Cranfield Calls

When I was working at my desk the other day, I ran out of space and had to move some books out of the way (it happens quite often). So I picked up the two volumes of John Chrysostom's homilies and put them on the shelf just under the printer and forgot about them. Dammit - forgot the sun swings round during the course of the day so that by two in the afternoon that shelf is bathed in full sunlight - which did my two new acquisitions absolutely no good at all!

So much for letting them dry out slowly: the bottom-most one was OKish, but the front cover of the upper one was bent as a banana by the sun's unrelenting warmth.

I had to call in LSJ (my biggest book) as well as a couple of concordances BDAG and BDF to weigh the b*gger down and flatten the cover out again. I curse my oversight. Now I need to conserve the spine with some appropriately organic glue. Fish bone or hooves, I think.

It still being Lent, and having finished The Book of Margery Kempe, I am going to turn my attention to Julian of Norwich's 'Revelations of Divine Love'. I bought this Penguin Classics version second-hand a number of years ago and now intend to re-read it as a spiritual companion piece of contemporaneous medieval piety. I also have 'The Cloud of Unknowing' (again a second-hand Penguin Classics) which I may read during Easter week if I have finished Dame Julian's book.

The Douglas Moo commentary on Paul's epistle to the Romans is most excellent: his attention to the textual and linguistic issue puts it squarely in my field of interest. However, as I am currently looking in great detail at Romans 5:12-14, I find my self time and time again directed towards C.E.B Cranfield's two-volume ICC commentary, constantly cited as THE authoritative voice on this epistle. And can I find a pre-owned copy? Well, yes I can, but not for less than £40! I have the Sanday ICC precursor to Cranfield and that is quite adequate, but it's the Cranfield that I really hanker for. It IS on Google books, but as is so often the case, the very pages that I wish to consult are 'not part of this preview'. Most vexing. Nor will the all-in-one Cranfield commentary fit the bill, as in its drive to become more compact and, I suppose, more user-friendly, it has omitted the very textual matters that I find so interesting. That's a shame because the compendium volume is easily and cheaply available brand-new. Ah!....but I LIKE the older ICC's with their green cloth covers and gilt titles, and their slightly musty smell and damp feel......I promise I will not let them sunbathe neglected on my shelf.....

The (damp) Homilies of John Chrysostom

Spotted two 'Library of the Fathers' volumes of John Chrysostom's homilies (6 & 7; Romans and Galatians & Ephesians) in the Barbican Bookshop the other day. I was initially quite interested, but it was only when I started reading Douglas Moo's NICNT commentary on Romans, and saw that he notes Chrysostom's preference in 5:1 for the hortatory subjunctive ἔχωμεν ('let us have') over the present active indicative ἔχομεν ('we have') that I thought Oooh! Textual commentary! So of course I went back this morning and purchased the two books, invoking my 15% theological student-card privileges. I wonder where the other volumes of the series have gone? The volume on Romans is in a particularly delapidated condition and needs attention to the spine (my last university's remedy was a nice thick piece of electrical tape!), and both smell somewhat damp, so I'll need to dry them out v-e-r-y slowly and thoroughly. I'm gradually accumulating a good selection of patrologia, including two of the Eerdmans Ante-Nicene Fathers series (volumes 1 & 2; Justin Martyr & Irenaeus and Hermas, Tatian, Athenagorus, Theophilus & Clement of Alexandria respectively) and the Loeb Ehrman 2 volume 'Apostolic Fathers'. But my dream-buy, only achievable with lottery-funding would be a complete set of the Eerdmans (both Ante-Nicene and Nicene) from the local St Paul's bookshop. If I get doctoral funding this year.....(hah!)*sigh* One can dream. Otherwise I'll just have to stick to scuffling around 2nd hand bookshops and charity shops for random opportune buys. Though actually, it's probably more fun and better for the soul to do it this way.

Moo or Peake?

This quite often happens to me: I buy a book that I have been craving for some time (in this instance Douglas Moo's NICNT commentary on Romans) and dang me if I find, completely serendipitously, another book on the very same day that I just have to buy (Peake' s Commentary on the Bible - £4.99 from Oxfam). Now I just can't decide which one merits first read: Moo or Peake? Each of the weighty volumes tick different boxes, the detailed or the broad, and I'm impressed by the scholarly names appended to the articles in the latter: Henry Chadwick, Charles Cranfield, Geoffrey Lampe, Bruce Metzger, Charles Moule, Nigel Turner and Allen Wikgren int al. A perfect snapshot of traditional biblical exegesis.

Of course it's not a bad dilemma to face: I'll just have to ramp up my reading hours by waking up an hour earlier than ususal, and going to bed an hour later at night.