Relevant, 2006, 191 pp., $11.99,
www.relevantbooks.com
This reviewer’s goal, dear reader, was to inspire you to read Jason Boyett’s Pocket Guide to the Bible in direct proportion to the degree that Boyett inspires you to read the Bible itself. Unfortunately, Boyett doesn’t do so until page 90, and then only in a footnote. So while Boyett is very clever with his words, they lack the substance needed to make Pocket Guide a useful tool, let alone an indispensable one.
The bulk of the book is taken up in discussing the events of each canonical book and listing biblical characters. Pocket Guide seems to be more interested in telling
readers what is in the Bible rather than helping them to read and understand the Bible for themselves.
Questions of literary genre and historical context — critical for understanding, let alone teaching the Bible — are glossed over if not completely ignored. Boyett does,
however, provide a very helpful history of the Bible’s development that will aid readers in understanding how the Bible came to be.
Bottom line: Pocket Guide shouldn’t compete with your iPod for real estate in the inner lining of your pants. Fee and Stuart’s How to Read the Bible Book by Book,
though not pocket size, provides much more useful information.
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Review by: PAUL BERRY, Writer, International Bible Society, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
