IVP - Addenda & Errata

Remembering July 4, 1969

Forty years ago—July 4, 1969—I was in a Bergschrund (German for “big, hairy crevasse near head of glacier”) on the Eliot Glacier at the base of the North Face of Mt. Hood, Oregon. I had not intended on spending my morning there, by the way. It was not a glaciology field trip.

Old Testament Spirituality

How about a preview of what’s coming in the fall? One academic book that’s heading for publication in October is John Goldingay’s Old Testament Theology, Vol. 3: Israel’s Life. And yes, volume three is the final installment of this truly magnum magnum opus. If you’ve been following Goldingay, you know how these volumes unfold. But let’s have Goldingay set it out in his own words:

Sins of the Fathers

A few days ago I was biding some time before an appointment, sipping coffee outside a coffee shop (yes, it was Starbucks) on the corner of First Ave. South and Yesler Way in the Pioneer Square section of Seattle. From where I sat I had a wonderful view of a classic illustration of the sins of the fathers of Seattle back in 1853. Doc Maynard, who owned the property to my south, had oriented his streets by the cardinal points of the compass, while Arthur Denny and Carson Boren, who owned property to my north, ended up orienting their streets according to the shoreline of Elliott Bay. Apparently they tried to work out a solution with Maynard, but it didn’t happen.

It’s a Zen Thing

For much of my childhood I lived within a few miles of the Great Buddha (Daibutsu) of Kamakura, the ancient capital of Japan. Kamakura had been a center of flourishing new sects of Buddhism in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. But even though Buddhism was an everyday reality of my childhood, I was much more attentive to things that interest boys everywhere than I was to Buddhism.

It wasn’t until I was transplanted back in the U.S. for college in the late 1960s and early 70s that I read much about Buddhism. And that came via university religion and philosophy courses in which Alan Watts’s The Way of Zen and D. T. Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture came into view. Watts I didn’t trust, since it was clear he was an eclectic borrower and shaper of a spiritual perspective tailored to his liking. But I was naturally predisposed to trust Suzuki. It turns out that I shouldn’t have trusted Suzuki either.

FedEx Treat Us Well--Mostly

Last week the FedEx truck rolled up the driveway of this telecommuting IVP editor. From my office I could hear Mr. Remo, our eighty-pound Shepherd mix, welcoming the truck with excited barks. You see, our regular FedEx man (and the UPS person before him) brings Mr. Remo dog treats. And for me it’s IVP mail, usually new books. So Mr. Remo and I both have something to look forward to in FedEx deliveries.

Well, the next thing I heard was the FedEx truck horn blowing.

The Lost World of Genesis One (Part Two)

Over the years I’ve learned that John Walton has some very important things to say about Genesis 1. A few years back I suggested to my colleagues that we should ask John to write a straightforward and readable book that would put his work on the table for anyone involved in the “origins” debates. They agreed. I asked John. He agreed. Now we have that book.