--- title: 'The Bible Throughout the Ages' type: text hasMedia: true requiresPurchase: false authors: - 'Ryan McGraw' date: 2026-11-02 collection: 'Articles' subcollection: '2026' topics: - 'Scripture' - 'Hermeneutics' - 'Book Reviews' url: https://confessional.org/articles/2026/the-bible-throughout-the-ages --- # The Bible Throughout the Ages In this book review, Dr. McGraw assesses the strengths and weaknesses of The Bible Through the Ages, a collection of essays that expose students of the Bible to thought-provoking issues regarding the important relationship between the nature and interpretation of the Bible. Lydia Jaeger and Crag G. Bartholomew, eds. *The Bible Throughout the Ages: Its Nature, Interpretation, and Relevance for Today* (Zondervan Academic, 2024). 332pp. Paperback. $7.21. Before we read the Bible, we need to know what kind of book we are dealing with. Is it a human compilation of religious texts, or is it a divine book—over the pages of which the Holy Spirit, who gave it through inspired men, is, as it were, hovering—bringing order into the chaos of disordered souls? Starting with what the Scriptures are, and how God designed the church to use them shapes how we read the Bible and evaluate modern uses of Scripture. Following these three intertwined issues, this multi-author volume incudes a collection of interesting, sometimes provocative, essays related to what the Bible is, how to interpret it, and its contemporary uses in the modern world. Most of the essays represent solid orthodox Christian approaches to Scripture, with some exceptions, that outline what Scripture says about Scripture as well as the function of Scripture in the church today. Serious students of the Bible will find here good entry-level invitations to key issues related to developing a theology of the Bible, biblical hermeneutics, and the challenges of reading and using Scripture in the context of an increasingly globalized Christianity. Dividing the volume into three parts, the editors invited authors to treat aspects of what it means for the Bible to be divine revelation, the present state of biblical hermeneutics, and the Bible in the contemporary world. As the postscript by Craig Bartholomew indicates, this volume fits into a sequence of books related to the doctrine of Scripture (The Scripture Collective Series), which includes treatments of hermeneutics and divine action in Hebrews. Starting out strong, the five chapters in part one include Kevin Vanhoozer’s defense of the Bible as the Word of God, Henri Blocher’s carefully nuanced and superb treatment of inerrancy, Henk van den Belt’s sketch of the interrelationship between the Spirit’s work in inspiring text and illuminating readers, Oliver Riaudel’s treatment of Scripture, traditions, and reason, and Karsten Lehmkuhler’s assessment of how the Bible does, and does not, serve as a foundation for building Christian ethics. Taken together, the first four essays in this section soundly factor into the picture what Scripture says about itself, while the fifth weakens the trajectory of the others to an extent by assuming that there is no consistent ethic spanning the Old and New Testaments. Part two, also comprised of five chapters, opens with Anthony Thiselton’s superb, and final essay before his death, offering an evaluative survey of biblical hermeneutics. His contribution is a digest of his voluminous work on Biblical hermeneutics, presented in one of its maturest forms, and, as such, is a great invitation into navigating modern hermeneutical questions. In chapter 7, Craig Bartholomew ably guides readers through the historical portions of Scripture, showing how to respect both historical contexts and the unique nature of the Bible as God’s book. Jewish Old Testament studies have been gaining ground in recent years, and Jeremiah Unterman provides a historical and modern survey of Jewish biblical interpretation that will helpfully introduce readers to what people have said and why and what they are saying now. Though a bit historically uneven, chapters nine (Emmanuel Durand) and ten (Armin D. Baum) skip a lot of material in church history to focus on Augustine and Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Gethsemane prayer, and the history, potential, and limitations of the historical-critical method, respectively. The three remaining chapters in part three highlight how Scripture has filtered into modern literature, keeping it in cultural memory (Karen Swallow Prior), how modern reading habits are returning us to an oral culture similar to the ancient church (Philippe de Pol), and why the West should not impose its reading habits on majority world contexts (Benno van den Toren). Since this volume is published both in English and French editions, chapter nine focuses on English literature, while its French counterpart shifts the examples to French ones (ix, xiii). While readers will not agree with all the perspectives represented in this book, it effectively helps them get a feel for what people are saying about and doing with the Bible today. One strength of this volume is that most of the authors slant in the direction of treating the Bible as a unified book under a single divine author, making what the biblical authors say about Scripture and its interpretation primary. The first and second chapters set the tone for the whole in this respect. Vanhoozer (chapter one), argues that we cannot separate the Bible’s claim to be God’s Word from its redemptive purposes in Jesus Christ (4). He gives a useful survey of Paul Ricoer’s classification of hermeneutical approaches to the world behind the text, in the text, and in front of the text (8-10), driving readers to examining God’s speech as action through the text (10). He concludes ultimately that what the Bible is as Spirit-inspired speech “has an important bearing on how it should be read” (16), pressing readers to submit to God through it (24). Henri Blocher’s masterful treatment of biblical inerrancy (chapter two) is perhaps the most pointed illustration of how our view of what Scripture is affects its interpretation. Carefully navigating what inerrancy does and does not mean, he draws the conclusion that if we understand Scripture genres correctly, then we have solid warrant from Scripture itself to believe that it is divine, inspired, and inerrant in its original autographs (29). Despite the charge that inerrancy is an “innovation” developed by Princeton theologians such as B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge (37), supposedly based on deductive rationalistic principles (41), Blocher argues otherwise. He maintains that these theologians, along with those who followed them, developed their doctrine of Scripture through exegesis of biblical texts about Scripture itself, thereby reflecting the sufficiency of Scripture (46). This is an important claim because many reject inerrancy by caricaturing such authors instead of meaningfully engaging their explanations of actual texts. Blocher shows how one's view of inerrancy affects hermeneutics: those who believe the Bible is divinely inspired seek to understand how its various texts harmonize, while those who reject inerrancy are suspicious of such harmony (55). Ironically, detecting disharmony in Scripture marked the most ancient forms of Gnostic heresy, while harmonizing the whole Bible was always a hallmark of orthodoxy. While other authors in this volume run in the same vein, these two thought-provoking chapters illustrate what is at stake in developing an exegetical theory of what Scripture is to direct the church how to read and use it. Some of the essays included in this work add some discordant voices, precisely by dropping off themes related to a divinely inspired and unified text. For instance, Karsten Lehmkuhler’s chapter on Christian ethics both assumes discordant ethical voices in Scripture, and he jettisons some biblical principles from modern use (110). Tracing what he calls deontological, teleological, and virtue ethics approaches (113), and seeing some truth in each model, he concludes, somewhat weakly, that “Christian ethics is marked profoundly by the Bible” (123). However, he falls short of giving Scripture decisive and invariable authority over Christian prudence in applying general biblical principles. Instead, he notes that ethical decision making “always includes a risk,” appealing to Deitrich Bonheoffer’s confidence that God will guide, enlighten, and forgive us where we accidentally pick the wrong ethical principles. Yet this procedure seems contrary to Jesus’s practice, who instead of saying that Moses’ divorce laws contradicted his teaching, harmonized both with God’s purposes in instituting marriage in the beginning (Matt. 19:8-9). This example, and others like it, show how Jesus’ interpretive practices followed the assumption of a unified biblical ethic. Sacrificing such unity implies an under-inspired text, and something like the Westminster Larger Catechism, with its multitude of Scripture proofs that assume the harmony of Scripture, is a less nebulous and more concrete guide to righteous decision-making than what Lehmkuhler offers readers. Chapters eleven (Philippe de Pol) and thirteen (Benno van den Toren) reflect similar tendencies, the former with respect to a relativized text, and the latter to a relativized hermeneutic, though each remain insightful in other ways. Whether readers view such chapters as weaknesses or strengths likely depends on what they are looking for. If they are looking for harmonious agreement with themselves or among the contributors, then they will likely be disappointed. But if they want short introductions to what people from other traditions are saying about the Bible, then such diversity shows them how such views play out in real time. Biblical interpretation is not a neutral endeavor, and none of the authors in this book give the impression that it is. Readers interested in compelling and conservative treatments of bibliology and hermeneutics will find several profound essays here, especially in the contributions from Vanhoozer, Blocher, and Thiselton, but also from many more. Serving as a good starting point for modern approaches to the nature, interpretation, and relevance of the Bible, those interested in such topics will learn much, sparking their interest where to turn next.