IVP - Addenda & Errata - March 2008 Archives

Pity the Futurologist!

A futurologist is bound to be increasingly frustrated with publishing—even in this day of desk-top publishing and on-demand printing.

First, we must state the obvious: the futurologist trades in identifying and speaking to and about future trends. Consequently, futurologists want their books out there now, while their views are still “future.” But the book publishing industry also wants to know ahead of time what the future holds in the way of books.

Catalogers, distributors, industry magazines want a manuscript—no, better yet, actual page proofs and the final cover—of a book several months ahead so they can get their catalogs, flyers and magazines out several months in advance of the books themselves so retailers and wholesalers will place their orders weeks ahead of time so the catalogers and distributors can ship and sell (and bill!) lots of orders immediately when the books arrive in their warehouses. And every year they seem to want to reach their hands deeper into the future of publishing seasons.

This means reaching further back into the publisher’s “forthcoming” lists. In other words, the marketer wants to be the futurologist, and that future needs to be a sure thing! Something they can hold in their hands.

Meanwhile, the futurologist is saying, But if it’s not fresh, it might be out of date! And I can only see so far forward. So the futurologist must be more prescient than ever. There’s a surcharge being levied on his visionary craft. He or she can’t just be telling us what’s going to happen in twelve months (that’s when the book will be published and the topic might be history by then), they must be telling us what’s going to happen in twenty-four months.

It’s doubly ironic, since these days one of the things they want to tell us is how and in what ways things will be moving faster than they are now—except they are bound by the slowness of publishing and marketing. Pity the futurologists. They either need a quick and dirty publisher or another medium entirely. Probably the latter. Like a blog. But that might soon, if not already, be so yesterday.

Good Friday's Empty House

Roderick Leupp’s forthcoming book, The Renewal of Trinitarian Theology: Themes, Patterns & Explorations (IVP Academic, October) reminds us that the best theology touches the deepest marrow of life. In Chapter Three, he is exploring a trinitarian theology of the cross, with help from Moltmann and Lewis. Here is an excerpt for Good Friday:

Those Old Scribes

Karel van der Toorn’s Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Harvard University Press, 2007) is a fascinating work for anyone interested in the possible processes by which the Hebrew Bible reached its canonical shape. As a twenty-first century book editor interested in this from both a scholarly and editorial standpoint, it’s doubly fascinating. Chapter Five is on “Making Books: Scribal Modes of Text Production.” There he discusses “six ways in which scribes produced written texts. They might engage in (1) transcription of oral lore; (2) invention of a new text; (3) compilation of existing lore, either oral or written; (4) expansion of an inherited text; (5) adaptation of an existing text for a new audience; and (6) integration of individual documents into a more comprehensive composition.” His discussion of each of these is supported by evidence from the ancient Near East (Egypt or Mesopotamia or both) as well as evidence from the Hebrew Bible.

I suspect some evangelical scholars will take issue with some of the claims of biblical evidence. Fair enough. For one thing, the work of someone like Alan Millard is not fully appreciated by van der Toorn (who buries in his footnotes a somewhat snarky comment regarding Millard’s work). But one point I think van der Toorn establishes is that the notion that scribes were mere copyists, just “editors,” and not involved in the literary production or composition of texts is deeply flawed.

And the Worshp Survey Says . . .

Yesterday I filled out an on-line survey for worshipers at the church I attend. There was a section on worship, and at one point we were asked to fill in by numerical order what aspects, or elements, of worship we valued the most (that’s not how it was worded, but it’s close enough)—Scripture reading, sermon, prayer, congregational singing, “special music,” baptism, communion, etc. Each aspect was to be given a unique number (say, 1-10). I tried to give them all a “1” or “2,” but the program wouldn’t allow it, and thus wouldn’t allow me to proceed! As usually happens, I was becoming progressively annoyed by the questions in this survey, but on this one I bottomed out. The pattern of worship is—or should be!—part of our churchly heritage, shaped by Scripture and the long wisdom of our forebears in the faith.

The 6 x 9 Canvas

As I was reading the manuscript, I knew I had stumbled on the opening line for the back cover of John Stott’s The Cross of Christ: “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. . . . In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?” Proud of my discovery, I worked up my back cover copy from that opening line. It was one of my earliest efforts—maybe my first—as a beginning editor writing back cover copy.

The Genesis of IVP’s Black Dictionary Series

Back in the late 1980s (oh, so long ago!) I was trying to come up with ideas for new reference books in theological studies. That was my job. And it still is. I don’t recall exactly when and how the idea came to me, but James Hastings’ two-volume Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (1909) played a role. It was a very dated work, more valuable as a slice of history than as a working resource. So why not do a one-volume Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels? Then, if that worked, we could move on to Paul and “the rest of the New Testament.” (Hastings had done one more, the two-volume Dictionary of the Apostolic Church [1915-1918.) I do recall first expressing this notion in a car—I think it was Jack Kuhatschek’s (now at Baker)—to Mickey Maudlin (now at Harper One), probably on the way to lunch.