IVP - Addenda & Errata - October 2007 Archives

Uptalking?

Uptalk, or rising intonation (HRT or HRI)], the ending of declarative sentences with interrogative tone, started to spread in the early 90s (NPR did a snarky segment on it, perhaps in 1993 or earlier). And long ago it took over North America, even moving to the U.K. It’s thought to have its origin in the “Valley Girls” of Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, but Australians have long practiced this verbal art. Uptalk was gaining ground not long after I started telecommuting in 1990, and when I noticed in teleconferencing that it was making inroads even among my IVP editorial colleagues, I was distressed. But I kept it to myself.

"L" is for Lohmeyer, "M" is for Moule

The New Testament scholar C. F. D. (“Charlie”) Moule died September 30, 2007. There have been a number of obituaries that have come to our attention over the past few weeks, and one of them with some interesting anecdotes. Moule’s name has been a familiar one for students of the New Testament in recent generations. Anyone who has read his books has been impressed by his careful scholarship. Take, for example, An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (Cambridge University Press, first edition 1953). What an impressive piece of linguistic scholarship! Or his compact commentary on The Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon in The Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary series—only 170 pages but densely packed with insights into the Greek text. We don’t publish little commentaries like that anymore! Then too there is the classic The Birth of the New Testament, as well as other studies. Over the years we’ve heard bits about the man behind the books, but it took his death to shake loose more details. Take a look and thank God for an extraordinary Christian man and scholar:

Times obit:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2590618.ece

Daily Telegraph obit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/02/db0201a.xml

Independent obit:
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article3018392.ece

Guardian obit:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2197700,00.html

And for the anecdotal:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2632442.ece

Building God’s Kingdom?

When I hear an evangelical talking about “building God’s kingdom,” my theological sensibilities go into scramble mode. “That way lies pelagianism!,” I want to scream.

Yet among evangelicals you will frequently hear this kind of talk. And it shows up in some manuscripts I’ve read. Where exactly do we get the idea that we should be building God’s kingdom? We may witness to it, testify to it, plant signs of it or work or build for (the word for introduces a big difference, as Tom Wright points out) it, etc. But it’s God’s kingdom, and consequently God is the one who is “building” it. As in “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” (It’s a spiritual tonic to say those lines of the prayer with the emphasis just so). The best explanation for this mistaken Christian speech that I can come up with is that we’ve heard it said so often that we unthinkingly repeat it. But we need to stop, think and desist.

Be Not a Slothful Reviewer

One of the annoyances of being an editor is reading negative postpublication reviews of books that you’ve acquired and edited and think deserve better, or at least more serious, interaction. It’s not that we think our books are without fault (editors often know where the faults are better than the next person), it’s that we want them to be treated respectfully and fairly. But editors rarely find it appropriate to respond to a book reviewer, though we do vent in our offices and editorial hallways. In my quest for suitable blog material, I’ve been jotting down types of book reviewing sloth (“sloth” being inspired from my current reading of Barth’s discussion of sin as sloth in CD IV.2).

The Joy of Excellence

I’ve just completed reviewing a revised manuscript. It is well written, well argued and so very “clean.” The author has taken on board the criticisms and recommendations of his reviewers, and a good manuscript is now even better. I’m enthusiastic enough to declare that there’s very little for our copyeditor to do other than perhaps address a few incidental issues of house style—though even on that score the manuscript seems very tidy. It is a joy to work with this level of quality in a manuscript. I want to hymn its glories to the blog-reading world!

But then a dark shadow arises from the recesses of my memory.