What Books Would You Recommend on Bible Difficulties?

What Books Would You Recommend on Bible Difficulties?

by
William Arnold III
WmArnold@gmail.com

Question:

Is this a good book, New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, by Gleason L. Archer

If not, what do you recommend? On Bible difficulties?

Response:

Well, I haven't read the "new" edition yet, but the old one was pretty good. Another similar book to that one is "Hard Saying of the Bible" published by Inter Varsity Press. This one is written by a group of scholars, whereas the book you mentioned is written by Gleason Archer only (who happens to be a leading Old Testament scholar). Another one that I have is "Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible" by John Haley. This one covers more issues than the others, but it is a much older book and much of the material needs to be updated. One which I do not have, but which looks promising is "When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties" by Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe. Geisler was at one time the Apologetics professor at Dallas Seminary.

He also wrote the "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics," which would also deal with some Bible difficulties as would any of the apologetics books. In this category, I would also recommend all of Josh McDowell's books. Of course, no book covers every difficulty in the Bible, so it is good to have a few of them. It is also good to get more than one opinion when possible.

Other than that, any good commentary should deal with difficult passages in detail. One of the benefits of a good multi-author commentary is that person writing the commentary for each book has usually studied that particular book in great detail and so has given much more thought and research to the difficult passages of that book than someone writing a book of "Bible difficulties" in general. But even then, I would consult several good commentaries. For recommendations on commentaries, see our Recommended Books and Software List.