I just read this, but I feel like I need to read it again for everything to sink in. As accessible as the book is, and it's often humorous as well, the ideas are challenging and will require further thought.
The author makes good points about keeping in mind time and culture when reading the Bible and not just seeing it as a rule book and trying to iron out/explain away inconsistencies.

The Bible—from back to front—is the story of God told from the limited point of view of real people living at a certain place and time.

He later says

These ancient writers had an adequate understanding of God for them in their time, but not for all time—and if we take that to heart, we will actually be in a better position to respect these ancient voices and see what they have to say rather than whitewashing the details and making up "explanations" to ease our stress.

Covering a variety of problem passages, he always comes back to his main point that "an owner's manual approach to the Bible doesn't work."
I picked this up because I'm re-reading the bible for the first time in years (I have one of those read-it-in-a-year versions—I'm increasingly skeptical of this approach, but I'll probably stick with it until I'm through), and there is quite a lot that bothers me, especially in the Old Testament. As a result, this book is my second foray this year into biblical scholarship, and I thought it made a lot of sense. That doesn't mean I'm on board with everything he says, but I will probably pick up more of his work, and that of others, as I look for answers. ( )

Started out good and then it just fails. The problem is Biblical literacy is abysmal in this country. Too many people are told what to read and how to read it and how to interpret it. Too many abdicate their brains for the pastor's word. And they take that word as law.

Especially when Enns got to the New Testament, I felt he was more interested in scrapping the Bible rather than understanding it as a whole. It became everything is just a fairytale rather than hard truths. And you wonder why there are over 40000 Protestant denominations in the US alone. Everyone can interpret and everyone thinks their interpretation is the correct one. The Christian Church in the US is failing and authors like Enns are helping it along. ( )

A really lovely and helpful take on how to understand and wrestle with the Bible—or any book of scripture. There are parts of this book that are a tad cheesy. And to be sure, some may not agree with Enns’ approach or conclusions. But this is a welcome approach that allows you to confront and reconcile the Bible with history and a modern understanding of God and religion.

Enns is a biblical scholar and does a masterful job of explaining various topics and the context behind biblical stories and history in a straightforward, easy to understand way. He doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the “hard parts” of the Bible, including those parts that appear to be contradictory, out of line with the historical record, or at odds with our present-day religious belief/practice. Indeed, Enns confronts many of those things head on and offers a legitimate—and in my opinion, helpful—way to understand the Bible.

Among other things, Enns argues that a “correct” understanding of the Bible requires you to look at the way the biblical writers understood God in their time and place in the world, the purpose they had in telling or re-telling biblical stories, and how subsequent prophets (and even Christ) re-examined biblical stories in new and creative ways. That allows you to accept the stories for what they are and the most important lessons to be drawn therefrom.

Most important of all, Enns is saying, applying this understanding of the Bible this allows us to take an even more expansive view of God and the Gospel, and to focus on the essential mission of scripture: to bear record of Christ and help readers come to know Jesus, feel His Spirit, and follow Him. After all, Enns notes, it is God and Christ, rather than the Bible, that are supposed to be at the center of every Christian’s faith. And for me, as a person of faith, that perspective is probably the most important thing I take away from this book.

So, despite a few quibbles on some minor points, a few new issues that this book raises but doesn’t address (for example, the problems that arise if the generally accepted meaning of scripture is always subject to change), and the cheesy way Enns approaches some issues, I found this book to be very well worth the read. I’d happily recommend it to anyone else interested in this topic. ( )

For many raised in conservative Christian churches, there comes a moment when you read a certain scripture and think, "What?!?! How can it say that???" It might be God in the Old Testament commanding the Israelites to slaughter every man, woman, and child. It might be the weird ways the New Testament writers use the Old Testament. Or it might be numerous contradictions between passages. (He addresses all these questions in the book!) At these times, it often felt like my faith was crumbling to oblivion.

This book certainly would have rocked my world 15 years ago. And yet, it might have hastened the growth process. Today after wrestling with these questions for 15 years, most of the book was a helpful summary of similar conclusions.

That said, Peter Enns is my go-to for understanding how to think about the Bible. He's a Harvard educated Old Testament professor who was fired for questioning the conservative presuppositions on scripture (for a little more, see his Wikipedia article). And, he remains solidly a Jesus follower through and through. I look forward to reading his other books. (His podcast - The Bible for Normal People - is also good. It seems to take what he writes here for granted and move on to next steps.)

My one complaint would have to be the tone. Get ready for some Dad jokes. Even for this new dad, it was a bit much. Okay, a second complaint (which might asking too much from one book and might be answered by his other books) is where to go from here. Sure, defending scripture skews our perspective, but where do we go from here? How does scripture relate to other literature?

All that said, if you are coming from a conservative background and struggle to understand how to deal with scripture, this is an excellent resource. It's fun and accessible, critical and honest, and yet still remains committed to Jesus. ( )

"The Bible Tells Me So" is an excellent and entertaining read that demonstrates, through scholarship and deep understanding, the Bible is not a literal, one-size fits all manual for how to live in the modern age. Enns's analysis of the Old Testament scriptures is particularly rigorous and he contextualizes much of these scriptures in light of their historical and cultural background. While Enns takes a sharp lens to the story of Israel I was a bit disappointed that the New Testament did not also get the same treatment. Enns asserts that Jesus changed the way the Jewish scriptures were meant to be read and understood, demonstrated in the writings of Paul, and this gives a cohesion to the Christian story in the Bible, but the NT are primarily discussed in light of the OT. More discussion, especially around the political intentions of the writers of the Gospel would have been welcome and warranted. Perhaps that is just the purview of another book. ( )