The Visual Word is an unconventional project. The book is the work of author Patrick Schreiner and illustrator Anthony Benedetto, and it attempts to add a visual element to written overviews of the books of the New Testament.
You may wonder how a visual component would be helpful in such a situation—this was exactly my question! Schreiner is professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he describes himself as a visual learner. “I find that I can grasp things and remember them better if I can see them. If they are arranged spatially. Students have had similar experiences in my classes” (page 10). When teaching, he found that his whiteboard sketches during class helped his students. This book is an attempt to reproduce, in part, a version of that classroom experience.
The Physical Object
The book itself is beautiful. (Moody Publishers kindly sent me the hardcover version in exchange for an honest review.) At 8.5×11 inches, it is larger than most books. I gather this was necessary to fit all the designs and illustrations on the page.
The pages themselves are also striking. Navy blue and gold are used throughout the book, and the book designers did an excellent job coordinating Bible themes and genres with colors.
Without being any sort of artist myself, I can see the highly skilled hand that produced the illustrations. Each drawing itself is more the size of an internet avatar or an icon—a small circle with a picture inside. The illustrations are the result of arranging many such drawings on a page along with brief words and phrases, connecting them with lines, and producing a visual aid to understanding each book.
I’m not sure how well I described this; to get a clearer picture, take a look at the sample pages the publisher has made available.
The Writing
Schreiner’s aim in his writing is something we at Knowable Word certainly appreciate.
First, I believe one of the most important things to do when reading the Bible is to read it contextually. For most, this means historical context. This is vitally important, but this book focuses on the literary context.[…]To read well, readers must follow the flow of an author’s argument. (The Visual Word, page 10)
For the most part, the book hits its mark. For example, the way Schreiner wrote about the book of 1 Peter gave me a clear, bird’s eye view of Peter’s purpose in writing and the flow of his argument through the book. This is exactly what I’d want from a resource like this.
There was at least one curious decision in these outlines. Schreiner takes all of John’s epistles (1, 2, and 3 John) together. After expressing in the introduction a desire to highlight the literary context of each New Testament book, it puzzled me to see topics from 2 John and 3 John simply attached to similar sections in 1 John.
The Illustrations
While Benedetto is obviously adept as an illustrator, I must confess that I didn’t get as much out of the spatial representation of the outlines as some of Schreiner’s students did. I acknowledge that this may just be me and the way my brain processes and absorbs information, indicating no weakness with the book at all.
Most of the illustrations seemed like standard, top-level outlines of Bible books, written perhaps in rows or columns instead of in standard outline format, with some accompanying icons. Some of the arrangements of the words and pictures were hard for me to follow. With a few exceptions, the illustrations did not add a lot of value to the book overviews for me.
A Valuable Resource
Despite my hesitance in the previous section, I found this book to be a helpful resource. Along with videos from The Bible Project (from which Schreiner admits to takings some cues), I envision using this volume to remind me of the big-picture structure and argument of New Testament books.
You can buy this book at Amazon or directly from Moody Publishers.
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