IVP - Addenda & Errata - July 2008 Archives

A Mid-Summer’s Rant: So Why Are We Beginning Our Discourses with “So”?

My wife works in a big law firm in Seattle where she hangs out with all sorts of smart, hip people. There she unconsciously picks up speech patterns, like lint on velcro, and brings them home to my linguistically antiseptic telecommuting laboratory for my dissection. I first noticed this beginning-discourse-with-“so” phenomenon in my wife, perhaps a couple of years ago.

Was Paul a Cross-Cultural Missionary?

Many have said so, including not a few missiologists. Not so fast, says Eckhard Schnabel. In his forthcoming Paul the Missionary, Schnabel does a sort of reprise—but beefier, more comprehensive and, well, different!—of Roland Allen’s venerable Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Schnabel is known for his extensive, two-volume work Early Christian Mission (IVP Academic, 2004), and this new book recasts and augments the Pauline material in the larger work. It is capped by a final chapter exploring how this all intersects with missionary work in the twenty-first century. There is much to consider and weigh in this new book, and it's sure to stir the missiological pot. Here is one interesting sample:

The Machine of Dry Hair

On the First Things blog recently, a photo of this (presumably hotel-room) sign from China appeared:

Dear Guests:

The machine of dry hair only last about 12 minutes. If you keep on using it not to stop, It will be destroyed.

What’s more, the machine of dry hair can only use it for making hair dry and for dry skin. Using it dry the clothes is forbidden.

If you can not use it correctly, The machine is destroyed, and you must pay for it by the price!

Thanks!

I grew up in Japan in the 1950s and 60s, and signs and printed instructions like this were a regular source of delight and wonder. Delight at the surprising and humorous manglings of the English language by those who wanted to communicate to English speakers—and apparently hoped to profit by it. And wonder that they did not consult a native English speaker but valiantly forged on with grammar and lexicon in hand.

Decades later, it's the computerized translation program that puts the fun in the transmission. I still get a kick out of these signs. And I know enough to realize that my own occasional attempts at translating my thoughts into foreign languages have probably been the source of just as much amusement. But you know what? We need editors even when writing in our own language. Even when the author is an editor. As our Chinese translator would have it, the book of dry text only last about 12 minutes. If you can not write it correctly, The reader is destroyed, and you must pay for it by the price! Thanks!*

*And thanks to my blog editor, Dave Zimmerman, for his helpful suggestions for improvements!

No Time for Sharpening Pencils!

Over twenty years ago, when I was about to start my editorial career, I read something by an experienced editor who commented that when one finishes a book, there is no time to organize one’s desktop or sharpen pencils. I thought this was in Editors on Editing, but revisiting that volume, I’ve not found the passage. I’d be interested to find out whether I remember this accurately or not. Anyway, “No time to sharpen pencils” has played over and over in my head as I’ve finished one project and jumped into another. Even though it turns out that these days pencils don't figure much in editing. Perhaps the equivalent would be sorting out my email in-box.

What Is Theology?

I often get the impression that Christians—maybe evangelicals in particular—think that theology is a comprehensive and timeless summary, or distillation, of biblical truths. And systematic theology is organizing these truths in one of a handful of established patterns. So real theology is what comes out of the Western, Eurocentric tradition. All the other theology is contextualized—that is, probably a contextualized version of Western theology, or else it’s a case of assembling theological data around a cultural bias. If there is one thing I hope the Global Dictionary of Theology will overturn, or at least undermine, it is this notion. For one thing—which should be enough—it’s just not true.