so, we've been reading the book "twelve extraordinary women" for our women's small group. i can say with all confidence that it is one of the most fantastic pieces of utter crap that i have ever read in my entire life. it's just about all i can do to sit still as we tear it apart every wednesday night instead of hunting down john macarthur himself and forcibly shaking him until his brain liquifies, effectively preventing him from publishing anything ever again.

 

now, i've never read anything else by john macarthur; never read any of his 150 books, never read his study bible. maybe those books are great. it sounds as if he has quite a ministry going. but i am fairly certain that i will never voluntarily read anything by macarthur ever again.

 

how bad is it? you might ask. it can't really be that bad. it's bad enough that i wrote the following review for amazon. we'll see if it actually shows up on the site... i can't imagine it would be good for business.

 

 

*** 

 

 

i can only hope this is the worst book i will ever read. 

 

i cannot fathom there being another book in existence that is worse than this one. this book is so ridiculously offensive that i created an amazon account for the express purpose of warning the general population about this drivel.

i can sum up the vast majority of this book in one word: UNSUBSTANTIATED. as far as geographical and archaeological facts, and church ritual and history, i have no disputes. however, in my opinion, the remainder of the book [i.e. THE TOPIC] is by and large a fanciful extrapolation of what macarthur THINKS and ASSUMES what these extraordinary women SHOULD be. macarthur has extracted the biblical accounts of these twelve women and created twelve chapters of fabricated nonsense, with no citations, no research, no evidence, and nothing remotely resembling a concrete reason for his blatant assumptions. he has attempted to fit these beautiful women into a box that exists only in his own mind.

macarthur takes away the respect and the power and the beauty of these women, and leaves the reader with nothing but a superficial shell of these heroes of the faith. you get the feeling he is writing [and i use that term loosely] with either an air of contempt that God would dare use the "weaker sex" in his kingdom; or with a condescending pat on the head to women everywhere, a sort of "there, there, now, isn't this a nice little book for you girls? now go off and play in the kitchen" air.

and the writing. OH, THE WRITING. the editors, the publishers, the typists, the people in the mailroom, EVERYONE was sleeping on this one. i lost count of the times the words "of course," "obviously," "naturally," and all derivatives thereof were used before i finished the first chapter. grown adults writing publishable material should not have to rely on such sad measures to prove their points.

obviously.

this book is a disservice to women, to the Church, to Christendom. the only positive comment i have about this horrific piece of writing is that it certainly creates discussion for our women's small group.

 

 

***

 

feel free to borrow this crap anytime if you are interested in seeing what all the fuss is about: i won't be rereading it anytime soon. meanwhile, we'll be off reading some carolyn custis james and hoping to find something a little less extraordinary.

 

 

addendum: said review was posted on amazon on february 25th.