Good Girls, Bad Girls of the New Testament

Whether you're a Christian or not, there's no doubting that more often than not the contributions of women to the Christian faith are usually pushed aside for a more masculine view. Enter T.J. Wray's new book, Good Girls, Bad Girls of the New Testament. The book looks at both the popular and often obscure women of the New Testament of the Bible and gives the reader a breakdown of their importance and just what they mean to the Christian movement.

Peppered with history and passages of the Bible itself, Good Girls, Bad Girls of the New Testament was an extremely eye-opening book for me. While I'd always heard the stories of Mary and Martha, Priscilla and Lydia, this was one of the first times I'd read a book that bothered to explain why they were important to the whole scheme of things and support the evidence with Biblical proof. The book covers the importance of Mary Magdalene (not a prostitute, guys) and also women we rarely remember such as John the Baptist's mother, Elizabeth.

The book is definitely geared more towards readers who have a basic idea of Biblical content, although folks who have not spent their whole life reading the book will enjoy the strong descriptions of the various women in the Bible. The book is definitely dense, so this is not exactly light reading for a day at the beach; plan accordingly.

Good Girls, Bad Girls of the New Testament is available March 1, 2016.

The women of the Bible are rarely the focus of biblical literature. This book was a fascinating insight into their stories.

This is a thought-provoking and illuminating exploration of 12 of the key women in the New Testament and their relevance and importance to both their own times and to contemporary Christianity. It’s a scholarly and well researched work, with much historical and cultural detail explained, and it’s written in an accessible and engaging way – although with rather too many exclamation points for my liking. It’s a book of Christian theology, admittedly, and perhaps aimed more at a Christian audience, but for anyone like myself interested in the bible from an historical and cultural stance rather than a religious one, there’s a lot here to learn and discover. But what I really took away from the book is how much of Christian thinking and belief is based on such flimsy evidence. The historical record is patchy to say the least and so many assumptions and so much guesswork seems a poor basis for all the dogma that Christianity is based upon. Nevertheless, an interesting and informative read, which I recommend to anyone interested in biblical studies.