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Trust Your Bible - 31 principles to help you understand the Scriptures

The Good Book
Trust Your Bible
By Tony Staite
Corban Trust. 160 pages
ISBN 0 9530691 0 9

Two features are indispensable on my computer - the undo button and the help facility. In this slim volume, Tony Staite, a trainer who retired from banking in 1992, has attempted to give the keen amateur some invaluable help in getting to grips with the Bible. His intention is underlined in the sub-title: '31 principles to help you understand the Scriptures'.
In ten chapters, he defends the reliability of the Bible and sets out his 31 principles for safe interpretation. In the two final chapters, he looks in more detail at the events leading up to the cross and the archaeological support for Old Testament history. Tony Staite writes as someone who has developed the trainer's passion for passing skills on to others. He says: 'The purpose of this book is simply to pass on a sense of my own excitement with the Scriptures in the hope that enthusiasm, like influenza, will prove infectious.'
Does he succeed? Well, he writes as a layman for laymen. He avoids jargon and makes no pretence to be the last word in academic scholarship. He provides helpful background information - on the details relating to Eastern weddings (p. 52-53) for example, and offers some excellent tips - like listening to the Bible on tape in the car. You may not agree with all his conclusions - on the baptism of the Spirit, for instance (p. 29ff), but we all need to be reminded of his thesis - that we must work hard at reading out of not into the text.
A good book. Not for everyone, but if there are keen young Christians in your church who should be on a training-to-teach type programme, this would be a helpful textbook. More conservative . . . less exciting than John Stott's Understanding the Bible.

Richard Underwood