Hoffman, Joel M. 2016. The Bible doesn’t say that: 40 Biblical mistranslations, misconceptions, and other misunderstandings. NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Joel Hoffman has held faculty appointments at Brandeis University and at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Hoffman notes five different reasons that the words of the Bible are misrepresented: 1) ignorance; 2) historical accident; 3) cultural gap; 4) mistranslation; and 5) misrepresentation (mistaking tradition for the original).
Restak, Richard. 2011. Optimizing Brain Fitness. Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses.
Restak is (or was) Clinical Professor of Neurology at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He has written over 20 books on the human brain.
The scope and purpose of the lectures is to improve one’s brain but, in order to do so, it is important to know how it works. There are images of the various parts of the brain and their functions but there is also an emphasis on diet, exercise and sleep—in general what is good for the heart is good for the brain.
Pearcey, Nancy. 2015. Finding truth: 5 principles for unmasking atheism, secularism, and other God substitutes. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook.
Nancy Pearcey is an American evangelical author who writes about the Christian worldview. She co-authored several books with Charles Colson (for example, How now shall we live? and The Christian in today’s culture) as well as one with Charles B. Thaxton (The soul of science: Christian faith and natural philosophy). She also wrote Total truth (2004) and Saving Leonardo (2010).
Her husband is Rick Pearcey, editor and publisher of the Pearcey Report, a website of news, comment, information, and worldview (see www.pearceyreport.com).
The book is divided into three parts: 1) “I lost my faith at an evangelical college”, a story of a young man who had professors who could discuss secular opinions but did not have Christian viewpoints to counteract their arguments. However, he found his faith again through reasoning and the Bible; 2) the five principles, which we will summarize; 3) how critical thinking saves faith.
There is also a comprehensive set of notes, an appendix on Romans 1:1-2:16, acknowledgments, a study guide and an index.
Smith, Bruce A. 2013. Living translation: My story. Xulon press.
Xulon Press is the largest Christian Self-Publishing company in the U.S. and is owned and operated by Salem Media Group. According to its website, since 2001 it has self-published over 10,000 Christian authors.
Smith’s doctorate is a ministry degree achieved on-line from Regent University, on Organizational Leadership. Additional educational information on Smith can be found at linkedin.com. Regent University is a private Christian research university located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States. The university was founded by Pat Robertson in 1977 as Christian Broadcasting Network University, but changed its name to Regent University in 1990.
Bruce Smith is the President of Wycliffe Associates, an organization with headquarters in Orlando, Florida. According to its website, “Wycliffe Associates accelerates Bible translation around the world by empowering national translators and equipping the local church to share God’s Word in their own heart language” (www.wycliffe associates.org).
Dreher, Rod. 2015. How Dante can save your life: The life-changing wisdom of history’s greatest poem. NY: Regan Arts.
Dreher describes his epiphany as follows: “This medieval masterpiece…reached me when I thought I was unreachable, and lit the way out of a dark wood of depression, confusion, and a stress-related autoimmune disease that, had it persisted, would have dangerously degraded my health” (xiii). The book is an intertwined story of Dreher and Dante.
In Dante there are sinners “who love the wrong things, or who love the right things in the wrong way” (xiv). Dante wrote his masterpiece in the language of the people, not in Latin, because he wanted ordinary people to find their way out of “the dark wood and into the light of the starry heavens” (xv). Dreher, like Dante, was in the dark wood.
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