Serendipity

Although still not completely clear of virus I am attempting to get back into some academic reading after the Christmas break. The 'to-be-read' pile has increased significantly since my package of book-requests arrived from uni. the other day (see previous post), so some headway has to be made, whether I'm under-par or not. The most obvious candidate is Constantine Campbell's 'Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek' which has attracted a lot of online interest; some positive, some negative and a lot of interbloggular arse-kissing. I have to say that I am finding it rather interesting, somewhat didactic..but not necessarily in a bad way. In fact the repetiton does go some way to fix CC's principles in the mind (off-screen howls of protest that 'the dust has not settled on this particular field yet, so how can you talk of principle-fixing' yada yada). However it is not my intention to go into detail in this blog: any serious stuff will appear on 'metalepsis' when I have had a chance to cogitate, nay, pontificate, further.

Having finished 'The Raw Shark Texts' (ho hum: promising start, last two-thirds in need of a good editor), I was lacking a good 'bedtime' book: nothing too demanding. Not really wanting to lash out on 3 for 2 (there's usually only ever one on offer that I vaguely want), I trawled around the charity shops for suitable candidates. Nearly bought Michael Gruber's 'Book of Air and Shadows' but then remembered how disappointed I have been in this genre recently, so put it back on the shelf. Nothing else turned up, so I called into the library on the school-run and picked up 'The Liar' by Stephen Fry. The protagonist is so obviously Fry thinly disguised, and the print quality is atrocious, but I was actually laughing out loud within a few pages, so it will do the job nicely.

The daughter, now on maternity leave, wants an easily digestible book for comfort-reading so we tried to get hold of Victoria Hislop's 'The Return', but both Waterstones and Borders only had it in superlarge paperback format (at £12.99!). Sure that we'd seen it at normal size we went into some charity shops. No joy, but I did get hold of a Penguin Classics copy of 'The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English' - a bargain at £1.50, although slightly crumpled. It is currently being corrected under LSJ, the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Moulton and Geden and Funk.

Lexicomania

And again. The Christmas shopping season is not conducive to abstemiousness on the bibliomania front. And yesterday I was put at risk of overindulgence when a friend cried off our coffee/chat at the last moment. Since I was in town anyway with the intention of picking up a few festive wotsits, I suddenly found myself with a couple of extra hours spare until the parking ticket expired. As I wanted one of those Advent candles with the dates marked off (yes...we had to have a massive burn-up to get to the appropriate date last night), I went down to the Barbican book shop which not only stocks That Sort of Thing, but has an extensive second-hand theology/religion section. I just popped upstairs to survey their latest acquisitions (recalling my luck with the two ICC's last week) and nestling on the Biblical language shelves...lo and behold! Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon in pristine condition! There's something funny that happens to my brain when I see (a) a lexicon and (b) Greek script....I don't know what it is, and if the font size is sufficiently miniscule, I actually start to hyperventilate and fiscal prudence flies out of the window. I bought it, on the grounds that it was 'coded with Strong's concordance numbers' and the definitions and cross-references seemed superbly detailed. In my defence I did have it open on my desk today and did use it for my analysis of the Galatian verb forms. OK...shall I tell you what else I was using (i.e. had open) whilst I was working, so you can see the extent of my mania? Here's the list, and it does not take into account the shut-up ones in the small book stand adjacent:

i) The Interlinear KJV-NIV Parallel New Testament

ii) Hans Dieter Betz's 'Hermeneia' commentary on Galatians

iii) Bauer's Greek-English Lexicon of the NT and Other Early Christian Literature

iv) The Oxford Classical Dictionary (to look up Grammarians)

v) Moulton and Geden's Concordance of the NT

vi) Han's Parsing Guide to the Greek NT (see last week's post)

vii) E de Witt Burton's ICC commentary on Galatians

viii) Swete's 3rd volume of the LXX (for looking up a cross-ref. in Isaiah)

ix) NA27

You see....I just can't be trusted around small Greek print.

I shan't tell you that I actually put an illustrated Jeromite missal back. It was volume 3 of 3, and the others were not there. DG.