IVP - Addenda & Errata - February 2009 Archives

The Burden of Knowledge

Life is short and the burden of knowledge is great. We academics have our ways of contending with this reality. Here are some.

Living large. With grand rhetorical gestures you point to all the mountain peaks of issues with which (so you say) you’re deeply familiar. Perhaps spike it all with a detail or two to inspire the reader’s confidence that you really do know what you’re talking about. This evokes a sense of mastery and yet does not commit you to proving it. It’s a sort of Ponzi scheme of scholarship. But as they say, when the tide goes out (or the critical reviews come in), we’ll see who has been swimming naked!

A Mountain of Theology

What is the task of theology? That’s a question I have returned to repeatedly. I like to think metaphorically, and I’ve found some help in likening the task of theology to viewing a great mountain from several angles. This works for a theological hermeneutic of Scripture too. In theology, to focus on a particular biblical text (or aspect of God) and to make it determinative of the whole is like viewing a great mountain from only one aspect, one viewpoint, and concluding that it captures Mount Rainier or Denali or Long’s Peak or the Matterhorn. Those who know mountains know how mistaken this can be in most cases.

A Bird’s-Eye View of Paul

A Bird’s Eye View of Paul. That’s what Mike Bird’s book is called in the U.K. We call it Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message. And you thought the Brits were the ones with the humorless, stiff upper lip. Well no, that would be us in the U.S.A. We were going to try to mess with his Aussie humor too, but it wasn’t allowed.

What's the Porpoise of This Sign?

Lately I’ve been thinking about indicators that go unnoticed, signals within situations (like maybe the economy) that tell us we are off course and need to make a big change in order to avert disaster. How well tuned in am I to my environment, be it social or physical, economic or political or any other? We rely on the latest science, the latest poll, the best social-science or the latest technology. So modern. And where does this leave us?

There is a story that keeps replaying in my head, a story of Bernard Moitessier and his porpoises. Moitessier was a great French sailor who in the 1950s and 1960s made some famous voyages across the great oceans—usually solo. He was a sailor’s sailor, a master of simplicity and resourcefulness, skilled in every nuance of his ancient art.

Memorize for the Prize

Miriam Adeney has finished a manuscript we will be publishing in November with the title A Kingdom Without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity. It’s a wonderful, inspiring book that broadens our vision of what God is doing through his people around the world. There is much in this book that I could blog about, but the following caught my attention in light of my recent blogs (here and here) on memorizing Scripture:

Let Your Bookshelves Be Your Gardens

There is an interesting article in today’s New York Times on a collection of Hebrew texts on auction at Sotheby’s: thirteen thousand Hebrew books and manuscripts called the Valmadonna Trust Library and collected by one man, Jack V. Lunzer. It’s an interesting article with some good photos and comments on Lunzer’s perspective on his collection. In light of my earlier reflections on the announcement of Kindle 2, a couple of things in this article caught my fancy:

“Make books your companions” read the words of a 12th-century Spanish Jewish scholar, Judah Ibn Tibbon, translated on one gallery wall. “Let your bookshelves be your gardens.”

I can imagine the day: “Grandpa,” young Robert asked, looking up from his Kindle 20, “what are bookshelves?”

Another gallery is inscribed with a blessing written by a Jewish scholar from 16th-century Prague, David Gans, that may be unique in the world’s religions: “Blessed be He… Who has magnified His grace with a great invention, one that is useful for all inhabitants of the world, there is none beside it, and nothing can equal it among all wisdoms and inventions since God created man on the earth: The Printing Press.”

Don’t you love it? Will we ever want to say that about Kindle? Well, I guess some are saying it now. But does it ring true against the backdrop of Lunzer’s magnificent collection?

Well, think about that. I’ve got to get back to work on some fall plantings for your garden.

Kindling Thoughts on Books

This week of February 9 (see here and here ), sees Amazon’s announcement of the imminent release of Kindle 2—thinner, crisper, memorier and synchrier. It’s a sleek looking device, and the consumer in me wants to have one. The Seattleite in me wants to stand proud for Amazon’s prowess. I imagine how my life would be better, so much better, if I had one of those Kindle 2s. And at IVP we’re ramping up our Kindle-ready books. I’m all for it.

But another—older, maybe wiser, yet still susceptible to the strumpets of consumption—part of me says, “I’d only use it for certain books. Like that big, thick Ronald White A. Lincoln biography I got at Costco last weekend, or Obama’s Dreams from My Father that I picked up at Costco the week before! Once I’ve read them, do I really want to store them in “physical” space? Maybe they could smolder away into digital ash on my Kindle and that might be fine.

The Reformed Love Books

We have just published Herman J. Selderhuis’s John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life. This is an interesting biography that draws on Calvin’s own writings. I started into it and came across the following bookish paragraph. It’s 1534 and the young Calvin has found the opportunity to immerse himself in the Bible and patristics in the “quiet nest” of the library of the du Tillet family in the castle at Angouleme. Selderhuis comments:

More on Memorizing Greek

While I was at SBL in November I not only got turned on to memorizing, I picked up a number of books. One of them is David M. Carr’s Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford, 2005). In my previous blog I briefly alluded to early written texts being aids to memory. I was thinking of Carr’s book. Here are few salient passages:

The Best “Rejection” Decision I’ve Ever Made

At SBL a few months ago a certain professor of NT spoke with me about his enthusiasm for memorizing Scripture—whole books of the NT, and even in Greek. In fact he had a proposal for a book on memorizing Scripture. His evident enthusiasm for memorizing entire books of the Bible caught me at a receptive moment. It was something that in recent years I’d often thought about trying.