Top Ten Books of 2023

Here’s a quick list of my top 10 books of this year (2023). I’ve reviewed all of them but one, and it’s one I couldn’t resist adding. Here are few books you can spend your Christmas dollars on. Click the pictures to go to Amazon or the publisher’s website, or one of my links to read the review. There’s no particular order with these besides a progression from easier-to-read to more academic.

The Lord’s Prayer (FatCat) by Natasha Kennedy and Harold Senkbeil

In an effort to teach the essentials of the christian faith to children, Harold Senkbeil opens up each line of the Lord’s Prayer for all God’s children and explains it in simple terms. Natasha Kennedy collates Scripture for each part of the Prayer which both shapes and limits her artwork to accurately teach your children about the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer.

The Dawning of Redemption by Ian Vaillancourt

This was a really easy and enjoyable introduction to the Pentateuch. The purpose of the book “to give a big-picture sense of the story so readers will be equipped to dig into its details on their own” (19). A lot of what is in this book I have read before in other books, but it was convenient to have it gathered in one book. Vaillancourt offers good illustrations and doesn’t get distracted with needless threads. At the end of each chapter he points you to Christ and his fulfillment of that particular theme in the OT. This offers a good “bird’s-eye” view of the Pentateuch. 

The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener

Our values and goals—equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress—are dependent on the Jesus revolution. How did these things become the air we breathe? Scrivener’s two-sentence answer is:

The extraordinary impact of Christianity is seen in the fact that you don’t notice it. You already hold particularly “Christian-ish” views, and the fact that you think of these values as natural, obvious or universal shows how profoundly the Christian revolution has shaped you. (13)

Scrivener brilliantly shows how many of the ideas we take for granted, beliefs we believe are “duh, who wouldn’t believe this? What was wrong with everyone else before this?” aren’t actually “self-evident.” Scrivener writes compellingly for the cross and resurrection of Christ. The first is shameful and the second unbelievable, yet they changed the course of the world. We get our ethics and moral value judgments not from Rome, but from Christianity.

Why the Gospel? by Matthew Bates

Anyone who reads this will gain a fuller understanding of the gospel, the importance of obeying (being allegiant to) our King and his gospel-saving work over all creation. Bates helps us understand why the Gospels spent so much time on Jesus’ life as well, presenting him as the King-in-waiting who did his preliminary work pointing to when God’s kingdom comes in full. today people often thing Jesus being Savior of our souls and nothing much more. He is King over every aspect of creation, and he rules over all.

Torah Story, 2nd ed. by Gary Schnittjer

How can we become better apprentices of the Bible? We do that through understanding the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. We may know many of the main stories, but if we’re honest we are probably a beginner apprentice, one who knows almost nothing about these books. What do they mean? How do they move the plot of Scripture? In light of the coming of Christ, how do these books shape us? As Schnittjer writes, if we misunderstand these five books, we “can only misunderstand songs of the psalmists, messages of the prophets, and teachings of the apostles” (1). This is the best textbook I have owned and read. It is geared toward seminary or college students, but it could be adapted for high schoolers.

The Beginning of the Gospel by Peter Orr

The New Testament Theology series hones in on key themes of each NT book. This one on the Gospel of Mark is the best I’ve read in the series so far. This book is deep and gives a thick reading of Mark. Orr immerses you in Mark and his theology and teases out the interlocking themes that weave their way through Mark’s Gospel. There is plenty here both to whet your appetite for more of Mark’s Gospel and enough here to give you plenty to study as you seek to shape your sermon series, Bible study, or lesson plans on Mark’s Gospel.

Leviticus (SGBC) by Jerry Shepherd

You really have to wonder how legit this list really is when a commentary on Leviticus ends up on my Top 10 list, but it was a really good read. Leviticus is a text embedded in an ancient Near Eastern culture, and the Lord dealt with Israel as the ANE people that they were. At the same time, God’s word is eternal (Ps 119:89). It takes work to discern how this text applies to Christians in different cultural contexts today. Shepherd’s commentary succeeds at showing the main idea of each chapter and section and of showing how even a book like Leviticus can be applicable to Christians today. (Check out Gane and Sklar’s commentaries as well.)

Jesus Among the Gods by Michael Bird

When was Jesus considered divine? Was it when he was on earth? Just after? At the Nicene Council 300 years later? Michael Bird shows that Jesus was considered fully divine well before the Nicene Council, and, arguably, during the New Testament times. In Bird’s words, “gods were either eternal and unbegotten (uncreated) or deified and begotten (created)” (2). This was not a new thing. These categories were used by Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian authors over several centuries.

By making these comparisons, Bird shows that the more we understand ancient categories of divinity, the better we understand Jesus’ own divinity. Understanding Jesus as divine did not happen in the fourth century debates but already within the first century. That said, Jesus is most similar with the God of Israel, his activity in creation and with his people. This is a hefty book, but it will deepen your understanding of Jesus’ divinity and how obvious it was to believers in the early centuries.

Genesis 1–4 by C. John Collins

How should we read Genesis 1–4? Are they there to tell us how old the earth is? Or is there something completely other? C. John Collins aims to get a sense of how the original Israelites, after coming out of Egypt, would have understood these texts. Their questions were not “How old is the earth?” but “Who is this God? Who are we? How did we get here?” Pick this up and learn how the Bible speaks truthfully even if it’s not in ways that you are used to hearing.

(This is good background reading for his book Reading Genesis Well.)

The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 2nd ed., edited by Scot McKnight, Lynn Cohick, and Nijay Gupta

A massive revision, this book is long. And it’s great! Only for the nerdiest among us, this looks at some of the usual topics like apostasy and circumcision, justification and righteousness, as well as more recent research like disability, homosexuality, household codes, and supercessionism. This is a serious contribution both to the church and to scholarship, one which seeks to help you understand Paul and his gospel from many different angles.

---

Well that’s all this go-round. See you next year!

Previous Top Tens

• Top Ten Books from 2019
• Top Ten Books from 2021