How to Read the Bible for All its Worth - Only $1.99 on Kindle!

This month Fee and Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All
Its Worth is on sale for only $1.99 in the Kindle store!   (Sale ends July 31, 2013)

More than half a million people have turned
to How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth to inform their reading of the
biblical text. That so many have relied on this resource is a testimony to Fee
and Stewart’s insistence that understanding the Bible isn’t just for the few,
the gifted, and the scholarly.

Covering everything from translational concerns to different
genres of biblical writing, this book will any reader to uncover the
inexhaustible worth that is in God’s Word.

In the excerpt below Fee and Stuart discuss the diversity of
Jesus’ parables, how we might begin to read each type well, and what sets them
apart.

"The Good Samaritan is an example of a true parable. It is a story,
pure and simple, with a beginning and an ending; it has something of a “plot.”
Other such story parables include the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, the Great
Banquet, the Workers in the Vineyard, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Ten
Virgins.

The Yeast in the Dough, on the other hand, is more of a
similitude. What is said of the yeast, or the sower, or the mustard seed was
always true of yeast, sowing, or mustard seeds. Such “parables” are more like
illustrations taken from everyday life that Jesus used to make a point. 

Such sayings as “you are the salt of the earth” differ from
both of these. These are sometimes called parabolic sayings, but in reality
they are metaphors and similes. At times they seem to function in a way similar
to the similitude, but their point—their reason for being spoken—is
considerably different.

It should be noted further that in some cases, especially
that of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1–11; Matt 21:33–44; Luke 20:9–18), a
parable may approach something very close to allegory, where many of the
details in a story are intended to represent something else (such as in
Augustine’s misinterpretation of the Good Samaritan). But the parables are not
allegories —even if at times they have what appear to us to be allegorical
features. The reason we can be sure of this has to do with their differing
functions.

Because the parables are not all of one kind, one cannot
necessarily lay down rules that will cover them all."

Learn more about the parables of Jesus, and the other genres
readers will encounter in the biblical text, in How to Read the Bible for All
Its Worth. Only $1.99 until July 31^st at the Kindle store! (Sale ends July 31, 2013)