From God to Us: How We Got Our Bible

"From God to Us" consists of 20 short chapters, the first 5 chapters deal with Inspiration, chapters 6-10 deals with the "Canon", and the concluding chapters deal with various "Manuscript" evidence. From page 7 to the last page are 248 pages of very interesting reading. It is well written, and contains a host of sources within the text. It lacks a final bibliography. While one may not agree with all facets of this book, it is a good read and provides very good source material for small group dicussion.

I am using this in conjunction with a class I'm teaching in my church on the doctrine of the Bible. I appreciate the conservative position, holding to the inerrancy of Scripture. The book is neither difficult to read nor overly simplistic. I agree with a previous reviewer that an update would be nice - it would be helpful to have more on modern translations such as the NIV, etc.

Geisler and Nix write what might be considered to be a classic on textual criticism. It is not impossible to read and should be understood by the average layperson who is not frightened of reading. They deal with everything from inspriation, canonicity of both the OT and NT, the major manuscripts, and translations of the Bible. It's probably as good an overall view of textual criticism as there is out there. With no updates since its original 1974 printing, and since the authors are still alive, I would challenge them to update the book for future generations, especially since there have been some new finds and translations made during the past quarter of a century. Updating shouldn't be that hard to do, and they would help preserve a valuable book for the years to come (when they are no longer around). If you have ever had anyone criticize the Bible ("how do we know it's translated correctly?"), this might be a good place to start to get some answers.