint from Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Make sure you get the one with the dictionaries. Vic Alexander told me that he finds the dictionaries almost useless. They might be good for getting the “color” of words, their "drift"-- general feel or intention, rather than locked-in exactness. See Douglas-Klotz, below.
In seminary, I much appreciated Ken Scott Latourette’s A History of the Christian Church, Vol. 1. It showed me how the church quickly moved away from Mark's and James' Mosaic Christianity. That might be all that you need to know. So also A History of Christian Thought, Vol. 1 by Justo L. González. These are pretty dry reading unless you are really into church history (I was) and the devolution of theology (I am). Especially interesting was my study of Gnosticism, which I think was more the cause of Christianity than the result of it. I am a theologian: I enjoy digging into this stuff.
Soon after beginning Melodyland School of Theology, I found Open Windows, Swinging Doors by Dr. Frank C. Laubach (1955, Glendale, CA: Regal Books Division, G/L Publications; see alternately Letters By A Modern Mystic, 1937/58, Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, which covers much of the same material). About that time, a pastor happened to read a passage from Laubach's Channels of Spiritual Power (1954, Fleming H. Revell) in one of his sermons, which set me off searching seven years (!) to find a copy for myself. Laubach’s Channels of Spiritual Power and You Are My Friends are among my most-prized possessions. I have ever since considered Frank C. Laubach to be my real pastor (hint: he and his friend Glenn Clark prayed and meditated in the Silence). I have just about everything written by and about Frank Laubach, and a good bit by Clark.
High on my list is Carl F. Rehnborg’s Jesus and the New Age of Faith (1955; published privately by the C. F. Rehnborg Literary Foundation, 5600 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park, California 90620). Rehnborg showed me how to see through modern "Christianity." It is his view of the kingdom of God I have adopted.
Jewish Meditation by Aryeh Kaplan. Best introductory how-to I know of. Pay attention especially to its WARNINGS.
You already know that I recommend everything from Neville Goddard -- his books, texts, and audios. I also recommend T. L. Osborn. Watch YouTube videos of T. L.’s evangelistic campaigns and crusades. Skip ahead to where he starts talking. Listen to his personal testimonies and his lectures. A big guy of faith. This is F. F. Bosworth read; this is Bosworth speaking.
Which reminds me of Smith Wigglesworth. It is worth it to just go ahead and get the biggest collection of his sermons you can find. I got all the little books, and then Roberts Liardon's collection. There are others. I also got Liardon's God's Generals, and books on Wigglesworth like The Secret of His Power. Wigglesworth and Osborn were brave men -- cast-iron eh, nerves, like the "Jesus" who gave himself according to Rehnborg's speculation. They believed, and then they did: “Only BELIEVE!” A pretty good recipe. I have books on missionaries like C. T. Studd, Goforth of China, and Hudson Taylor. Father Bede Griffiths gives us another great video. Unfortunately, they took off his best video due to copyright problem. Oh! I found this. Part of the Story I wanted you to hear.
I always push David A. Cooper's God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism. He gave me the idea of Ein Sof, and of That Greater Than Ein Sof. Cooper had a wonderful website with lots of stories and audios. I enjoy stories about the Baal Shem Tov. Books on Jewish mysticism are always interesting, but pretty deep if you don't understand the association between their symbols and esoteric realities.
You might notice a trend of skepticism toward Christianity in my list. Gerald Massey was among the chiefs of critics. His books and essays can be found on the Internet. He might possibly have been entirely a fraud, but he voiced what I thought were valid criticisms of the church and offered an alternative structure of Biblical interpretation.
On the other hand, Faith Strengthened, by Isaac ben Abraham Troki, presents an entirely logical Jewish criticism of "Christian" illogic and misinterpretation. I got it off the Internet. A bit massive for most people. Ben Abraham demonstrates how much of Christian doctrine is complete nonsense based on complete ignorance of Jewish thought and philosophy. It is based instead on other Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern religions.
Thomas Thompson’s The Mythic Past is worth a look. It is dense, but eye-opening. We have a history presented to us in the Bible, and the archaeological evidences just don't add up. It isn't that they are missing; it is just that something else was happening. The Biblical stories are illustrative STORIES; they are PICTURES that show relationships IN US. Authors often usurped real historical characters' names and histories and presented their own stories as the other guy's. Who was to know? It was good marketing. Applied to the Gospels, the stories are literal spiritually, but not historically.
Freke and Gandy’s The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess shed light on the people’s minds back then. These are two openly Pagan writers with an ax to grind with the church. Well, let them. As a student of their grind, I love their presentation. They suggest that Gnosticism existed well before the advent of Christianity, and that much has been lost of true Christianity due to the hostility of the church's unspiritual leaders toward it.
The best King James study bible I have found is the Companion Bible by Ethelbert Bullinger. Not that I have looked for anything else in the last twenty or thirty years. I have most of the other modern versions, too. The KJV has thousands of mistakes, BUT WE KNOW THEM ALL. As a Pentecostal, I have attended and watched and/or listened to countless preachers and lay workers cast out demons and heal the sick, and ALWAYS, invariably, it is the King James that is quoted as God's all-powerful, effectual Word. THAT is an endorsement! I often hear other versions used in preaching for clarification sake, but when it comes to "Thus sayeth the Lord!" it is always, always the KJV. It's like we can't use any other version and still feel ourselves to be serious. I do not always agree with Bullinger, especially with his ultra-dispensationalism. A product of the Reformation, he is too radical and extreme. There are dispensations, but not like he cuts them up. His is still the best KJV study bible, though, in my opinion. You start reading some little side-note, and he'll send you off looking up other references and appendixes for hours.
The English translations of the Ancient Aramaic Bible by Victor Alexander are what I read to get a better idiomatic sense of what was really said in the ANCIENT Bible. But you have to cut Vic some slack: he has put all these out by himself as a labor of love, and they are not the most polished of productions. There are typos, grammatical errors, missing notes, all sorts of imponderables, and yet things come out that just make you drop to your knees and bow to God in thanks for the revelation. His Old Testament Scriptures: From the Ancient Aramaic Language are just those he has translated, NOT the whole Old Testament. Vic has had some serious health issues, and some of the medicines affected him adversely. He is back on his feet again, but I don't think he can put his website back on the Internet or continue with his translation work unless someone can SUPPORT him. I still think he should get the Nobel Prize.
During my last year of seminary (1999 - I began in 1975 - slow learner), I found The Worship of the Dead, or the origin and nature of Pagan idolatry and its bearing upon the early history of Egypt and Babylonia by Col. J. Garnier. If you are crazy about ancient religions and history and how people and religions spread after the flood, you are going to LOVE this. I also do not agree always with Garnier, but this is a massive, massive and involved work. There is just SO MUCH to consider. It is online, as is everything nowadays, but please order, if you do, Kessinger Publishing's edition (they gave me copies when I pointed out a serious and potentially costly error they had made). Much like this book is George Stanley Farber's The Origin of Pagan Idolatry ascertained from historical testimony and circumstantial evidence (in three volumes). These old guys were amazing!
Worthy is the Lamb by Dr. Ray Summers is one of my favorite spines. It was a five-dollar closeout at a secular bookstore. The first half is dense, scholarly, theological introductory discussion. The second half is commentary on the text; still scholarly, but easier to understand. Less wrestling. Ray works out the Book of Revelation’s one point: Worthy. Is. The. Lamb.
I have recently lifted up Merlin Carother's Prison to Praise and Power In Praise. Still very highly recommended. PDF
Small but salient is The Apostolic Preaching and Its Development by C.H. Dodd. My copy is as underlined and annotated as my Jesus and the New Age of Faith. I'd recommend Dodd's The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, but you have to know enough Greek and Hebrew to understand it -- Dodd doesn't translate. In Apostolic Preaching, Dodd notes that John and Paul came to realize that salvation all happens here, now, inside. It's not a future event.
Something I picked up in a speed-reading class was Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. I cannot imagine Neville not having it. It is psychological therapy. I happened to look through some of the reviews -- GET THE OLD COPY. "New and Improved" means ruined, in my opinion. I got my 1960 edition for a dollar from the used bookstore's clearance bin.
You know what I’d call having to watch A Christmas Carol 365 days in a row? A perfect year. I love the ones with Alistair Sims and Reginald Owens. And after each viewing I say, “Can I watch it again?”
They Found the Secret, by V. Raymond Edman.
God's Transmitters, and Hearing Heart, by Hannah Hurnard
I have several books by George Eldon Ladd. He is required reading in seminaries. The Gospel of the Kingdom is probably his most popular "light" study. In it, he explains how our definition of 'kingdom' is nothing like the biblical meaning of kingdom. We see an expanse of land and/or people ruled over by a sovereign. The ancients saw the qualities and attributes of the sovereign that made him king; those were his king-dom. So "Jesus Christ is returning to establish a kingdom among his saints." In the archaic sense, that means something quite different from what any modern church hears. Boy, are they in for a surprise.
The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament by Norman Snaith, and Synonyms of the Old Testament by Robert Girdlestone were invaluable to my formation years ago. What the ancients meant by what they said -- the ideas they had -- was so very different from what we are told they meant and thought. I have never heard THEIR thought in any church. Something to keep in mind is that the ancients' associations in a word were different than our associations. Neil Douglas-Klotz makes this clear, sort of, in The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus. That and Rocco A. Errico's Setting a Trap for God remind us that the breadth of what the ancients heard was not as limited and precise as the Greek theologists would have us believe. They split linguistic hairs in a field that has deep breadth of meaning and associations, and they do it imposing a language the authors knew, but did not use. Their. Experience. Was. In. Aramaic.
Sometime ago I came across the word Therapeutae. That's its plural. I think it was in The Worship of the Dead, but maybe not. Looking into it, it opened a whole new world of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy I had little knowledge of. In my young hippie days I had read a lot about Zen Buddhism and some Hindu sects, but what was said about them had zero -- nothing -- to do with their adherents’ actual views. Through this investigation I was introduced to Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna, Ashoka and the missionary project which might have produced Marcus, the author of the Gospel of Mark and possibly even the Book of John. That's a mouthful. Grasp the Christian Lindtner Theory. Many suppose that Jesus in his undocumented years went to India to study Buddhism. I think not. I think it was simply a Buddhist who learned true, Mosaic Judaism and presented a Jewish-refined Buddhism as the truth he then saw, using Gautama Buddha as Judaism's anointed teacher, Jesus Christ: God manifest.
Be that as it may, Buddhism has a host of bugs in it. I am sure Marcus thanked God for getting his head straightened out beyond that of both his Jewish and Buddhist peers. He turned the world upside down! Oddly, perhaps, I get a better understanding of what Buddhists actually believe and where they probably are wrong from Yu-lan Fung's A History of Chinese Philosophy (1952; Princeton: Princeton University Press; translated by Derk Bodde). Chinese argument and apology is far superior to Western theology, for they actually discern what each group or philosopher truly MEANS by what they say, and interact with issues of reality instead of their fantasies. At 1300 pages, you have to look for what you are interested in and read what you want. It isn't light reading. Married to a Chinese for 39 years and having lived there - just got back from a visit - I find A History of Chinese Philosophy interesting and enlightening culturally and theologically.
I keep hearing "Sidlow Baxter." I wanted to list just the books I keep in the house I think have informed me in the weird mental state I am theologically. I wasn't going to include survey type books. J. Sidlow Baxter's Explore the Book is a survey of the entire Bible. I have had unnumbered survey classes and books and bible commentaries. Explore the Book is more explanatory than most, and less academic. Baxter presents outlines of THOUGHT, IMAGERY, AND VALUE, and takes nearly 1800 pages to do it. If you don't know what's in the Bible, Baxter's your guy.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
2:31 AM
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