Christian Literature & Book Reviews

I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation: Old Testament Stories
By Val D. Greenwood

Val D. Greenwood has come to the rescue for many a frustrated novice Bible reader with the publication of I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation. Beginning with the creation accounts in Genesis and working his way through the Bible chronologically, Greenwood covers all the major Biblical figures in detail and gives accounts of the most well known and important events in the Old Testament. Best of all, with each account, he gives the location of the relevant Scriptural accounts so the book can serve as an introduction to the reading of Holy Scripture directly.

The book is divides into sections covering all the major eras of the Old Testament beginning with the creation accounts and ending with the period following the return from the Babylonian captivity. Each section has an average of eighteen chapters of a few pages each. Each chapter covers one of the important stories from the Bible. The text is very user friendly without being simplistic and manages to convey the material in a manner that can appeal to a wide range of backgrounds and ages.

Val D. Greenwood has managed to fill a void with I Will Make of Thee a Great Nation by supplying all the classic stories from the Old Testament in a very thorough yet engaging form. This book should be in the library of every Christian involved in teaching God's Word and would be a blessing to any new Christian undertaking their first encounter with the Old Testament.

The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence
By Mike Aquilina & Christopher Bailey

Since the publication of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, there have been a number of excellent books refuting the historical inaccuracies that Brown asserted as facts. Much of these have concentrated on such topics as the Divinity of Christ, the Canon of Scripture, and the Council of Nicea. Oddly enough, though Brown's assertions on the meaning of the Holy Grail so central to his book are thoroughly undermined, none of the apologists for orthodox Christianity had yet to bother to give a solid treatment of the history of that topic for the average reader.

This void has been ably filled by Mike Aquilina & Christopher Bailey's The Grail Code. Beginning as a simple meditation on the Eucharist, the authors weave a tapestry using threads from Roman and Church history, barbarian invasions, pagan mythology, practical evangelism, medieval romances, and Catholic devotion as medieval society comes to see that what they have been searching for all along is not in a far away land but as near as the local church where the salvation of mankind is presented to the faithful under the appearances of bread and wine.

In telling the tales of not only the legends of King Arthur and the quest for the Holy Grail (and how these two diverse traditions became intertwined) but also the evolution of how these tales were presented, Aquilina and Bailey delve into the stylistic devices authors have employed to add their own twists to these venerable legends and how these gradual accretions reflect the spiritual state of their audiences. In times of spiritual decay, the tales would take on views of love totally at odds with the Christian vision; in times of renewal, the quest would not be fulfilled in adventure but in the most sublime of the Christian mysteries.

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