4 out of 4 stars
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I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation by Val D. Greenwood is a compilation of Old Testament stories from the Bible. Although written more simplistically, the stories still have a flair of the biblical text. The language is easy to understand, enabling the reader to enjoy every page. There are 219 stories placed in chronological order for a better understanding of the Old Testament, and history of the Jewish people. The book takes the reader through the ancient history of biblical times, beginning with the story of creation. The stories of Abraham and Isaac; David and Goliath; Cain and Abel; Job, and many more are in this remarkable book. Old Testament stories familiar to most people suddenly come to life as never before for the reader.
I enjoyed reading this book and was excited to discover many passages from the Old Testament I had never fully comprehended were now clear to me. For instance, I was never able to understand the full extent of the conversation between Job and his three friends. I knew the three men weren't being a comfort to Job but trying to understand the original dialog in the Bible was difficult for me. Greenwood did an exceptional job of simplifying each story without taking away the intended message. He painstakingly provided footnotes for reference to each story as well as random pictures. There are also maps, a name index, a pronunciation guide, and a subject index at the back of the book the reader can reference. This book could be a useful study guide for the Old Testament as well as a book of Biblical stories to read just for the pleasure of reading.
What I liked most was the stories are short and easy to understand, yet one still has the feeling they are reading directly from the Bible. What I disliked most about this book was a statement the author made when telling the story of creation. He stated, (verbatim): "It is certainly more correct to say the earth was organized than to say that it was created, for it was not created out of nothing." The Bible plainly says in Genesis that God "created" the heaven and the earth. I almost stopped reading the book when I read that statement, but I am glad I didn't because this book has so much to offer. It is apparent Greenwood dedicated a lot of time, effort, and research to this work.
The book appears professionally edited, and I found only a few errors, mainly missing and misspelled words. There is an issue with the formatting, on the Kindle version at least. Some paragraphs have double spacing between them, and some do not. There are also pages where a new chapter heading is at the bottom with the rest of the page blank. The inconsistent formatting was distracting; however, other versions may be correctly formatted, so I did not count it as an error.
I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation by Val D. Greenwood is well-written. Putting the stories in chronological order makes the book flow as one continuous story instead of a collection of individual ones. Also, the footnotes and referencing tools included are thorough and easy to follow. For these reasons and more I give this book 4 out of 4 stars. I recommend this book to everyone interested in the Old Testament. I also would recommend it for anyone to use as a study guide to enhance their understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures.
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I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation
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