How NOT to review a book

I love reading, as I've written about before, and I usually review the books I read on Amazon.

Two recent events have raised the issue of how NOT to criticise or review a book. I will use these two examples to illuminate this common error.

The first occurred on facebook. John Dickson wrote an article criticising Andrew Bolt's attempt at Biblical criticism, and then this article was linked on the Public Christianity facebook page. A guy named Dave Singer responded with this gem:


I note that John offers, as usual, NO evidence whatsoever to support the claim that the Gospels are true.

He may as well call Andrew Bolt an idiot for thinking the Phantom Menace contradicts The Empire Strikes Back.

 I responded by pointing out that it's an error to judge an author by a standard that he never intended to meet. John Dickson's purpose wasn't to "provide evidence to support the claim that the Gospels are true", it was to show that the problems raised by Andrew Bolt aren't all that troubling at all. I also referred to Dickson's latest video where he talks about historical reasons to believe that the Resurrection accounts are historically plausible- 1. They're historically very early, 2. The testimony of women and 3. The conviction of knowledge (as opposed to belief) evidenced by the early followers.

A second example occurred on Amazon.com. A review of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible was heavily critical of the book, on the basis that Smith's argument was "hoisted on it's own petard". The author of the review, S.D Parker, berated Smith because Smith apparently criticises the Bible for not being definitive enough, but Smith's own conclusions won't reach definitive agreement either! As I pointed out in response to Parker, Smith never intended for his own conclusions to reach definitive agreement! He clearly states that his views are merely some suggestions to get the discussion started on how to better approach the Bible, and not the final word. Further, Smith's argument was not against the Bible for not being definitive enough, it was against a particular view of the Bible (Biblicism) which implies the Bible should reach definitive agreement when it clearly doesn't! Big difference.

 

 

Smith devotes the second half of the book to arguing that the theology of the Bible does contain ambiguities (Chapter 6) and even the theological conclusions that we can reach are not entirely based on the Bible but are developed with later reflection and discussion (Chapter 7).

 

 

Parker was welcome to argue that Smith's suggestions don't work, but it was a simple error to criticise them for not being capable of reaching definitive conclusions. Smith never said they would! In fact quite the opposite. Not only did Parker misrepresent Smith's argument, but he judged Smith by a standard he never intended to meet.

 

 

It's interesting to note that Parker deleted that review the day after my response. The moral of the story here is that you can only judge a book by whether it sets out to do what it intended to achieve- NOT whether it achieved what YOU want it to achieve.