Tag: books

My 4-year-old son reviews Duck Soup

My 4-year-old’s prelude to the review, as we were getting ready to type it up:

Remember what Catherine’s mom said? Only read it one time. We’ll look at it, and I’ll tell you, and we’ll review it.

And now… his review of Duck Soup by Jackie Urbanovic.

The story is about Max. Max is the duck, this duck [points to cover]. Max is making soup. And everyone else doesn’t like it, but only the bunny likes it. Max’s soup tastes not right. Chives! He needs them.

Brody, Dakoko [=Dakota] and Beebe come and eat his soup: “I hope it smells better… Max must be finishing now… [gasp!] I think I know where Max went… in the soup.”

They try to get Max out by stirring, by yelling, by pouring the soup to fall into the drain and leave Max behind. Max comes in and says, “My sooouuuuuppp!”

I like that the bunny likes the soup. I didn’t like that everyone else doesn’t like it. It’s funny that Max comes in and says, “My sooouuuuuppp!” People should read this book because it’s funny. 7-year-olds would like this book. That’s all.

Duck Soup is here on Amazon. See my 4-year-old’s other book reviews here and here.

Where do sentences come from?

So experiment a little. Make a sentence of your own in your head. Don’t write it down. Any kind of sentence will do, but keep it short. Rearrange it. Reword it. Then throw it out. Make another. Rearrange. Reword. Discard. You can do this anywhere, at any time. Do it again and again, without inscribing anything. Experiment with rhythm. Let the sentences come and go. Evaluate them, play with them, but don’t cling to them. If you find a sentence you really like, let it go and look for the next one. The more you do this, the easier it will be to remember the sentences you want to keep. Better yet, you’ll know that you can replace any sentence you lose with one that’s just as good.

From a New York Times “Opinionator” article. Read the whole thing here.

And God planted a garden…

[R]econciliation has too often been discussed in Christian circles as if it took place in a vacuum, as if only people and not trees, rivers, mountains and farms are swept up in God’s redemptive drama. Our aim, then, is to point our attention back to the land, to say what a faithful life on it might look like, and to show that the land–indeed, the entire cosmos–is inextricably bound up in God’s salvation through Jesus Christ (see Col 1:20).

–Fred Bahnson & Norman Wirzba in Making Peace with the Land

The newest offering from IVP Books’ Resources for Reconciliation series is Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation. The Resources for Reconciliation series pairs a practitioner with an academician, who then together address the theology and practice of reconciliation in a given sphere of life. The first book in the series, Reconciling All Things, profoundly influenced my development of a Biblical theology of justice and reconciliation.

Practitioner Fred Bahnson is an agriculturalist and writer (and excellent theologian); academician Norman Wirzba is a theology professor at Duke Divinity School (and grounded practitioner). Making Peace with the Land makes the Biblical case that “redemption is cosmic,” and so extends to the whole created order, not just humanity. God wants all creatures (“human and nonhuman”) to be “reconciled with each other and with God.” In other words, our Biblical theology of reconciliation is anemic if it does not extend to a loving stewardship of the whole of God’s creation. The authors warn against “ecological amnesia.”

Our “ecological amnesia” is at its core a theological issue. God is God of the soil, a gardener who loves the soil and brings forth life through it (as noted in Genesis). But we have worked against the land in developing systems and structures for farming that draw heavily on “our own agricultural scheme” and “monocultures of annual crops.” Instead we need to “look to nature as a model for how to practice agriculture,” engaging in what Bahnson calls regenerative agriculture, founded on the truth that “the ecosystems in which we find ourselves–created by God and deemed ‘very good’–are far more adept at growing things than we are.” The profile in chapter 6 of the work of ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) both astounded and inspired me. (Check out ECHO here.)

Bahnson and Wirzba are compelling: “Surely it is a contradiction to profess belief in the Creator while showing disregard or disdain for the works of the Creator’s hands.” After reading a lengthy description of how Chicken McNuggets are made, I was about ready to become a vegetarian. Regardless of how the phrase “animal rights” makes you feel, animal torture is not possibly justifiable by those who have been called to co-steward the creation with God.

At times I desired more exegetical nuance when the authors dealt with Scripture. For example, though the prologue is convincing enough that we ought to view God as gardener, to accept that God’s gardening work is “the most fundamental and indispensable expression of the divine love that creates, sustains, and reconciles the world” is difficult for me to… well… reconcile with the expression of divine love on the cross. In the end, it’s all of the above. That said, Bahnson’s note on the acacia tree in Isaiah 41:18-19 as a nitrogen-fixing tree and thus “divine agroforestry advice” was awesome. And the authors do affirm elsewhere that reconciliation begins with the person and work of Jesus–it is in Jesus that all things hold together, as they point out from Colossians 1.

Many of us practice “a sort of gnostic disdain for manual labor, soil husbandry, caring for physical places and living within our ecological limits.” If I make enough money to simply buy food, I don’t need to get close to that food except to pick it up at the store (or restaurant!). Then I eat it and keep going with my work, however disconnected I may be from the source of that food. However,

Reconciliation with the land means learning to see the land as part of God’s redemptive plan and acknowledge God’s ongoing presence there. That will require putting ourselves in proximity to the land and staying there long enough to be changed.

After reading this book, I’m unsettled. I’m a lot farther from “the land” than I perhaps should be. I’m not sure what to do with that. And my theology of reconciliation has often not been robust enough. But I’ve been thinking more about my food, its sources, and my connection to God’s land now that I’ve read Making Peace with the Land. I’m not suggesting that we engage carbon offsets as a solution. (Slight detour: does this not look eerily like indulgences?)

But if I’m unsettled, I’m also inspired. What if I allowed my having been reconciled with Christ to inform a ministry of reconciliation not limited to other people? What if we followed Wirzba’s advice to allow our weekly “Eucharistic eating” to “not only transform the eating we do with people,” but to also transform “the entire act of eating, which means [changing] the way we go about growing, harvesting, processing, distributing, preparing and then sharing the food we daily eat”?

That would be an abundant life.

Thank you to IVP for the free review copy, in exchange for an unbiased review, and–as it turns out–a re-examined life. Find more about Making Peace with the Land here (IVP) or here (Amazon). Highly recommended.

Review of Malachi (Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Text), part 2

In this post I both explain the jarring Malachi 2:3-4 as well as offer part 2 of my review of Malachi: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text by Terry W. Eddigner (Baylor University Press, 2012). Part 1 of the review is here.

Eddinger begins each passage with his own English translation, then analyzes the Hebrew text verse by verse. Any reader will appreciate that Eddinger prints the full Hebrew text of a given verse, then reprints the various clauses and words when commenting on them. (This eliminates the need to constantly refer to another book when using Malachi.) The Hebrew font is large, clear, and easy to read. It’s fully pointed and includes the Masoretic markings that one would find in the BHS. Though at first I had wished to see the English translation verse-by-verse alongside the Hebrew, Eddinger’s decision to have English translations primarly at the beginning of a passage does force the reader more into the Hebrew itself. For the intended audience of “a second-year Biblical Hebrew student” whose focus is translation, grammar, and syntax, this is a good thing.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Eddinger discusses textual variants throughout the handbook. He especially focuses on LXX/Septuagint variants that receive attention from the BHS editors. His conclusions regarding variants often end with something like, “X makes sense in context and so should be retained.” Thoroughgoing text critics may be left wanting more evaluation or interaction with variants than this (as I was at times)–but this is a short handbook. The fact that the author highlighted such variants at all was an added bonus, as far as I’m concerned.

Eddinger gives excellent attention to grammatical and syntactical detail–down to an assimilated dagesh lene (1:13)! He treats clauses as wholes–for example, highlighting word order and fronting for emphasis. And he treats individual words and parts of speech. He never loses the forest for the trees, and he gives the trees their due attention, too. In conjunction with the “key words” chart at the beginning of a section and the appendix of all Hebrew words in Malachi, Eddinger often notes rare Hebrew words as such, giving something of their context in the rest of the Hebrew Bible. He seems to have HALOT, TDOT, BDB, and other technical commentaries readily at hand as he comments on the text. On 1:14 he writes,

נוֹכֵל is a rare word in the Masoretic Text, occurring only four times (only here in Malachi) and means “one who acts cleverly” or “deceitfully” thus, “a cheat.”

That is the sort of insight I could come to expect on a regular basis by the end of the handbook. I loved it for that.

In terms of grammar, his discussion of individual words includes syntax and morphology, with every single word parsed / morphologically analyzed and often more detail than that. Eddinger uses the qatal and yiqtol verb classification system. This may not line up with what every Hebrew student has read regarding tense/aspect in their first-year Hebrew class, but it does (at least according to some) carry significant advantages over “perfect” and “imperfect.” (See a mini-primer on the Hebrew verbal system here.)

Regarding the verses from Malachi with which I led off part 1 of this review, Eddinger explains them well:

פֶרֶשׁ refers to the contents of the bowels of sacrificed animals, which the priests were to burn as refuse at a location away from the altar (Exod 29:14; Lev 4:11; 8:17). The phrase [feces upon your faces] is a double entendre in meaning as the act is an act of humiliation and contact with the ‘unclean’ matter makes the priests ‘unclean’ for their priestly duties.

(I allude more to Malachi 2:3 here.)

I’ve found Malachi to be an indispensable companion for reading through Malachi in Hebrew. I do have one minor critique and one larger one, though.

First, the English Bible versification at the end of Malachi gives the book four chapters; it is just three in the Hebrew text. Malachi nowhere notes this (although it does note regarding the last three verses that “some LXX texts have these verses reordered.” Again, this is a handbook on the Hebrew text, but a simple explanatory note here as to why English Bibles have four chapters in Malachi and Hebrew Bibles three would have been beneficial.

Second, I found myself often distracted (though I didn’t want to be) by the presence of typographical errors or comma splices or run-on sentences. I hope future printings can correct these, since they take away from an otherwise great book. There would be no benefit in listing typos here, but there were some 20 or more spots where either a word was misspelled, there was disagreement of number between verb and subject, punctuation was missing, and so on. Fortunately the vast majority of these are in English and so easy enough to spot. (I.e., the reader can trust the Hebrew here.) But the author’s English translation sections especially seemed to be in want of a closer edit. I do hope future printings or editions can make adjustments here; I imagine students of Malachi will want to make use of this book for years to come.

Eddinger in the end is a worthy guide through the Hebrew of Malachi. The prophets often (suddenly!) shifted pronouns or speakers or subjects in their writing. Who is talking now: God, the prophet, both, or the people? Eddinger coolly walks the reader through such grammatical challenges, and others besides.

While the obvious use of Malachi is as a reference work in which to look up a given passage, it reads well as a whole, too. I eagerly await future books in the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series.

Thank you to Baylor University Press for providing me a free copy, in exchange for an unbiased review (which ends up being a two-part review in this case–by my choice). You can find the Baylor product page for Malachi: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text here. It’s on Amazon here.

Review of Malachi (Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Text), part 1

“Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord Almighty.

–Malachi 2:3-4 (NIV)

Although Words on the Word has since taken fuller shape, two primary motivations in my beginning this blog were (a) to read and review good books and commentaries and (b) to interact with the original Biblical languages. This post offers a good opportunity to do both. Here I review Malachi: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text by Terry W. Eddigner (Baylor University Press, 2012).

The Hebrew prophet Malachi holds a significant place in the Hebrew Bible. Malachi is the last prophet of the Book of the Twelve (minor prophets) and the last book in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The last two verses of Malachi are Yahweh’s promise to send the prophet Elijah–a promise fulfilled, Christians believe, by John the Baptist. It sets up the beginning of the Gospels well.

The Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series is a deliberately unique contribution to the field of commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. Okay, I suppose all commentary series intend to make unique contributions, but this one really does. It fills a void. Although the student of the Hebrew of the minor prophets is fortunate to perhaps be able to access Baker’s fine exegetical commentary (Malachi is in this volume), there is still a dearth in general of OT commentaries that comment extensively on the Hebrew text and grammar. In that sense I’ve been happy to see the careful attention this series gives to the Hebrew text. (Bonus: this book and some the others in the series that I’ve briefly glanced through give good treatment of discourse analysis.)

It’s important to note from the outset that Malachi (as a book in this series) is not a “full blown commentary.” It’s a “Handbook on the Hebrew Text,” which does “not attempt to replace the second step of consulting commentaries and secondary literature….” In keeping with this aim, Terry W. Eddinger gives the reader a short (five pages) introduction, yet it is plenty to be able to work well within the Hebrew text of Malachi. (And a bibliography with references throughout points readers in the direction of other Malachi-related literature.) Eddinger especially emphasizes the structure and “literary forms and devices” in Malachi. He views the structure of Malachi as consisting of a superscription, six oracles, and two appendices. Literarily, Eddinger says, Malachi is a prose and poetry hybrid, “perhaps the best example of such in the Hebrew Bible.”

There is a linguistic glossary at the back of the book, so when Eddinger says, “Hortatory style is the predominate literary form and is found in all but two verses,” the uninitiated reader can quickly determine that hortatory means “a word, clause, or sentence of direct dialogue.” This is perhaps an over-general or vague definition (the Jonah book in this series has, “Hortatory discourse is meant to exhort someone to act in a particular manner”), but I found that not to be the norm for the succinct and useful glossary.

One commendable feature is the “key words” chart at the beginning of each oracle. Malachi is the first book in this series to offer such a feature. Eddinger highlights important words that the reader will want to know as he or she makes his or her way through a pericope. Then–in what was my favorite part of this book–Eddinger has a chart at the back of the book that lists every Hebrew word in Malachi and verse references for all its occurrences. (Future printings or editions of this book could soup up this chart even more with English glosses of the Hebrew words, for the purposes of vocabulary acquisition.) Several times in making my way through Malachi and this handbook, I referred to the Hebrew word chart.  A second appendix lists all the times the “divine messenger formula” (e.g., אָמַר יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת) occurs in Malachi.

Eddinger begins each passage with his own English translation, then analyzes the Hebrew text verse by verse. In part 2 of this review (to post Monday), I’ll look at the guts of Eddinger’s handbook, that is, the verse-by-verse exposition, including his explanation of the verses that led off this post.

UPDATE: Part 2 of the review is here.

Thank you to Baylor University Press for providing me a free copy, in exchange for an unbiased review (which ends up being a two-part review in this case–by my choice). You can find the Baylor product page for Malachi: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text here. It’s on Amazon here.

My 4-year-old son reviews The Jesus Storybook Bible

A long-time family favorite has been The Jesus Storybook Bible (subtitle: Every Story Whispers His Name). Friend and fellow blogger Robbie and his wife gave us this sweet gift when our now four-year-old was born.

Following on the heels of his first book review, my four-year-old here reviews The Jesus Storybook Bible. (Cool thing: the author of the book he reviewed blogged about it here.) As before, I did the typing, but the words below are all his. For the purposes of this review, he focuses on “The terrible lie: Adam and Eve lose everything, from Genesis 3.”

This story is about a snake, and the two people that God told them not to eat the food on that tree… and they did. And a big lie–a really, really, really, really big lie–came into the world. And then it felt like everything was going to break. And I even know that story.

God had to send them out of the garden, because they were being naughty. God sent them away. God gave them a note that said that they were going to get back to their place. God said he was going to forgive them.

It’s wroten [written] good. This book has a bird on it. And bats might come into the house and might like the book, just in case if they come in the house. [Editorial note from dad: four-year-old son just saw a news story about bats.] It’s a good book. It could help somebody if they were crying, and if they were sad, and nothing could work… except only if a book could work, and only if someone said Jesus StoryBible Book and they could buy it.

Here’s a sample page of the Bible, from Zondervan’s product page (click for larger):

There’s a great accompanying website for The Jesus Storybook Bible, with sample pages, audio files from the audio version, and more. You can also find the book on Amazon.

Forsaken: Did God the Father kill Jesus on the cross?

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

“I and the Father are one.”

Wondering how these three verses of Scripture fit together? I often have. Cognitive dissonance finally got the better of me, and I decided I should try to think through this one a little more deeply. To that end I read Thomas H. McCall’s Forsaken: The Trinity and the Cross, and Why It Matters (InterVarsity Press, 2012). Here, on Magnificent Monograph Monday, I offer a review of the book. (Thanks to IVP for the free review copy, in exchange for an unbiased review.)

First, the very short summary of my review, if you want to cut to the chase and head off and do something else after this next paragraph.

McCall tackles some difficult questions: “Did God forsake Jesus [on the cross]? Did the Father turn his back on the Son in rage? Was the Trinity ruptured or broken on that day?” His answers and arguments are rooted in Scripture, the history of interpretation of that Scripture, and are consistently compelling. McCall really helped me through my own struggles to grasp some of these questions, leading me to a fuller understanding of the life of the Trinity and the relationship between its persons, particularly in terms of what happened on the cross. And he spells out the implications of his assertions beautifully. God is not divided, he concludes, but God–all of God–is for us. So we can rejoice and rest secure in that. Five stars, no doubt.

McCall writes “not for other scholars…but for pastors, students and friends–indeed, for anyone genuinely interested in moving toward a deeper understanding of God’s being and actions.” Forsaken is heavy theological lifting for a non-scholar (and not lightweight for a scholar, either), but the effort is well worth it. McCall answers some very common questions people ask (or are scared to ask and should ask) about the Trinity, also showing ramifications for our relationship to God.

Forsaken has four chapters. Each asks a theological question, addresses it, then concludes with some theological assertions to avoid, some to affirm, and why it matters.

The first chapter asks, “Was the Trinity Broken?” Here McCall discusses the theological concept of “dereliction,” or the idea that Jesus was abandoned by God on the cross. Recent theology notwithstanding, McCall makes a strong Scriptural case that God the Father did not forsake the Son on the Cross. Understanding Psalm 22 as an “interpretive key” to Jesus’ death, McCall writes:

No, the only text of Scripture that we can understand to address this question directly, Psalm 22:24, says that the Father did not hide his face from his Son. To the contrary, he has “listened to his cry for help.”

Not only that, the author argues, but if God truly had forsaken Jesus, why would Jesus bother–after his cry–to say, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”? Jesus “prefaces his last words with a sense of deep relational intimacy: Jesus addresses his ‘Father.'”

In chapter two McCall asks, “Just what are we to make of the biblical witness to the wrath of God? Is it opposed to his love? Is it a ‘dark side’ to God that is inconsistent with his holiness or with his mercy?” He makes a pretty hard-to-argue-with case that “the biblical witness does not set love and wrath in opposition to one another.” McCall, I thought, was at his best in this chapter when he highlighted multiple New Testament references to wrath–not only the wrath of God generally, but Jesus’ wrath specifically. So there’s no Old Testament God=wrath, New Testament God=mercy conclusion to be drawn from the Bible. The author utilizes the theological categories of divine impassibility and simplicity to show that “wrath” as God exhibits it is not what we might envision in human anger; rather, it is an expression of holy love.

McCall’s third chapter asks whether God’s divine foreknowledge means that God killed Jesus, since he knew it was going to happen, could have stopped it, but didn’t. “God’s plan was to use the death of Jesus for his purposes and for our good,” but God himself did not cause the death. As Acts so often makes clear, McCall points out, “The apostolic proclamation of the gospel places the fault and blame on the sinners who are responsible for the death of Jesus.”

Chapter four articulates a robust theology of justification (forensic; instantaneous; by which I enter into the life of God) and sanctification (separation unto God; progressive; by which I grow in communion with God). Page 145 and following has a brilliant interpretation of Paul’s famous Romans 7:14-25 passage where he (seemingly) wrestles with sin.

One difficult implication of this book for me as a worship leader (and coach of worship leaders) is that, if McCall is right, we may be singing some not-quite-right theology in two well-known songs. “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” has a line that says, “The Father turns his face away.” And the song “In Christ Alone” says, “…till on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” McCall addresses these two claims head on and (in my opinion, successfully) refutes them. The Father did not turn his face away (see the block quote above). And to say that God the Son mollified the wrath of God the Father is to bifurcate the Trinity in some unorthodox ways. (!)

I’m not sure if it’s generally accepted for a book reviewer to admit to shedding tears when reading a review copy. (Objectivity! Right?) No matter. McCall’s concluding postscript (“A Personal Theological Testimony”) moved me to tears, as he recounted the difference “the trinitarian gospel” made for him and his family as they processed the death of his father.

Getting the theological details of the Trinity right (as best we can!) matters. It matters for our understanding of God, our relationship with him, and for all of life. In the life and truths of the Trinity–properly understood, and I think McCall a good guide here–there is great comfort. We see a God who, as McCall says, is for us. We find a God who has granted us victory over sin and death, making it possible for us to enter into communion with the triune God of love.

You can find Forsaken here at the IVP product page or on Amazon.

Avoid plagiarism like the plague

Charles Halton writes about how one can avoid plagiarism. He links in his post to a set of tutorials from Duke that help students identify (and avoid) plagiarism. Good reading for all. I’m not a professor, but… oh, the stories I could tell!

And as for Bart’s presence above… one good Simpsons/academia piece of media deserves another.

July 2012 Biblical Studies Carnival

Head over to Reading Acts for the July “Biblical Studies Carnival.” It’s a compilation of many, many posts on all things Biblical studies on the blogosphere in July. There is some really good stuff there, and Phil has done a great job gathering some informative links. I’m thankful to have received mention in the carnival (of my July posts here, here, and here).