IVP - Addenda & Errata - December 2009 Archives

My Great Unfinished Books of 2009

Some of my friends like to record all the books they read in the past year and blog about them. I could do that too, and you might be impressed. But since my New Year’s resolution is to become the most humble reader on the face of the earth—and the most transparent too!—here’s my list of unfinished books of 2009.

I Once Was (Not) Lost But Was Found.

It must be incredibly sweet to be lost, to know you are lost, beyond hope of saving yourself, and to be found and rescued, saved as if from death. It’s not quite so sweet not to be lost, in fact quite healthily content, but presumed to be lost, and then to be found. Let me explain, and beg your indulgence as I relate some memories triggered by the current tragedy unfolding on Oregon’s Mt. Hood. These news items always have a back story. Let me tell you one.

They Asked for a Publisher's Perspective (Continued)

In the past decade or more the need for theological commentaries has become increasingly apparent. Nevertheless, as I have tried to follow the literature and debate surrounding theological interpretation of Scripture, one thing has become apparent: there seems to be a lack of consensus regarding what theological interpretation should optimally look like. Witness, for example, the opening words of Walter Moberly’s recent article in the Journal of Theological Interpretation entitled “What Is Theological Interpretation of Scripture”:

I must start with a confession. I have found this a difficult paper to write. There are many ways in which the topic could be treated. Also, on more than one occasion when I started to write, I got bogged down in attempts to do justice to the burgeoning and multifarious literature on the subject of theological interpretation. (JTI, 3.2 [2009], p. 161)

They Asked for a Publisher's Perspective on Theological Commentaries (Part One)

A few weeks ago I was on an IBR panel focused on theological commentary on Scripture. I was asked to give a publisher’s perspective on how theological concerns inform, or should inform, biblical commentary. Here is my contribution, in two parts.

Last night my friend Tremper Longman in his IBR lecture seemed to express reservations about David Clines’s notion that “Just as a tailor cuts the cloth to make a suit according to the specifications of a client, so the biblical scholar exegetes the text according to the expectations of those who pay for the service.” And I was thinking, “Tremper, you have a problem with that?” (I’m kidding, of course. Tremper’s point was that commentators shouldn’t be saying one thing for one audience and another, possibly contradictory thing, for another.)