Review of How to Read the Bible by Steven L McKenzie
In the area of canonically intended recipients, McKenzie is quick to caution readers about the need to understand the Bible first by exegesis of the biblical authors’ own intent and what kinds of texts they thought they were writing and how they might have been. understood by those intended audiences.
Outside of traditional auspices, ‘expected audiences’ are an interesting admission; indeed, if one considers the particular area and constituency, turnout would be of limited, if any, modern importance. This advice leads us to ask: if it was not a modern intention, then who was the Bible intended for? Inadvertently, the title of the author’s book becomes meaningless, its importance is misleading, and the modern audience is clearly out of sync with the content of his book.
McKenzie’s classmates write glowing keys praising this Hebrew Bible professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. A renowned scholar, according to the cover information provided and a brief bibliography, the professor earns many accolades as a true scholar. Or is his work a mere reflection of traditional grind with a bit of denominational fervour?
Author McKenzie considers it ridiculous that Jonah would resist his God and travel to Tarshish on the coast of Spain. Contrary to its geographical misapplication, Tarshish existed as a municipality both in Spain’s western Mediterranean and near the eastern Mediterranean coast; obviously the author wrongly assumes that Jonah will embark for Spain rather than the biblically stated destination beyond the Assyrian coast at Nineveh. But it is not to the Assyrians but to the Israelite captives that Jonah travels to investigate, to verify the disposition of the captives who are not in the covenant, members of the tribe of the house of Israel, lost to their God, but to be restored. at the time of the Messiah (their indicative number of captives, not the huge population of the city [much cattle]). Jonah is angry and resentful that the Israelites will be restored as prodigal sons, and as they promised to receive the same reward that he and his half-faithful house of Judah have deserved.
McKenzie raises an important issue related to understanding the Jonah story. But he ignores the Ten Ages as fulfilling episodes in the Chosen Peoples’ march into oblivion, as illustrated in Daniel and Ezekiel. McKenzie and other volunteers of biblical exegesis expose the great difficulty of interpretation incurred with casual reading, when trying to penetrate the symbolic labyrinth that confuses the biblical intention.
Like many aspiring translator-writers, McKenzie misses the point of the entire biblical text and thus of the context; he fills columns with little more than not logical traditional rhetoric and does not recognize the dark purpose of the Bible; in fact, it is only in recent research that we can discover the end result in Jonah cabal and other codified references to theocratic infractions and final disposition of the unfaithful coerced participants in Covenant marriage episodes, often their status nullified and renewed by the God. -husband head of His wife of the Chosen People. Recent writings expose the cabal’s deception in this ancient dilemma lived out to its final messianic conclusion: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.” Should readers know when the final wedding vows finally ended? Is there an intercepted solution to the mystery of the Sadducees in Matthew 22:24, as it relates to the investigation of the seven wedding vows and the termination of the practice when they all became dead entities?
This was the fate of those watched from Jonah’s shadow under the gourd vine in Nineveh, but overlooked in McKenzie’s analysis. Still, his book is a good read.