Mmmmmm.....New Greek Lexicon....

Blimey! Returned the university library copy of the Patristic Greek Lexicon to them by post today......as it weighs nearly 3kg it was NOT cheap, not even sending it by Parcelforce 48hr. Still, it's cheaper than the train fare to the midlands. By an elegant coincidence, just as I was about to leave for the post office, the DHL van arrived to deliver MY OWN COPY OF IT!!!!! Yes - I bit the very expensive bullet, courtesy of my anticipated funding, and now have a Lampe of my own to illuminate my reading. Mmmm...brand new book with crisp clean pages......mmmm.......small Greek text......mmmm!

Egypt Calls

The library's recall of Lampe's Patristic Lexicon has left me in a bit of an expensive quandary: to buy my own copy or not? It's vastly expensive, but I could spend pounds and pounds if I indulge in constantly recalling it myself for redelivery. Would that there was an online version! If I don't eat for a month or two......

I've been reading, in a very desultory fashion, C.J.Sansom's Revelation......and to be honest I'm not really getting into it. Maybe it's the 'historical mystery' genre ('Morse in hose', as the hero has been dubbed) - not really my thing although I really enjoyed The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl - but I think that I'm not really enjoying the way that it's written....it seems almost too straightforward and clear, almost as if it were written for teenagers. Writing by numbers, if you like. I probably won't persist as I picked up a copy of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and, having read the first few pages the quality of the prose just hit me between the eyes. Fantastic! The languourousness of humid Alexandria reminds me (unsurprisingly) of Naguib Mahfouz' Cairo Trilogy which are among my absolute favourite books. It makes me want to read the poems of Constantine Cavafy again.I hope I'll be eventually able to source a charity shop copy of my own. Still waiting for Sum to arrive, but when it does, I can slot the separate tales between the Durrell chapters.

An Old Man: by Constantine Cavafy.

At the noisy end of the cafe,

head bent over the table, an old man sits alone,

a newspaper in front of him.

And in the miserable banality of old age

he thinks how little he enjoyed the years

when he had strength, eloquence, and looks.

He knows he's aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.

Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.

So brief an interval, so brief.

And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,

how he always believed - what madness -

that cheat who said: "Tomorrow. You have plenty of time."

He remembers impulses bridled, the joy he sacrificed.

Every chance he lost

now mocks his senseless caution.

But so much thinking, so much remembering

makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep,

his head resting on the cafe table.

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.....

A Lampe to Read By

The courier has just brought me G W H Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon from the uni. library. How exciting! It's actually not as old as I'd imagined it to be: I thought Lampe was some bewhiskered Victorian clergyman-scholar, but in fact the publication date is 1961. Being an OUP publication, it's very much like my large Liddell-Scott-Jones in format (not quite so bulky though), but of course specialises in theological and ecclesiastical vocabulary, so I don't have to wade through all the classical forms and definitions first. I can't wait to get started!

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.