29 April 2016

Book Review: God Against the Gods: Storytelling, Imagination and Apologetics in the Bible - Brian Godawa

God Against the Gods - Brian Godawa God Against the Gods: Storytelling, Imagination and Apologetics in the Bible by 4 of 5 stars

While Godawa is best known for his many fictional books and writings, I, being not much of a fiction reader usually, am only familiar with a couple of his non-fiction writings like this. Not too many months back I had read his When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed and since I thoroughly enjoyed it, I approached this title with similar expectations. Well, those expectations were met.

Again, Godawa presents a look into the culture and writings of the ancient Hebrew and their surrounding neighbors, and in doing so, presents us with a deeper understanding of many texts of Scripture that, when taken too literally, become confusing.

The premise is, the ancients wrote in a literary style that we are not necessarily expecting from them, and until we recognize this fact, we are prone to misinterpret what the writers were trying to get across in Scripture. This has been a big problem in the modern church for decades upon decades, and Godawa joins the ranks of many, many other writers delving into these topics.