The Big Book Of Bible Difficulties: Clear And Concise Answers From Genesis To Revelation, by Norman L. Geisler and Thomas Howe

Perhaps a better title for this book would have been “The Big Book Of Bible Difficulties For Evangelicals.” Every sect or branch within Christianity (even my own) would be able to write a different book of Bible difficulties. This book is really divided in its “difficulties” between two large concerns. The first is to defend the inerrancy of the original text by explaining away apparent contradictions, and this book succeeds very well in that function. The second, and more troublesome function, is to attempt to smuggle in an apologetic for an unbiblical evangelical worldview in the guise of looking at either proof texts or some of the many problem texts for Evangelicals, and often dishonestly.

The authors tend to use a presuppositional apologetics by which they assume the correctness of their positions and then try to force the interpretation of these texts out of given scriptures. Sometimes they give bad explanations of problem texts, inconsistent with their position elsewhere in the book (for example, in their explanation of the lack of human immortality stated in 1 Timothy 6:16, which contradicts their belief expressed elsewhere that humans, both sinners and saved, have an inherently immortal soul). Sometimes they ignore problem texts to their worldview (like Zechariah 14’s insistence that the Feast of Tabernacles will be kept in the future, or Isaiah 66’s comments that the earth will worship from Sabbath to Sabbath and from new moon to new moon). Sometimes they try to force unbelievable and heretical doctrines from texts that say the opposite by presenting an incomplete picture of interpretations, as when they use 2 Samuel 12:23 to claim that all infants who die go to heaven, ignoring the fact that David, in this passage, claims that he will be going to his son in the grave where they will sleep together until the resurrection (an accurate claim, see Acts 2:34). The poor rhetoric of the authors leads to a lot of bogus and mistaken interpretation of scriptures.

This book shows a particularly disinterest in prophecy (an area of “Bible difficulties” that is a very fruitful area of understanding, but they make up for this lack in part (and I say this only mildly sarcastically) in their extreme interest in debunking Muslim interpretations of scripture on more than half a dozen locations in the Hebrew scriptures. The book combines sound refutations of some mistaken interpretations of the Bible held by evolutionists or Arians or Mormons, but then the book makes severe stumbles when it assumes a Trinity from Genesis 1:26. The book is sound where it harmonizes different accounts to show a bigger picture, and these moments ought to be appreciated by any reader of the book, but then the book will make an odd claim that is assumed to be true, not explained or supported by evidence, and that is then used as proof text in one of the heretical hobby hunts of the authors.

So, this book is decidedly a mixed bag. This book (and it is a fairly big one, at a little over 600 pages) is not without value, but it could be dramatically smaller if it focused only on the harmonization of biblical difficulties based on an understanding of orthographical scribal errors based on difficult spelling in ancient texts, similarities between letters, and a difficulty in understanding figures of speech from bygone eras. In these parts of the book, one wishes the authors had spent less time on dubious eisegetical interpretations on their bizarre favorite heresies and more time on actually presenting the biblical case itself.

And so this review of the book is decidedly mixed. If you want a book that can provide a case for explaining a genuine biblical difficulty about apparent contradictions, there is much to enjoy here. If you are looking for a book that is going to provide a rock-solid biblical justification for evangelical doctrine, only those who already believe such views are going to be convinced by the poor logic found here, including rampant inconsistencies, assumptions made without evidence, false dilemmas where only some of the possible explanations are presented (and sometimes falsely, as in the book’s presentation of the Arminian perspective of Hebrews 6:4-6). The presence of so many such problems prevent this book from being worthy of high praise, but a book about half the size that had focused on merely apparent contradictions and textual corruption would have been a vastly better book–easier to read and less frustrating and filled with less of the poor logic that riddles most of the New Testament passages explored by these authors. Someone needs to teach these authors some basic skills in logic and exegesis, but such teachers probably cannot be found among the Evangelical tradition, sadly.