Tag: contemporary biblical research

2024 Year in Review

2024 Year in Review

Posted on by Jaymie

2024 was a busy reading year, but I was pleased to see in the end that my top 10 were a nice mix of books. (You can read past Year in Review posts here.)

I want to remember that 2024 was the year I discovered Lucy Score – both the Riley Thorn series and the Knockemout series were fantastic and made for fun vacation reading for the year. 2024 was also the year I discovered John Walton’s books on scripture which led to the Bible for Normal People podcast, more books by Pete Enns, and other books on Biblical studies. When I think of 2024, these are some of the things I think of.

In my top ten, there’s one picture book, two middle grade books, and one nonfiction adult book to accompany the usual adult fiction. As an honorable mention to the top ten, I would list Dating and Dragons by Kristy Boyce as my favorite YA read from 2024, since there’s no YA option in the top ten. This is a companion book to Dungeons and Drama. I will have a full review of Dating and Dragons later this month.

Here are my top 10 favorite books from 2024:

10. The Frindle Files – This sequel to the beloved Frindle, and the last book written by the author, was everything I hoped it would be. You can read my full review here.

 

 

 

9. The Imposter – We lived this story of having a second beloved critter in case of an unfixable loss, so I hoped this would be cute and capture that experience from when my son was small. And this exceeded my expectations. This is the only picture book to make the list this year. You can read my full review here.

 

 

8. Big Witch Energy – I have thoroughly enjoyed both of the books so far in the Starfall Point series about a trio of “witches” with ghostly powers, but this book has been my favorite because of the teen characters who were an absolute treat. You can read my full review here.

 

 

 

7. No One Leaves the Castle – I have loved Christopher Healy’s middle grade novels since I first read The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. You will be able to read my full review of this delight later this month.

 

 

 

6. Wisdom for Faithful Reading – 2024 was a great nonfiction year for me. I still read them SOOOOO slowly, but the quality has been top notch. And this book really kicked off a year of memorable study and learning. You can read my full review here.

 

 

 

5, The Rom-Commers – Another Katherine Center book makes my Year in Review list – The Bodyguard made the list in 2022. You can read my full review of the 2024 entry here.

 

 

 

4. The Corpse in the Closet – The Riley Thorn series was EVERYTHING I needed this year from my reading – funny, flirty, and clever. I loved the characters and the mysteries in this paranormal romance/mystery series, and this book (second in the series) has been my favorite. You can read my full review here.

 

 

3. Apprentice to the Villain – Book 1 in this delightful series, Assistant to the Villain, was at the top of my 2023 favorites list. For good reason. This series is a delight. I didn’t post a full review of book 2, but I loved it just as much as book 1. I can’t wait for book 3 which will release later this year!

 

 

2. Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books – This was the surprise of my reading year in 2024. I saw this in the bookstore and found the premise intriguing, but not enough to pay full price for a hardcover book. So I picked this up from the library – and was stunned by how fantastic this was. I immediately shelled out the money for my own copy because I will definitely read this one again. There are several content warnings on this one, so check out my full review here, but you won’t want to miss this one.

 

 

1. The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year – And the best of the best. I tried to describe in my full review how reading this felt in my body – all the ways I knew this book was special and would definitely be in my top 10 for the year. I don’t know that I did it justice. But this book was perfection for me – the humor and banter, the swoony romance, the book-related and writing-related content, and the top notch mystery. I re-read this before Christmas, and it was just as perfect as the first time I read it. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

 

 

And those are my top 10 favorites for 2024! What did you read – and love – in 2024?

REVIEW: The State of Old Testament Studies by HH Hardy II and M. Daniel Carroll

REVIEW: The State of Old Testament Studies by HH Hardy II and M. Daniel Carroll

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Baker Academic in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

The editors of this book assert that an earlier exploration of Old Testament scholarship, The Face of Old Testament Studies, published 25 years ago, while still valuable, is missing some of the more recent developments in Old Testament studies – new questions being asked, new topics and new research agendas, even new sub-disciplines that didn’t exist at the start of the millennium! So a new resource was necessary. And this one also offers suggestions of still more future research that could be done.

There are three sections of the book, and, honestly, section one was completely out of my lane. This section explores archaeological finds and other contexts outside my experience. Section two, which dives into questions of cannon and the actual texts from the Old Testament, was a much better fit, and I really enjoyed it. Section three tackles topics like ecotheology, OT ethics, the Ten Commandments, gender and sexuality, etc., which was also fascinating.

This felt harder to connect with than the Pauline Studies book in this series that I reviewed earlier this year. The content was still fascinating! But it felt over my head more times than not. While I am by no means giving up on squeezing everything I can learn out of this, I would recommend it highly for seminaries, professors, researchers, and students. Casual readers of Biblical scholarship (like me) might veer toward deep dive commentaries on the texts themselves instead if this feels like too much. But for a broad consideration of the field, including new and developing research, this feels like an excellent resource. I have recommended this to my colleagues at the seminary where I work.

Rating: ♥♥♥♥*

*♥♥♥♥ = Great! Might re-read.

REVIEW: The Mary We Forgot by Jennifer Powell McNutt

REVIEW: The Mary We Forgot by Jennifer Powell McNutt

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Brazos Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

Mary Magdalene is known in scripture for being healed from multiple demons by Jesus and also for being one of the first witnesses of the risen Christ. But there are misunderstandings of her as well. Dr. Powell McNutt is determined to clear up these misunderstandings and present a compelling portrait of this disciple of Jesus and apostle of the early Church.

This book:

  • Addresses the “surprises” of the Bible – Peter and John being called in front of the High Priest in Acts, Jesus as a surprise out of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene – or any woman – mentioned in Scripture.
  • Extensively covers the conflation of Marys (Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene) with the woman in Luke 7 which is challenged with multiple sources and logical rationales. And where the Luke 7 woman is distinguished from Mary Magdalene, the woman is honored by the author (as she is by Jesus in the text). I liked that this honored many of the women of the New Testament, not just Mary although she was the focus.
  • Refers to the Gospel of Mary Magdalene as a commentary on the time of its writing.
  • Addresses Mary’s demon possession as well as her inclusion with Jesus’s ministry and followers along with other women healed by Jesus and named by Luke – patronesses of Jesus’s ministry.

Overall I liked this – the writing is conversational and easy to follow. The author sprinkles in some personal stories to tie some of her exploration areas together. And I found the conflation section fascinating, although it seemed to go on for a long time. I think researchers, historians, and students will love the deep dive, but for a newbie like me, it felt like selling past the close. Super detailed proof and examples of how past scholars and historians have blotted out Mary’s role, identity, and place in the followers of Jesus will be fantastic for other scholars, but the point was made sufficiently for me pretty quickly.

The book is also written with the full view of history interjected regularly which may be a distraction for less-informed readers. The book doesn’t necessarily move in a straightforward way from from left to right so to speak. It felt at times like re-reading a favorite series where you read book 3 in light of what you know is coming in book 6. But for those exposed to this material for the first time – like me – those interjections of what is to come may be jarring. This is one of the ways I felt like I am  not the intended audience for this book. My PhD-level colleagues at a seminary would have a lot more context for the material in this book. If this is used in an academic setting, students may need more historical context as well for the Church’s response to Mary.

My only real complaint would be that in my review copy, the endnotes aren’t linked which is frustrating for the reader. Hopefully this will be fixed in the official e-book.

I can recommend this to scholars, researchers, and seminarians. I think it would be a supremely readable textbook for students. More casual readers like me can get a lot out of this, too. This will forever impact my understanding of Mary and her presence in the gospels!

Rating: ♥♥♥♥*

*♥♥♥♥ – Great! Might re-read.

REVIEW: The State of Pauline Studies edited by Nijay Gupta, et al

REVIEW: The State of Pauline Studies edited by Nijay Gupta, et al

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Baker Academic in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

A few years ago, Baker Academic released The State of New Testament Studies, and the contributors felt like they couldn’t devote as much space to Paul as they needed. So this book was developed. It includes chapters on Paul and specific areas of focus – gender, Judaism, the Spirit, etc. – as well as chapters on each of Paul’s letters. The book exists to highlight recent research, study, theories, and debates. Each chapter is essentially a literature review of recent research – and it’s brilliant! This is a deep, heavily researched exploration.

Professors, researchers, students, and practitioners could use this as a one-stop starting place to dig into the contemporary world of Biblical scholarship, specifically around Paul. The content can spin readers off to numerous resources to dig deeper. Each article/essay is heavily end-noted.

As an example, the chapter on Romans is written by Dr. Jennifer Strawbridge, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Oxford. The chapter covers topics like justification, Junia and Phoebe, post-colonial readings of Romans, ecological interpretation, queer approaches to Romans, and disability studies.

This could be a fascinating textbook for New Testament courses as well as a stellar resource for students and researchers. I would highly recommend the addition of this to university libraries. And practitioners/pastors could get a lot out of having this in their libraries. Again – this is a STARTING place – far more reading and follow up work would come after reading this. I don’t know that someone preaching on a passage in Romans, for example, would use Strawbridge’s chapter alone and feel they did their due diligence in examining current thinking on Romans. Professors, especially those developing or updating a course on Paul’s work, would be well-served by this resource, again as a starting point to include contemporary research.

Also available from Baker is The State of New Testament Studies (already available) and The State of Old Testament Studies (releasing in November).

As a non-academic reader, I felt clearly that I was not the intended audience for this book. But I was captivated by it anyway. I wanted to follow every end-noted rabbit trail to further reading on a variety of topics. The voice of the introduction is great! As a non-seminarian, I had to look up three words/concepts in the intro alone. Have your phone handy to look up terms you might not know. But anyone who is fascinated by Biblical study will find something to dig into here. My only “complaint” is that the end notes (at least in my review copy) weren’t separated by chapter/article which would have made using them a lot easier.

Rating: ♥♥♥♥½*

♥♥♥♥½ = I loved it! Would re-read.