Our Lady of the Forest

Have nearly finished Dave Guterson's 'Our Lady of the Forest' and what a damn fine read it has been!

Set in the dank forests of the Pacific north-west, near a run-down logging town populated by the disillusioned and feckless (think 'Shameless' meets 'Axe Men'), it tells the story of Ann, a frail, runaway, asthmatic teenage survivor of chronic sexual and drug abuse. Scratching a living by finding chanterelle mushrooms in the forests' undergrowth, she finds herself receiving 'visitations' from the Virgin Mary. Before long she has attracted the attention of the bored, the curious, the religious and the exploitative. One is never quite sure about the provenance of these sightings: are they induced by her constant self-medication for her various ailments? Stoner flashbacks? Desire for attention? Or her subliminal longing for a non-judgmental mother who will protect her from what her own flesh and blood failed to?

It's beautifully written and Guterson evokes well the menacing atmosphere of both the forest and of the increasingly hysterical swarm of pilgrims that gather, plaguing her to intercede for them. I'm not sure how it will end.

He has assembled a cast of pretty unappealing characters: Tom Cross, the surly ex-logger whose driven machismo has led to his son's quadriplegia in a work-related accident; Father Collins, a young but rather world-weary priest who finds himself attracted to Ann rather more than just spiritually; Carolyn Greer, a cynical new-ager and Ann's self-appointed spokeswoman who cares neither for Ann nor her visitations just so long as she gets a cut of the profits, and Father Butler, a gimlet-eyed doctrinaire who is intent on certifying the girl as a fraud or psychotic.

I just hope it's not one of those books that run out of steam in the last few chapters. There are a number of themes running through the book: can they be brought to a satisfying and united resolution? I hope so!

Sisters of Sinai

Recently I've been quite good with online purchases, that is, I've been staying away from Amazon and the like* and restricting my purchases to second-hand/charity shops. However, I had to make an exception today when I read about a newly published book called 'Sisters of Sinai' by Janet Soskice. It is right up my street: travel, preservation of knowledge, biblical and female scholarship combined. The Random House review reads:

'Sisters of Sinai tells an extraordinary tale of nineteenth century exploration; how two Scottish sisters made one of the most important ancient manuscript finds of the age. Hidden in a cupboard beneath the monastic library at St Catherine’s in the Sinai desert the twins discovered what looked like a palimpsest: one text written over another.It was Agnes who recognized the obscured text for what it was – one of the earliest copies of the Gospels written in ancient Syriac.Once they had overcome the stubborn reluctance of Cambridge scholars to authenticate the find and had lead an expedition of quarrelsome academics back to Sinai to copy it, Agnes and Margaret –in middle years and neither with any university qualifications – embarked on a life of demanding scholarship and bold travel.In this enthralling book, Janet Soskice takes the reader on an astonishing journey from the Ayreshire of the sisters’ childhood to the lost treasure trove of the Cairo genizah.We trace the footsteps of the intrepid pair as they voyage to Egypt, Sinai and beyond, Murray’s guide book in hand coping with camels, unscrupulous dragomen, and unpredictable welcomes.We enter the excitement and mystery of the Gospel origins at a time when Christianity was under attack in Europe.Crucially this is the story of two remarkable women who, as widows, were undeterred in their spirit of adventure and who overcame insuperable odds to become world class scholars with a place in history.'

The author is Reader in Philosophical Theology at Jesus College, Cambridge.

I await my copy with great eagerness.

*interestingly enough, once again it was cheaper to get this volume from The Book Depository through Amazon, rather than from The Book Depository direct.

HT Evangelical Textual Criticism

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.

Gender Analysis Part 3

Back to 60% certainty now......must've been the OMG that swung the percentages back up!

Gender Analysis Part 2

OMG! After writing the last post I re-fed the blog back into the gender analyzer...and guess what...it's now only 53% certain to have been written by a woman!