I was in a leadership turbogroup during the spring of 2007. At Randy's suggestion, I listened to Walter Wangerin's audio tapes, The Book of God, which presents the Bible as a narrative. I gained more than I would have thought possible by doing this. I put the tapes in my car and would listen to them whenever I was driving, and I actually came to look forward to driving places because I would get to listen to the tapes. I got a very good visual sense of events from the Bible that I had never had from reading it.

Also, the ordering of the events chronologically was helpful to giving an overall sense of the history of the Bible. The way the story was told was accurate, but also gave a better sense of the events unfolding and the feelings of the people in the various stories than I had gotten from reading the books, especially the Old Testament books. I even was able to get a better sense of the geography because the descriptions of it were very good.

 

I find listening to these tapes even more helpful now that I am working on reading through the Bible in the year. I have a much better visual sense of what is going on and I feel like I understand the events better than I did before just reading alone. I would recommend these tapes for anyone who wants a better sense of the history of the Bible as a whole.    -Laura McPherson