The Comfort of Job

Can't resist an ICC commentary! Picked up a 1921 copy of 'A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job' by Samuel Rolles Driver and George Buchanan Grey from the Barbican Bookshop. It's in pretty good condition, a bit faded and musty, but most of the pages are still uncut along the top edge, so I'm guessing that it hasn't had much use unless the previous owners were content to peer into the pages! I'm particularly keen on examining the language of Job's hope for post-death vindication, but that'll have to wait a wee while until I've incorporated some of Albert Schweizer's ideas (from The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle) into my study of Pauline eschatology. It's an amazing book: I can't quite understand why the university have relegated to the storeroom. However, I'm going to have to read Kasemann on Schweizer. No doubt I'll find all my current ideas turned upside-down!

Daniel and Decisions

Studying the Book of Enoch has lead me onto the Book of Daniel. The ever-brilliant Barbican Bookshop has a large selection of International Critical Commentaries at the moment (some in considerably better condition than others!) including a pristine commentary by James Montgomery on Daniel. Not the most modern commentary on the market, but very useful as it contains a great deal of textual detail. The wonderful news that I am to receive funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for my doctoral studies means that a whole new world of book-buying will open up for me come October. I scarcely know where to start: One biggie that I surely want is the IVP Dictionary of New Testament Backgrounds edited by Stanley Porter, another possibly my own copy of Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon. Decisions, decisions.....

The Valley of Dry Bones

Currently occupied in tracing the development of the afterlife in Judaism, I find myself engaged with Ezekiel's 'Valley of Dry Bones'. Whereas She'ol is had generally been understood as beyond the dominion of YHWH, in chapter 37 of the Book of Ezekiel describes God's power through prophesy to clothe the dead bones and restore breath to the bodies. I need to look thoroughly at the language used in the Septuagint. I knew that the good old Barbican Bookshop had a rather elderly copy of an ICC Ezekiel, so I called in to see whether it was still on their shelves. It was, so I bought it. It's vintage stuff: first published in 1936 (although I have the 1960 reprint), Cooke's commentary 'keeps the Hebraist in view' and each section is most usefully followed with a page or two of detailed textual notes, including readings from the LXX. Marvellous stuff. Whilst there I happened to see another ICC volume: Abbott's 1897 (although mine must be a reprint) commentary on Ephesians and Colossians. I've generally avoided anything on the deutero-Pauline epistles thus far, and really only purchased it because of the library plate on the fly-leaf:

'This book is the property of

The Hoult Library

Free Methodist Church

New Mills. Derbyshire

and is on loan to

Rev. Keith Beckingham

as long as required.'

Wouldn't like to be paying his fine.....!

Am also currently waiting delivery of Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon from the university library. I imagine that it's quite a hefty tome - although probably not quite as large as my LSJ 9th edition. I couldn't find it when I was down there the other week, but even if I had, I probably could not have managed to hump it all the way back home on the train. My neck was cricked enough after filling my back-pack to capacity with impulse borrowings. Seven pound fifty is a bargain for door-to-door delivery.

The illustration at the top is one of my favourite pre-Raphaelite paintings by one of their lesser-known brethren Henry Alexander Bowler. Painted in 1855, it is titled The Doubt: Can These Dry Bones Live? (on display in theTate Collection). This is a quotation from Ezekiel which describes God showing Ezekiel the valley of dry bones. The butterfly, resting on the skull of John Faithful, is a traditional symbol of the Resurrection. The word ‘Resurgam’ is inscribed on the headstone, and translates as ‘I shall rise again’. It is typical of the Victorian tendency towards maudlin sentiment, but I just love the delicately backlit horse-chestnut leaves.

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.....