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New Acquisitions

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Because of the struggling economy, Gordon-Conwell is closing their BookCentre, or rather, they are making it smaller. As a result they have been selling off books at a fairly sizable discount. Today, I was able to score the following two books for well under $20 (HT to Adam, for tipping me off to their presence in said store).

David Wolfers Deep Things Out of Darkness: The Book of Job–Essays and a New English Translation.
Joseph Blenkinsopp Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel

These two are simply the most recent in a rather lengthy series of expansions to my library. I also recently ordered the following books from Eisenbrauns:

Marvin Pope Job. Anchor Bible.
Norman Habel The Book of Job. Old Testament Library.
Bruce Zuckerman Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint

Going back roughly four weeks ago, I managed to snag several nice Christmas gifts, including Gordis’ commentary on Job, as well as Konkel’s commentary on the same. Books of interest in the textbook category include the following:

Ziony Zevit The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches
Sandra Gogel A Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew
Francis Andersen Job. IVP.
Jon Berquist Judaism in Persia’s Shadow

Perhaps Mandy will share her own recent purchases with everyone; but regardless, it seems clear that we are going to need more bookshelves.

Posted in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Posts by Calvin | 4 Responses »
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N.T. Wright on Biblical Studies and Theology

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

I’ve been reading The New Testament and the People of God for my New Testament Interpretation class. I’ve found the reading to be engaging all around. Wright has a certain style of writing whereby he is able to engage the reader when lesser writers simply bore.

As I was reading today I came across a section where Wright discusses Christian Theology as a worldview. As part of this section, he makes the (in my opinion, rather bold) assertion that Biblical studies and theology need one another. Below, I summarize his arguments (which can be found on pp. 137-138 of the aforementioned title) and in a subsequent post I hope to interact with them to a greater or lesser extent.

Wright’s arguments for why theology and Biblical studies need each other:

1. Biblical studies needs theology because the original authors wrote with a theological worldview in mind. In order to understand this worldview, one must be engaged in the theological discussion.

2. Biblical studies needs theology because one needs to be aware of one’s own presuppositions, and this is only possible through a “theological analysis of contemporary culture.”

3. Theology needs Biblical studies since theology must needs interact with the stories of the Bible. This goes doubly for Christian theology which must include the stories of the Bible or risk falling into “ad hoc use of the Bible,” (ie, proof-texting, etc).

Posted in Christian Scriptures, Hebrew Bible, Posts by Calvin, Theology | 2 Responses »
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Thoughts on SBL Regional

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

This is a little delayed, but I’m finally motivating myself to post some random thoughts about the SBL Regional we attended recently.

First, my favorite paper by far was The Nature and Identity of ‘Satan’ in 1 Chronicles 21:1 by Ryan Stokes of Yale University. Calvin and I met Ryan at the Second Temple conference we attended a few weeks back, and I thought his paper was excellent. Of course, I’m partial to anything having to do with gods, mythology, or possible supernatural beings. But, his comparison of the 1 Chronicles passage with the Numbers passage that a “satan” appears in was very interesting to me. It’s not something I considered before, so I felt like I learned something. The other papers were generally decent, some more so than others.

Second, books!!! Of course, I found myself salivating over the (albeit small) supply of books on display at the conference. Several caught my eye, and we’ll be placing an order with the conference discount soon. I’ll mention one book in particular that stood out to me, because it caused somewhat of an epiphany for me by the very fact that when I saw it my reaction was interest. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel by Finkelstein, Mazar, and Schmidt: why on earth should I be drawn to this book? I am quite positive of the fact that I am not and do not desire to be an archaeologist. Nor does archaeology interest me over much. After some thought over why I wanted this book, I decided that it’s not as much the archaeology, as the “quest for the historical Israel” part that drew me. Ever since reading William Dever’s three-part series on this topic, I have become very interested in maintaining a sense of reality to the study of the Bible. I want to keep up on what archaeologists are saying about Israel, even if I don’t want to “study” archaeology. Dever had convinced me that biblical scholars need to be in dialog with archaeologists, and upon sighting this book, I realized that this idea has stayed with me.

Third, I feel relieved now that I’ve seen some papers given at an SBL meeting. I feel as though I have more of an idea of what to expect now should I want to submit a paper for next year’s regional. I also feel some pressure off, at least for a regional meeting, as there were many different types of presenters, some dry and deadpan, others who managed to make the fact that they were reading a paper to me interesting. I hope to be one of the more animated presenters when I get there one day…

So that’s not exactly a full-blown itinerary of the day, but there are the main thoughts I have coming away from the conference. All-in-all, it was a good day, and I am really looking forward to national this fall.

Posted in Hebrew Bible, Posts by Mandy, The Floppy Hat | No Responses »
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