The Untold Story of the New Testament Church An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament Author:  Frank Viola

 

Why is the Bible arranged in a seemingly unorganized matter?  What is background of the writers and readers of each of the New Testament Books?  These are questions that the author, Frank Viola seeks to answer.  Throughout this book Mr. Viola seeks to lay out the New Testament in a chronological order while at the same time including background material to help the reader understand what the meaning of the text was for the original readers of the text.

While “The Untold Story of the New Testament Church” is not a bad companion in studying the bible, there are at least two issues that ought to be addressed.  The first potential issue is that Mr. Viola will limit the impact of the work because of statements that have been made in the forward and preface of the book.  The first sentence of the forward states that Mr. Viola “straightened out the New Testament for us.”  The author of the preface also states the New Testament is a complete jumble and somewhat resembles a Chinese puzzle.  All of these statements occur on the first page of the preface.  While in some instances these statements might be found true, most evangelical Christians shopping for books  would not purchase a book if they first read words such as those in the preface. I Rather, they would probably find these words to be insulting to the Word of God.  Statements like this might be ok to make but hide them in the middle of the book, do not put them on the first page.

The second potential issue that I personally have with the book is that in the preface of the book Mr. Viola comes across as rather insulting to believers who are seminarians and Bible college students by making vast assumptions about how they study the word of God.

When the book is all said and done, Mr. Viola does a decent job of providing us with another bible handbook.  However, there appears as though there is not anything new within this book.  Christian writers have been writing Bible handbooks for years and there are many chronological Bibles and workbooks readily available. However, the preface and prologue need to be removed or changed if he desires to market his material.  I would not purchase a book that appears to insult God’s Word on the first page.

Review by Jon Goodwin