Category: Book reviews

Words on the Word Interview with Leslie C. Allen, Author of Liturgy of Grief

Not long ago I reviewed Leslie C. Allen’s Liturgy of Grief: A Pastoral Commentary on Lamentations. The book gently yet steadily coaches the reader in processing grief, expositing and drawing on the rich Biblical tradition of lament. I interviewed Dr. Allen this week.

You write, “Contemporary Western culture provides little space for grief.”  Why do you think this is?

A very good question. Perhaps, in reflection of a technologically advanced and relatively stable society, our culture expects comfort, convenience, and control, and won’t face up to anything contrary. Medication is assumed to be the answer to psychological as well as physical ills. So we feel embarrassed by grieving (and dying) people.

How can churches and worshiping communities better attend to the grieving processes of their community members? In addition to Lamentations and the rest of the rich Biblical tradition, are there other resources available to worship leaders and liturgists to better help them guide their communities through experiences of grief?

One example comes to mind. When I moved my home and started attending a new church some years ago, I found the associate minister’s morning prayer each Sunday was prayed on behalf of those present who were suffering in various ways. It was a different prayer each week, always wide reaching and beautifully crafted. I (and doubtless others) appreciatively felt she was praying for me, at a time when I needed prayer but found it difficult to pray.

You say, “‘Why?’ in the complaint psalms is never an intellectual request for information but a loaded rhetorical question that conveys emotional bewilderment and protest.”  Is there ever an appropriate time for the pastor/chaplain to address questions like “Why did this evil happen?” through a more deliberately theological-philosophical lens?  If so, how does the chaplain discern if and when it’s appropriate to go there?

C.S.Lewis’s The Problem of Pain evidently brought him no help as he penned A Grief Observed. Lamentations felt free to eventually tackle theological issues, using prophetic revelation as the guideline, whereas we and those we try to help are not living in the immediacy of such a situation when prophecy was being directly fulfilled. And Lamentations is able to give a variety of answers, perhaps in the hope that some at least would be found helpful. If a grieving person truly seeks an intellectual answer, one may tentatively broach some thoughts to be tried on for size. Otherwise, it is better considered when the emotional passion of grief does not intrude.

You mention the New Testament story (Mark 4:35-41) where Jesus’ disciples ask, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”  Especially given Jesus’s reply (“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”), how can we who worship God know when it’s appropriate to lament or complain in prayer and when it’s not?  This is the “how far is too far?” question with relation to lament and prayer!

If our prayers are to be real, we must pray from where we are, emotionally and in other ways. We miss a tone of voice in the written form of biblical revelation. I suspect Jesus’ reply was mainly meant as reassurance, rather than rebuke, like the examples of “Do not fear” in Isaiah 40:9; 41:13, 14; 43:1-2; 44:2, etc.

I happened to read Allen’s book just before the Colorado movie theater shootings. Reading it inspired me to find and pray two lament prayers in response (here and here). As a Professor of Old Testament and hospital chaplain, Allen in his book provides the reader with good space for grief and Biblically-inspired means to lament.  A Liturgy of Grief is available here.

My 4-year-old son reviews his first book, Alpha Oops! The Day Z Went First

Following on the heels of a great guest post from Timothy Dean Roth Wednesday, I’ve invited another guest to post at Words on the Word, this time for Family Friday: my four-year-old son. Here is his review of a book he particularly enjoys, Alpha Oops! The Day Z Went First. I’ve typed it up, but the words are all his.

A always goes first, but Z wants to go, and Z and Zebra are sick of the “last in line stuff.” W sits on a whale spout. Z has a zebra jumping. “O is for owl,” “N is for night,” and everyone else thinks it’s not H’s turn, but it really is… right? (Yeah.) He goes right where he goes, because that’s just how the alphabet goes.

I like that Z goes first. A goes last and the alphabet goes backwards. B is “bouncing on… a brisk breeze.”

I didn’t like “D is for dragon and damsel in distress,” because she might get hurt. (I don’t really want to get hurt.)

Our new neighbors would like this book. We could give it to someone else, and then tell everyone in the world to give it to someone else, after they read it.

Alpha Oops! is available at Amazon, or, I’m sure, at your local library.

Review of The Greek of the Septuagint: Supplemental Lexicon

This, then, is the single dominant characteristic of the LXX vocabulary: it is normal, idiomatic Greek. I base my construal of it on this hypothesis whenever I can.

–Gary Alan Chamberlain in The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon

Not long ago I noted that “the challenging nature of Septuagint vocabulary is … one reason why even students of New Testament Greek stay away from the Septuagint. How can one make her or his way through the Septuagint in Greek in a way that is not entirely frustrating?” To begin, you could read about why you need the Septuagint here, and some helpful resources here to get started. Also, I recently reviewed Bernard A. Taylor’s Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint: Expanded Edition, a one-stop reference work to guide readers through the LXX.

I have now had the occasion (and privilege) to spend some time with The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon, by Gary Alan Chamberlain. (Thanks to Hendrickson for the review copy, provided in exchange for an unbiased review.)

Chamberlain intends his lexicon to be a supplemental one, an addition to any Greek New Testament lexicon. (He has BDAG specifically in view.) The vocabulary of the Septuagint is more expansive and potentially different enough from New Testament vocabulary that a lexicon like this is warranted. Many Greek students, especially Biblical studies ones, come to the LXX after first studying the New Testament. So if they already own BDAG or some other New Testament lexicon, the potential need for something like this to “fill in the gaps” could make sense.

The Greek of the Septuagint contains lexicon entries for 5,000 LXX words not in the NT, as well as 1,000 words with LXX-specific uses that a NT lexicon would not carry. For the latter, Chamberlain simply adds to the BDAG numbering system, so that the entry for καθίστημί, for example, begins, “3.b. seek to establish, declare.” Words that the lexicon does fully treat have morphological information (e.g., principal parts for verbs) and citations of word usage in the LXX and beyond.

There is “no treatment of the most common words” in the LXX, so not just a cursory knowledge but a solid grasp of Greek vocabulary would be needed to use this lexicon on its own. I.e., a first- or second-year Greek student really would have to use this as the “supplemental” lexicon it intends to be. “Throughout this work,” Chamberlain notes, “I have assumed that the user has sufficient command of ancient Greek to cope with articular infinitives, genitive absolutes, and the varied means of expressing volition and command. The thousand or so most common LXX words should convey relatively few difficulties.” This work won’t serve the Greek initiate, in other words, but Chamberlain does not intend for his work to be “elementary.”

One might ask, Why not just purchase a full-on Septuagint lexicon? Here is where Chamberlain makes the “distinctive contribution…to LXX studies” that he aims to make.

The dense 19-page introduction explains several classifications of LXX words, and is complemented by an exceedingly useful set of word lists in the appendices. (Hendrickson has the intro in pdf here.) Chamberlain includes word lists and discussion of:

  1. Precise parallels between the LXX and extrabiblical texts. This is where he asserts that LXX vocab is “normal, idiomatic Greek.” He accounts for what others have claimed are examples to the contrary (e.g., “Semitisms”) with the following categories.
  2. Transliterations of the Hebrew into Greek.
  3. Hapax Legomena–Greek words that occur once in the LXX and nowhere else in ancient Greek literature, as well as words that occur multiple times in the LXX but nowhere else (he notes all this and all these categories throughout the lexicon in the appropriate entries, a sample pdf of which is here).
  4. Greek words that occur first in the LXX.
  5. Words with no parallel in other ancient Greek sources.
  6. Stereotypical translations (“calques,” where “translators faced severe challenges in rendering a few common Hebrew terms for which no equivalent was possible within the framework of Greek language”).
  7. Mistranslations (where “LXX translators misconstrued the meaning of their sources’ words, through a confusion of roots or a misunderstanding of meaning of the source”).
  8. Textual variants (more than 200 instances, including his suggested emendations, helpfully organized in canonical order).
  9. More complicated words “involving multiple factors” (“We are simply trying to explain how a Greek word was placed in a context that does not make good sense if we read it as a Greek sentence”).

Having read the descriptions of each of these categories and looked through the corresponding word lists, this reader is convinced that The Greek of the Septuagint offers something that neither BDAG nor any other LXX lexicon on the market (of which I’m aware) currently does. Even without the actual lexicon entries, the word lists and explanations are an invaluable contribution to LXX studies. (The lexical entries themselves are appropriately concise yet substantive.)

His Appendix II is the place to start when looking up a word. It shows (through the use of bold, italics, and regular font) if a word is in this lexicon but not BDAG; if it is in BDAG and supplemented here; or if the word is sufficiently covered in BDAG and therefore not in Chamberlain’s lexicon. Appendix III has a neat listing of LXX book titles in English and Greek, as well as a table that shows the differing versification between the two.

The Greek and English fonts are clear and easy to read (the Hebrew font is a bit small).

I found The Greek of the Septuagint to be a lexicon one has to work at. In other words, it’s not like Taylor’s lexicon, which one could easily pick up and use right away off the shelf. Carefully reading the 4-page preface and 19-page introduction is pretty much required to be able to make use of Chamberlain’s work. But that’s true of BDAG, too, and sort of the point of a preface and introduction in the first place. So that’s not at all a strike against this lexicon. In fact, the user who is willing to put in the work will find great reward in a deepened understanding of the LXX and its vocabulary.

Chamberlain concludes his introduction in this inspiring way:

For many years I have been reflecting upon and experimenting with the question of what the faithful reading of Scripture is in relation to life lived very much “in the world.” Both the method and the goal of preparing this lexicon have been the reading of the LXX text itself (alongside the Hebrew Bible, the Greek NT, and not infrequently the Vulgate) with the prayerful attention the Benedictines call lectio divina. I have made constant and grateful use of the astonishing resources of biblical and classical scholarship, with an embarrassed and hopeless inability to be in any sense in command of those resources. I want simply to apprehend the text, and beyond that to engage the living reality of which the text intends to speak.

Chamberlain’s lexicon is available here.

The reactions Jesus generated (Blog Tour of Theology of Luke and Acts, by Bock)

Luke and Acts, Darrell L. Bock says, is “a very Trinitarian story.” Indeed. The two volumes taken together go a long way to instruct the reader in the mutual relationship God shares as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They also detail the founding of the early church and show how it continued Jesus’ ministry and mission.

The above video is from Zondervan, in promotion of their blog tour of Bock’s new book, A Theology of Luke and Acts. Blog tour participants each select a chapter on which to focus their review, i.e., a major theological theme. (Posts from Round 1 of the tour are all here.)

I focus my review on chapter 16, “How Response to Jesus Divides: The Opponents, the Crowds, and Rome as Observer of Events in Luke-Acts.” Having last semester taken an exegesis course on Mark, I had already become interested in how groups of people could have such radically different responses to the same person and message.

But first, the book more generally.

A Theology of Luke and Acts consists of three parts. Part One briefly addresses introductory matters (context, unity of Luke-Acts, extensive book outlines, etc.). Part Two covers the theology of Luke-Acts. (For the Contents and a sample chapter, see the pdf here.) Part Three then briefly concludes with Luke-Acts’s place in and contribution to the New Testament canon.

Bock makes the case right away for why study of Luke and Acts is important:

The biblical material from Luke-Acts is probably the largest and most neglected portion of the NT. Of the 7,947 verses in the NT, Luke-Acts comprises 2,157 verses, or 27.1 percent. …In addition, only Luke-Acts tells the story of Jesus Christ from his birth through the beginning of the church into the ministry of Paul. This linkage is important, for it gives perspective to the sequence of these events. …So thinking biblically, it is important to keep Luke and Acts together and tell the story of Acts with an eye on Luke.

Bock has spent the last 30 years in Luke and Acts. Many (myself included) consider his Baker commentaries on each book (Luke here; Acts here) to be the standard among recent evangelical Luke-Acts commentaries. Bock writes that this new volume “has allowed me to put together in one place many things I have said before in many distinct volumes.”

The author balances in-depth scholarship (extensive footnotes and a 16-page bibliography give the reader more to explore) with winsome, practical insight into the Biblical text. Of “discipleship and ethics in the new community” (chapter 15), for example, he writes,

Discipleship is both demanding and rewarding. According to Luke, it is people-focused, showing love for God and then treating others with love that parallels the love of the Father. In Acts, one sees little of the church serving itself and much of the church reaching out to those who need the Lord. For Luke, the people in the highly effective early church look outward.

For the preacher, teacher, or student working his or her way through Luke and Acts, this is a book to have at hand.

Chapter 16 addresses “How Response to Jesus Divides: The Opponents, the Crowds, and Rome as Observer of Events in Luke-Acts.” Bock notes that in his pre-Jerusalem ministry, “it is the Pharisees and teachers of the law who interact the most with Jesus among representatives of official Judaism,” often occurring together in Luke as a pair: “Pharisees and teachers of the law” (οἱ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι).  The Pharisees, who ridicule, question, and oppose Jesus, are “the key foil for Jesus until he gets to Jerusalem.” At that point, says Bock, “the chief priests and teachers of the law take over that role with much more hostility. …Their opposition is part of the picture of a divided Israel for Luke.” Jesus’ “new way” and claims of authority “brought reaction from those who liked the old wine.”

“Crowds” (ὄχλος), by contrast, “often note Jesus’ presence or press upon him in his ministry” in a non-oppositional way. Noting the blind man’s cry from the crowd of “Son of David” (“a messianic confession of great significance”), Bock says that those “on the fringe” or margins of the crowd are “often more sensitive” to the mission and message of Jesus. Jesus interacts with the crowd, Bock says, as teacher and healer, and yet “the crowd as a group thinks of him only as a prophet (Luke 9:18).” In Acts, the crowds are more easily swayed, “being incited or worked up to oppose the new movement.”

Rome is a mixed bag. “After Jesus, her actions protect the Christians from the hostile desires of Jewish leadership, but do so with an injustice that will not recognize their rights or release them.” And yet they are still for Luke “the unseen agent of providence in their acts,” even though they may not be aware of it.

It is easy to imagine Bock’s chapter on varied reactions to Jesus aiding the preacher or teacher, especially one who wants to elaborate on the famous “Who do you say that I am?” question of Jesus. Bock guides the reader through key texts in Luke and Acts to survey various Jewish, crowd, and Roman reactions to Jesus, whose coming, if nothing else, “generated a reaction.”

I can also easily envision someone referring to other similar chapters for a quick yet thorough overview of how Luke treats other theological themes: women and the poor (chapter 17), Israel (chapter 12), salvation (chapters 10 and 11), and so on. A Theology of Luke and Acts is worthy of Bock’s other work on those two texts, and serves as a useful reference guide.

See more about the book at Zondervan here. It is available for purchase through Amazon here.

As a blog tour participant, I received a free review copy of the book from Zondervan, but without obligation to write a positive review. The blog tour continues through the end of this week. You can follow it here.

“How do I get more out of my Bible reading?”

“How do I get more out of my Bible reading? What was going on during the gap between the Old and New Testaments? How do all the books of the Bible fit together as a whole?”

It is the aim of Understanding the Picture of the Bible: A Guide to Reading the Bible Well to answer those questions and put “clear, readable Bible study aids at your fingertips.” (All quotes from back cover and also found here.) Here I review the book for another installment of Magnificent Monograph Mondays.

The book begins with “An Overview of the Bible’s Storyline,” then continues with three parts, one for the Old Testament (subdivided into OT Theology, Pentateuch, Historical Books, Poetry/Wisdom Literature, and Prophets), one for New Testament background (intertestamental history and literature), and one for the New Testament (NT Theology, Gospels/Acts, Epistles, and Revelation). Each author gives a thorough yet concise overview of the section of the Bible he (all authors are male) treats. Each also discusses themes within a given section of the Bible and how they connect with the larger Biblical narrative.

What first stands out in Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible is that almost every author has a knack for simply explaining important concepts and terms. The summary overviews of sections of the Bible provide the reader with a firm foundation for better understanding the purpose and scope of that section. For example, Paul House’s excellent chapter on the prophetic books has an excursus on “pronouns in the prophets.” He begins: “As prepositions are to the letters of Paul, so pronouns are to the oracles of the prophets: crucial for meaning, but often puzzling” (72). In the five following pages he does much for the reader to make prophetic pronouns (and how they often shift person and gender) easier to understand. Other highlights are Gordon Wenham’s chapter on the Pentateuch and Dennis Johnson’s essay on Revelation.

Timelines and charts throughout are a great feature. In addition to timelines in the back of the book covering all of Biblical history (including intertestamental times), there are charts throughout the book that aid the reader. Thomas Schreiner lists all the Epistles, their authors, dates, place of writing, and recipients. Johnson uses nine separate figures to visually (and clearly) display the differences in how Christians interpret Revelation. And House has a table that lines up the prophets with the kings during whose time they prophesied. (A couple of similarly simple and clear maps could be a great addition to future editions of this book.) Here’s an example (taken from a pdf sample of the book):

And then there’s the middle section, part two of Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible. That section alone makes this book worth more than its purchase price. It contains the following:

  • “The Time between the Testaments,” by J. Julius Scott Jr.
  • “The Roman Empire and the Greco-Roman World at the Time of the New Testament,” by David Chapman
  • “Jewish Groups at the Time of the New Testament,” by John Delhousaye

Take just this short quotation from Chapman as an example:

Amid this history, Jesus Christ launched his ministry in a Galilee governed by a Roman client king, a Judea under Roman procurators, and a Judaism tinged with Hellenism. After his crucifixion by the Romans and his resurrection, his gospel was carried by the apostles directly into the heart of Greek culture and Roman power. (94)

Having this background in mind when approaching the New Testament will greatly advance the efforts of any Bible reader. Most Bible overview guides that I’ve seen go right from Old Testament to New Testament. But what about all that time in between? I’ve written more here about why that time period is essential to NT understanding. This book really gets that, and covers that period well. Someone with no knowledge of NT background would find this section easy to follow, and even a budding scholar would appreciate the clarity of the historical overview.

While it’s hard to discern what is the work of the editors (this book has three: Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Schreiner) and what is the work of the writers, this book could have benefitted from a little more careful editorial oversight. There are a few little typos scattered throughout the book (tehillah instead of tefillah for Hebrew prayer, e.g.). I found the use of the sex-specific “man” to refer to all of humanity–even when not quoting the ESV–distracting (although this may not bother other readers).

But there is a bigger editorial oversight. While the book excellently helps the reader to better understand the “big picture” of the Bible, it never directly answers the question it seeks to answer of “How do I get more out of my Bible reading?” The authors present all the necessary information to better understand the background (context) and foreground (content) of the Bible, yes. But understanding context and content is only necessary and not sufficient for “reading the Bible well.” I wish the editors would have made sure the book gave more attention to how one can read the Bible, for example, devotionally… or for transformation rather than just the receiving of information. In other words, I wanted this book, based on its title, to answer: How can I grow closer to God as I read the Bible? How can I allow the Bible to convict me of my sin? What about the importance of reading Scripture in community and corporate worship? David Reimer’s essay gets closest to this when he says, “[T]he art and craft of the Bible’s poems offers an invitation to read slowly, to have one’s vision broadened, once’s perception deepened… to see literary reflection in the service of worship and godly living” (54). I wanted to hear more about this. The key question for me is: Is overview knowledge of the Bible’s context and content sufficient to read the Bible well? Necessary, yes. Sufficient, no.

However, even if the book doesn’t execute its aim listed in the subtitle, it is still a valuable work to have in hand while reading through the Bible. Its unique contribution to works of this kind is in the middle section. I’d imagine this book sitting well on someone’s shelf next to his/her Bible and notebook. (It has on mine these last few weeks!) It would benefit a serious Bible reader to read, say, Darrell Bock’s essay on the Gospels and Acts before reading those Biblical books through.

Thank you to Crossway who provided me with a review copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. You can find Understanding the Bible Picture of the Bible at Amazon here.

BibleWorks in the pew? (Not quite, but the next best thing)

[GEEK ALERT] In an effort to integrate my learning of Biblical languages with church attendance and participation, I can be spotted at my church carrying this and this around. If I had an extra hand, I’d bring this, too. At first I feared it would look pretentious–it still may–but my motives are just to use my Greek and Hebrew in the context of corporate worship, while Scripture is being read aloud (in English, in my church’s case). So I follow along the Scripture readings, as best I can, in the original languages.

By Gerard Whyman (http://www.gerardwhyman.co.uk/)

To take it a step further, some time ago on the BibleWorks forums there was a user-initiated discussion about whether it is appropriate to have a laptop with BibleWorks open in the middle of a church service.

While I personally find the idea of a pew-sitter with a laptop tacky, I do understand the sentiment behind wanting to look at the Bible in the original languages while it’s being read and exposited in church. Hence my solution of having a print Bible with me. That’s not quite as out of place as a laptop would be.

So having my Greek and Hebrew Bibles with me is the next best thing to having BibleWorks open during church. However, there are two other next best things that do involve BibleWorks. First, there is a free user-created module that has the Revised Common Lectionary, linked to texts in BibleWorks. I rarely have time to use it on Sunday morning as we rush out the door, but I have at times been able to look ahead to the texts we’d be reading in church that week and use BibleWorks to work my way through them. The RCL module is really nifty. More about it here.

Today I found myself with the unexpected blessing of some time to play around with BibleWorks a bit. (I just received BibleWorks 9 in exchange for an unbiased review, which I will be offering in parts in coming weeks. Consider this a prologue of sorts.) Using the Report Generator, I was able to create a “Reader’s” version of Jeremiah 23:1-6, the Old Testament reading in church from the RCL this morning. Here’s the screen shot of how to get there, which also shows how I have my BibleWorks set up for Septuagint study. (Click on image for larger, or open it in a new tab.)

Once there, I set the Report Generator in the following way:

Then I clicked on “Build Report” and got a report with the text of Jeremiah 23:1-6 in Greek, followed by the listing of all words used in that passage, with frequency counts, followed by lexicon entries. After some manual organizing, I ended up with the below. Resources like this exist for the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament (what I take to church with me), but there is not as of yet a “Reader’s” Septuagint.

Fellow language-lovers… what do you think? And do you take your languages with you to church? If so, how?

Jeremiah 23:1-6 (Rahlfs Septuagint)

–with footnoted vocabulary (glosses) for words that appear less than 200 times in entire Greek Bible (LXX+NT together). Glosses from here: print / BibleWorks module.

1 Ὦ[1] οἱ ποιμένες[2] οἱ διασκορπίζοντες[3] καὶ ἀπολλύοντες τὰ πρόβατα τῆς νομῆς[4] μου.
2 διὰ τοῦτο τάδε λέγει κύριος ἐπὶ τοὺς ποιμαίνοντας[5] τὸν λαόν μου Ὑμεῖς διεσκορπίσατε[6] τὰ πρόβατά μου καὶ ἐξώσατε[7] αὐτὰ καὶ οὐκ ἐπεσκέψασθε[8] αὐτά, ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἐκδικῶ[9] ἐφ’ ὑμᾶς κατὰ τὰ πονηρὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα[10] ὑμῶν·
3 καὶ ἐγὼ εἰσδέξομαι[11] τοὺς καταλοίπους[12] τοῦ λαοῦ μου ἀπὸ πάσης τῆς γῆς, οὗ ἐξῶσα[13] αὐτοὺς ἐκεῖ, καὶ καταστήσω αὐτοὺς εἰς τὴν νομὴν[14] αὐτῶν, καὶ αὐξηθήσονται[15] καὶ πληθυνθήσονται·
4 καὶ ἀναστήσω αὐτοῖς ποιμένας[16], οἳ ποιμανοῦσιν[17] αὐτούς, καὶ οὐ φοβηθήσονται ἔτι οὐδὲ πτοηθήσονται[18], λέγει κύριος.
5 Ἰδοὺ ἡμέραι ἔρχονται, λέγει κύριος, καὶ ἀναστήσω τῷ Δαυιδ ἀνατολὴν δικαίαν, καὶ βασιλεύσει βασιλεὺς καὶ συνήσει[19] καὶ ποιήσει κρίμα καὶ δικαιοσύνην ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.
6 ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις αὐτοῦ σωθήσεται Ιουδας, καὶ Ισραηλ κατασκηνώσει[20] πεποιθώς, καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, ὃ καλέσει αὐτὸν κύριος Ιωσεδεκ[21].

[1] ὦ (109) woe (to)
[2] ποιμήν (99) shepherd
[3] διασκορπίζω (64) scatter
[4] νομή (39) pasture
[5] ποιμαίνω (65) shepherd
[6] διασκορπίζω (64) scatter
[7] ἐξωθέω (31)  force out
[8] ἐπισκέπτομαι (181) visit
[9] ἐκδικέω (97) exact vengeance
[10] ἐπιτήδευμα (58) practice, way of living
[11] εἰσδέχομαι (20) gather
[12] κατάλοιπος (98) remnant
[13] ἐξωθέω (31)  force out
[14] νομή (39) pasture
[15] αὐξάνω (63) grow
[16] ποιμήν (99) shepherd
[17] ποιμαίνω (65) shepherd
[18] πτοέω (39) tremble
[19] συνίημι (144) have understanding
[20] κατασκηνόω (70) dwell, settle
[21] Ιωσεδεκ (18) proper noun (name)

Good Grief (a review of A Liturgy of Grief)

There is a Yiddish proverb that calls tears the soap of the soul. The release, rather than the bottling up, of inarticulate emotion is a valuable first aid to be applied over and over again to the raw wounds of grief.

—A Liturgy of Grief, p. 2

My boss and I have recently lamented together the lack of good lament liturgies for the Church. Worshiping communities seem to be good at celebration and constant in intercession–maybe even at times confession–but lament? We’re too scared or too complacent to adopt that difficult posture. We may think that even if we wanted to lament, we don’t have the words with which to do it. “Contemporary Western culture,” Leslie C. Allen says in his Liturgy of Grief, “provides little space for grief.”

And yet we do have resources, scripts to help us unbottle the anguish and woe we inevitably experience. Allen, whose book is aptly subtitled A Pastoral Commentary on Lamentations, writes, “The book of Lamentations is best understood as the script of a liturgy intended as a therapeutic ritual.”

A Liturgy of Grief is a unique kind of commentary. Though Allen has written technical commentaries and contributed to commentary sets (a few are here), this book is a monograph, a singular contribution to Lamentations commentaries. Baker Academic publishes it, but it is not so academic or technical so as to exclude readers who have only a passing familiarity with Lamentations or the Old Testament.

The book includes the full English text of Lamentations, in Allen’s own translation. Though he often references the Hebrew he translates, he rarely lists the Hebrew words themselves. Language and translation buffs, however, will be happy to see nine pages of translation notes in an appendix. (This language buff appreciated that Allen saved his longest translation note for the single English word “but” in the last verse of Lamentations.)

Allen has written lengthy technical commentaries, yet this is not that, nor is it intended to be. However, Allen does not neglect to thoroughly elucidate the text. He understands the five chapters of Lamentations as “five poems,” each with their own distinctive theme and contribution to the larger book. The climax of the book comes in the fifth poem. Here the grieving community, having heard the model prayers of a pastoral mentor/liturgist (Allen calls him “the reporter”), at last can pray to God in their grief.

Allen weaves together narratives past and present, from the 6th century B.C. to today, in order to guide the reader section-by-section through the book of Lamentations. In addition to being Senior Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, he is a hospital chaplain. Nicholas Wolterstorff comments in the foreword, “[Allen] brings to his commentary an understanding of grief that was already deeply informed both by the contemporary literature on grief, all of which he seems to have read, and by his own activities as a hospital chaplain.” In reference to the repeated expressions of grief in the first poem (chapter 1 of Lamentations), Allen writes:

For those who grieve, but not for their regular hearers, the old story is ever new, always filling their consciousness and needing to be told once more, as intensely as it was the first time. Patience is the prime virtue that empathy requires.

Any preacher, liturgist, or worship leader will appreciate Allen’s commentary. He gives attention to the approach and words of “the reporter”/liturgist in Lamentations, drawing important conclusions that can guide today’s liturgist in helping a community deal with grief:

In this [third] poem a wounded healer offers his knowledge of God’s ways and his experience of them in a context of suffering. At beginning and end he ministers out of his own suffering and presents himself as an object lesson. A fellow sufferer, he points the congregation forward to a new wholeness that both he and they yearn to attain. In turn, we readers who are wounded have the potential to be wounded healers.

A Liturgy of Grief is a special book and a gift to the Church, both its leaders and its members. Contrary to lament-free churches or a Western culture which knows not how to grieve, Allen opens up a space for readers to recall and feel their hurt and the hurt of others. The commentary is “pastoral,” just as it promises, with Allen a pastor to any who will receive the ministry he has to offer through this book. “When believers find themselves in such a fearfully dark valley,” Allen concludes, “the biblical tradition is there, providing challenging words for souls in pain to use.” In addition to Lamentations, Allen evokes the biblical traditions of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, and makes reference to numerous lament Psalms.

Allen illuminates all these “challenging words” of Scripture beautifully. His final chapter perfectly matches the surprising ending of Lamentations. (No spoilers here, but I will say that all I could write in the margins was, “This is real, true, holy.”) I finally realized hours after finishing the book that, all along, Allen as author plays the same role to reader as “the reporter”/liturgist in Lamentations did to his 6th century B.C. worshiping community:

He mentors members of the community by giving expression to the grief he and they have in common, turning incoherent feelings into words and explaining the experiences they have all been through. …He is also interpreter of their loss…. and finally involves them in a creative response of their own that they are ready to make in the final poem…

…that of prayer to God. As a result, A Liturgy of Grief serves as its own sort of book of Lamentations for the 21st century, with Allen “giving expression to the grief” of his readers, interpreting their loss and–finally–guiding them into a response of prayer.

I offer my thanks to Baker Academic for providing me with a free review copy in exchange for an unbiased review. A Liturgy of Grief is available at Amazon.

UPDATE: I interview the author here.

How to Speed Read (Or, at least, how I am learning to speed read)

I have often watched in awe as my wife sped through the book she was reading while I slogged through mine. But I have been teaching myself to speed read lately. The number of books I’ve been able to review for Words on the Word in the last month is perhaps evidence that what I’m trying is working.

Here’s what I’m doing to increase my reading speed:

  • I am pushing myself to read faster than is comfortable for me. This may sound like an obvious thing to do; it is. And it works great. I am still at the stages of sacrificing a bit of comprehension for the sake of speed, but my comprehension is already increasing as I practice more.
  • I try to discipline myself not to go back over words I’ve already read. It’s a temptation to go back, especially since I’m pushing myself to read faster, but it defeats the purpose. Keep moving forward.
  • I “silence the inner voice” that I hear when I read. I got this idea from the speed-reading site Spreeder (as well as the above two thoughts). At first I thought it just sounded cheesy, but then I realized they were right. Spreeder makes the point that when many of us first learned to read, we read out loud. With time we could read silently, but still with an inner voice pacing us. This means we will only ever read as fast as we can speak. But I want to be able to read faster than that. So far, so good.
  • I read as fast as I possibly can for less essential reading. If I’m reading a theology book for class or reviewing a commentary for this site, I can’t generally afford to lose comprehension. But if I’m reading a newspaper or magazine article, or something online, or a book for fun, I try to really push myself.
  • I glance through the entire book I’m about to read before diving in. I actually learned this from one of my college philosophy professors. Even 10 minutes glancing through the book, looking carefully at the table of contents, and poking around for the thesis in the introduction or first chapter helps me frame the book in such a way that I can better read it quickly.
  • I try to speed read when I’m well-rested. Ha. We just had our third child. “Well-rested” is relative here. But I do find that I speed read much better in the morning or early afternoon than at, say, 10:00 at night.
  • I don’t beat myself up if I decide to slow down for a section. Especially when comprehension and eventual recall is important, I let myself slow down if I need to. No need to stress.

As an encouragement, let me say that if a previously slow reader like me can learn to speed read, you can too! I had to demystify the process by just trying… and then trying some more. It’s not as hard or magical as it seems. But it sure makes reading more enjoyable, and I get to read more of what I want.

UPDATE: More lessons learned on speed reading here.

All you need is your Septuagint and this (LXX+ALS=Septuagint Success)

I wrote a few days ago about why you need the Septuagint. I noted:

For students of Greek, the LXX is a good way to challenge oneself in Greek beyond the New Testament. There is a fuller and deeper vocabulary in the Septuagint that helps Greek students grow in their knowledge of the language.

While this is true, the challenging nature of Septuagint vocabulary is also one reason why even students of New Testament Greek stay away from the Septuagint. How can one make her or his way through the Septuagint in Greek in a way that is not entirely frustrating?

I’ve listed some helpful Septuagint resources here, including vocabulary helps. But what if someone just wants to read through the Septuagint in Greek, unencumbered by multiple resources at hand? One thing I value is not having to use four or five additional reference works to understand the first reference work.

Enter Bernard A. Taylor’s Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint: Expanded Edition (Hendrickson, 2009).

Taylor lists every single word found in Rahlfs Septuagint, the standard LXX text, as it appears (inflected) in the text. Each word then has full parsing information and the basic word meaning taken from Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie’s Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint [GELS].

This means that the user of this expanded edition (ALS, hereafter) does not need an additional lexicon at hand to get basic word meanings. To be sure, Taylor notes:

The abridged GELS entries in this volume include only the basic word definitions, not the contextual meanings found in the subsequent paragraphs of many of that work’s entries. The word definitions included are glosses, or translation equivalents, rather than [full] descriptions of each word’s meaning.

If you’re looking to read the Septuagint and do word studies, you’ll need an additional resource. But if you need only the basic meaning (what most people want who are reading straight through), Taylor’s lexicon covers all your needs. (And he certainly doesn’t claim that the glosses in his ALS are anything more than that, glosses.) You get full parsing information, which then refers you to the lexical form of the word, which then has the basic word meaning from GELS. Especially helpful is the inclusion of proper nouns, so that there is really no word in the LXX that is left untouched by this lexicon.

ALS is intuitive, well-laid out, and easy to use. The Greek font is clear and big enough to read easily. The lexical forms of words (i.e., where the basic word definitions are) are in bold for easy reference. The book is not very heavy (two pounds), so it travels well. More than 20 pages of introductory material clearly and concisely explain the features of the lexicon, abbreviations, suggestions for use, and overview notes on various parts of speech, transliterations, and so on. The introductory materials are instructive and easy to read, yet ALS presents its information so well that its user can easily put it to work right away.

It’s tempting to debate the merits of a work like this in print, when all that Taylor offers (and more) can be had in electronic Bible programs like BibleWorks. However, to do that would not be to review this lexicon in its own right. Of course an electronic database (that can parse and provide lexical meanings of words) is faster to use, but a print copy is easier on the eyes, you don’t have to wait for it to boot up, etc. That’s all beside the point, though. The important thing about Taylor’s expanded edition is that it has morphological and lexical analysis, so it functions as an all-in-one supplement to guide the reader through the Greek of the Septuagint.

Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint: Expanded Edition is now on my bookshelf right next to my Rahlfs Septuagint. It’s hard to imagine a more useful Septuagint resource than Taylor’s.

I thank Hendrickson Publishers for the review copy of this book, which was provided to me free of charge in exchange for an unbiased review. Taylor’s lexicon is available here.

Should I get a PhD?

Should I get a PhD? If you’ve asked yourself this question, especially about a PhD in Biblical Studies, you should read Nijay K. Gupta’s book. In Prepare, Succeed, Advance: A Guidebook for Getting a PhD in Biblical Studies and Beyond (Wipf and Stock), Gupta walks through the stages of applying for a PhD (prepare), working on a PhD (succeed), and using one’s PhD to find work (advance).

In Prepare, Succeed, Advance, Gupta seeks to “provide a series of responses to a host of questions that one may encounter when travelling down the path towards a PhD in biblical studies and beyond.” The book is right on the money in this sense. While it reads through nicely, it is also the sort of work that one will want to refer to time and again–especially someone who is trying to advance through the stages of the PhD process.

In the Prepare section, Gupta guides the reader through how to select a program, including what factors to consider, such as cost, location, school prestige, and so on. Perhaps the most useful section of the book is the second chapter, in which he counsels PhD applicants in how to prepare for a PhD–what languages they’ll need to know, what reference works with which to familiarize themselves, and so on. The bibliography he provides (with comments) is a time-saver to many. He concludes the section with nuts-and-bolts advice for how to fill out a PhD program application.

The second part of the book, Succeed, is all about how to do well in a PhD program, once accepted. Gupta goes in depth with regard to how to work with one’s supervisor, how to write and plan for the dissertation, and how to prepare for the oral dissertation defense. He writes:

The point of a dissertation is not that your argumentation and evidence will convince everyone, but rather that you have made a sufficiently plausible argument using methods and evidence that are appropriate to your field and generally accepted.

(He coaches to reader on how to do this, too.)

Finally, for the one who has earned her or his PhD, the final section of Advance covers everything from how to interview for a job, how and where to get teaching experience, conference involvement and article publishing (with helpful lists of journal series to shoot for), and dissertation publishing.

There is much to appreciate about this book. As a book reviewer, I particularly appreciated his section on how (and where) to write book reviews. He covered the basics well. (Key point: measure a book against its own standard; that is, does it advance its thesis successfully?)

If I have any criticism of the book (and this is hard to come by), it’s that Gupta’s section on writing the actual body of the dissertation could have included more. He gives advice like, “Individual chapters should be relatively freestanding and stand as an independent contribution to the overall argument,” but doesn’t spend much time on how to go about writing each individual chapter in the dissertation’s body. Perhaps Gupta assumes that other books on the market adequately cover how to write a dissertation, or that it varies so much from topic to topic that no general advice can be given. But something more about how to organize the argument of the dissertation and make sure its logical flow is clear and cogent would have been a good addition to the book. But this is a minor quibble. There is not much that Gupta does not cover thoroughly and winsomely.

Gupta blogs at Crux Sola. Portions of his book (PhD advice) can be found on his blog here. He writes about his book here. More (PhD Survival Guide) here. Even with all that is available on his blog, this guide is indispensable to anyone thinking about a PhD. Should that day ever come for me, I plan to have this within reach on my bookshelf.

I am grateful to Wipf and Stock for the free review copy, provided in exchange for an unbiased review.