Five Books

Theophrastus has tagged me with a new meme: list at least five books that have influenced your reading of the Bible. They needn’t be restricted to Biblical studies literature, but may include religious works or works of literature.

Hmmm. Where does one begin? Closer to the beginning, I think….

Ancient Egypt
by Lionel Casson and the editors of Time-Life Books (Time-Life Books, 1965)
When I was in second and third grade, I remember going to our elementary school’s library and sitting with this book for what seemed like days. Many years later, I saw this book and a number of others books of the Great Ages of Man series to which it belongs, and promptly purchased them, as a nostalgia fix. This book was the beginning of my fascination with things ancient Near Eastern, and directly responsible for my understanding that the Bible described real places, real times, and real people, and that there were real remnants from that ancient, ancient world that were still present and that we could see and touch, and enjoy for their beauty, and wonder at their splendor. Egypt was both savior and oppressor to the Israelites, and so the connection was direct. Hearing the story of Joseph, or the story of the Exodus, my mind would fly back to the images in this book: of noble Pharaoh Khafre on the cover, with his proud chest and mystical smile, his face upturned slightly, listening to God, I always thought; to wondering at which of the Pharaoh’s crowns he wore when Moses confronted him in the palace; to picturing the beautiful, nimble chariots of the Egyptians racing along, after the poor Israelites all afoot. This book put real images in my head of real things from the ancient world, the first that this happened.

Halley’s Bible Handbook
by Henry H. Halley. Twenty-fourth edition, 1965.
I first read this book when I was 16 or 17. I still find this little book remarkable for the variety of information that Halley managed to cram into its small pages. This truly is a handbook, about 5x7x1.5 inches. As a teenager, I had no idea of all the wealth of information available on the Bible, and all the complexities of discussions going on about it. Halley does quite a good job explaining these, actually. It’s written from what was at the time a not unusual conservative stance. Even when I got it, in 1983, it was not too extraordinarily more conservative than the majority of things being published. Nowadays, it seems archaically conservative. That is as much a statement on our times and the state of the resources as it is a statement on my well-kept copy of Halley’s Bible Handbook. One of the fun things about this book is the hand-drawn line maps, which are actually quite good. Another is the selection of photographs, all black and white, many of which are from museums and universities, giving people likely their first glimpse of things like a praying statue of Gudea, or the Stele of Hammurapi. The majority of the photos, however, come from the Matson Photo Archive, the surviving negatives of which were donated to the Library of Congress, and digitized. You may browse and view the Matson Photo Archive pictures online starting here. I still enjoy looking through this book now and again, just as I still enjoy looking at the Ancient Egypt book above.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament
Third Edition with Supplement, by James B. Pritchard
(Princeton University Press, 1969)
My copies of this book have a history that made Theophrastus laugh. So, first I had the pair of paperbacks of ANET—the orange first volume and blue second volume—which provided selected texts and selected pictures from Pritchard’s Ancient Near East in Pictures. Within a few months, however, I was the happy owner of a full copy of the big third edition with supplement. It was a gift of Isaac Kikawada, who was a lecturer at UC Berkeley at the time and for whom I helped correct papers. He inscribed it “To Kevin. Isaac, 1987. After the Flood!” That was because this book, like many others of his, had been stacked in some part of the ground floor of his house somewhere, and a pipe in a washer broke while he was away. My book and undoubtedly many others were swollen and moldy. “Some gift!,” you might think? What undergrad could afford the full Pritchard? I certainly couldn’t. I was grateful for it. And through judiciously lying the book in the sun open to the most moldy pages, I was able to arrest the mold. It wasn’t until 2001 that I bought my own copy. I ripped Isaac’s little inscription out and pasted it into the new book, with a short explanation of its history. Anyhow, my reading, devouring more like, of Pritchard was probably the most influential set of reading I’ve done affecting my reading of the Bible. Here were the words of other ancients, from the very world of the Bible, rendered into English for us. The superficial parallels (this or that Israelite or Judahite king mentioned) didn’t interest me as much as the rhetorical structure of the writings, and the deeper similarities of worldview perceptible throughout these various writings and the Bible: the great piety and palpable pain, the real human emotion perceptible in the Sumerian Lamentations over the destruction of Sumer and Ur; the braggadocio of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian kings in their campaigns; the very human concerns recorded in the wisdom literature and letters. All of these things made the ancient Near East come alive for me, and the Bible come alive as well. It became to me not just a holy book, as surely it is, but also a writing of human beings from that ancient world, thinking and writing in the same way as their contemporaries, with the same braggadocio, the same emotion, the same prosaic concerns. These days, I would still recommend Pritchard’s ANET (as it is still a standard reference tool) and also recommend William Hallo’s Context of Scripture volumes (the paperbacks are apparently slightly revised; I think the electronic edition is, too; the hardbacks are first-edition only, as far as I know), and the entire SBL series Writings from the Ancient World, the latter of which are much easier to tote around and read under a tree. The Pritchard and Hallo books are huge. All of these books, if read not for quick and superficial parallelomaniac reasons, can aid the user in coming to an appreciation of the Bible as an ancient piece of literature. For the faithful reader, such an appreciation is also beneficial, as one comes to understand the kinds of literature included in the Bible better, and one is able to appreciate the differences from that literature, the strengths and superiorities of the Biblical literature (for some of it is certainly superior), and also the seemingly miraculous preservation of the Bible as the text of a living community of faith, while all those other texts’ civilizations and faiths are gone.

Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology
by Jacob Milgrom. Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 36, series ed. Jacob Neusner. (Brill, 1983).
This was my first taste of a Brill book. Even though it was (and is) a photocopy, I was bowled over by the quality of the information. I think it’s fair to say that no one will understand the sacrificial system as presented in the Hebrew Bible without reading the articles in this collection and internalizing the methodology utilized in them, all of which were written by Jacob Milgrom. (Of course, I would say that, as Milgrom was my Hebrew Professor at Berkeley.) The volume comprises the following:
Introduction: On the Dating of P and Related Cultic Issues
      ANTIQUITY OF P
1. Priestly Terminology and the Political and Social Structure of Pre-Monarchic Israel
2. The Term ʿAbodah
3. The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance
      THE ḤAṬṬĀʾT SACRIFICE
4. Sin-offering or Purification-offering?
5. Two kinds of ḥaṭṭāʾt
6. “Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly ‘Picture of Dorian Gray'”
7. The Paradox of the Red Cow (Num. xix)
      OTHER SACRIFICES AND RITUALS
8. A Prolegomenon to Leviticus 17:11
9. The Biblical Diet Laws as an Ethical System
10. Concerning Jeremiah’s Repudiation of Sacrifice
11. The Cultic Šegāgāh and Its Influence in Psalms and Job
      DEDICATORY RITES
12. The Alleged Wave-Offering in Israel and the Ancient Near East
13. Hattĕnûpâ
14. The Šôq hattĕrûmâ: A Chapter in Cultic History
15. Akkadian Confirmation for the Meaning of the Term tĕrûmâ

Milgrom’s method is rigorously philological. It’s all about the usage of the words, because different usage will indicate different meaning, and sometimes this meaning isn’t simply reflective of a broad lexical value for the word or term, but of a real temporal difference. It is only through the most careful and detailed attention to the text as it is that one will truly understand it. This sounds like a self-evident truth, but one would be surprised at the things some people get up to these days. Anyhow, this book transformed the formerly tedious descriptions of sacrifices in the Pentateuch into truly interesting and meaningful passages for me. And the understanding of the Israelite sanctuary as “The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray” is truly apt: the sanctuary took on all the sins of the Land, and these were removed from the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement. The sacrificial system can be viewed as a great holiness engine, maintaining a zone of holiness so that God’s Name might dwell amongst the People. Without the properly functioning holiness engine, the Name can no longer remain, for sin encroaches on the Holy Place. So, this book likewise effected a change in my reading of the Prophets (Former and Latter, Major and Minor). The book is unfortunately hard to come by. Every once in a while, I look to find a real copy to replace my photocopy, but I’ve had no luck yet. Someday!

The Religion of Israel: From its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile
by Yehezkel Kaufmann, translated and abridged by Moshe Greenberg. (Schocken, 1972)
This reminds me to get the full Hebrew edition of this one, which I’ve never actually read fully, and which I remember was positively crammed with notes. Even the abridgment is astounding, however. This is essentially a history of Israel. Hayim Tadmor (z”l) actually assigned this for reading for a year-long class we had in which he covered the history of the Israelite monarchy. This was just when his Anchor Bible volume on II Kings had come out. Like some kind of groupie, I got him to sign my copy. I had just started Akkadian that year, and having a class with Tadmor was like a dream come true, as I got Hebrew (I was in second year Biblical and second year Modern at that point) and Akkadian and history all in one class: what’s not to love? And this was as an undergraduate! [I also had a year with Moshe Weinfeld (z”l) in which he covered Deuteronomy, but that wasn’t as much fun.] The Kaufmann history is solid, by which I mean quite efficiently packed with information, which is perhaps an artifact of the abridgment. There are no lengthy excurses and such in the notes, as there are in the Hebrew edition, for there are no notes. There is nothing controversial about this history, so perhaps this explains why it is generally ignored in discussions these days. But, the thing that should not be ignored is Kaufmann’s keen intellect. It is his commentary on the issues within this history that he’s constructing that is so compelling. His reasoning and argumentation are incisive and flawless. It was with this book, and within that context of Tadmor’s instruction, that I was taught and learned that it is absolutely not unintelligent to read the Bible’s narratives as written and draw history from those pages. Now, although I’ve recently picked up both Ziony Zevit’s relatively new The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches and Richard Hess’ Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey, I haven’t yet read more than the introductions. The Zevit is a magnificent book, a work of truly anthropological value and methodology it seems. It’s very impressive, and already a classic. The Hess is much shorter, and seems to approximate a kind of new Kaufmann, as it follows in part the Biblical arrangement of historical periods, though not strictly. Now I really want to read Kaufmann again!

Well, I was going to include some more books. But I’ve run out of time!

I don’t pass memes along. I just can’t bring myself to do it, though I’ve tried, and though I do enjoy participating in them. So, the meme stops here unless you, O reader, find yourself, perhaps, on an off chance, as the case may be, meme-amenable, so that you might then take it upon yourself to contribute to this meme which could very well force you to jog down your own local Memory Lane, and also, I hope, enjoy a dig through thine own dusty bookshelves as well.

Birkat ha-Hammah

Once every 28 years, according to Jewish tradition (see b. Berakhot 59b), the Sun returns to the same place in the sky on the same day of the week as it was at its creation, as described in Genesis 1. There is a special prayer that our observant Jewish friends say at this time, and only at this time: “Blessed is He who accomplishes creation.”

It’s good for all of us to keep this in mind, the care shown by a loving Creator who makes such wonders for everyone, who “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5.45).

The Birkat ha-Hammah (“Blessing of the Sun”) occurs this year on 8 April, or 14 Nisan, which is also the eve of Pesach, or Passover.

I hope all my Jewish friends are able to partake of the blessing of this blessing! I think it’s a wonderful thing that the rabbis established this, so very long ago. It’s a beautiful thing.

International Septuagint Day

Tyler Williams [in a defunct blog post] reminds us all that 8 February is International Septuagint Day. The day was established by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies in order to bring attention to the Septuagint. The IOSCS website hosts a wealth of information regarding the Septuagint and related subjects, including lists of recommended critical editions, of modern translations, of internet resources, and links to the journal Septuagint and Cognate Studies, and various other things.

The IOSCS is also responsible for one of the most useful tools for a student seeking to learn about the Septuagint: A New English Translation of the Septuagint, published in late 2007, which I’ve mentioned favorably here before. Tyler also recommends (as do I!) two further volumes for the introductory student:

Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen Jobes and Moisés Silva (Baker Academic, 2000), and

Septuaginta: editio altera, edited by Alfred Rahlfs; revised and corrected by Robert Hanhart (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006).

For those who are interested in how the Septuagint compares to the Hebrew Masoretic Text, a truly amazing tool is available from the IOSCS: a parallel presentation in transliteration of the Greek and (where available) Hebrew texts. That’s some awesome primary data, prepared and maintained (along with other presentations, like a morphologically tagged LXX text, and a presentation of LXX variants) by IOSCS members. There is also the very interesting work done by Emanuel Tov. He covers the interrelation between the MT and LXX in his Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Augsburg Fortress, 2001). Much more depth in Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research. Completely Revised and Expanded Third Edition (Eisenbrauns, 2015). [I originally mentioned here the second edition, which is available on Amazon and elsewhere). A good online source, aside from the IOSCS, is Joel Kalvesmaki’s The Septuagint Online.

As these various sources noted above will explain in more detail, the Septuagint is an umbrella term for the first widespread Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible and related books. In more technical usage, the term Septuagint applies only to the Pentateuch, the Books of Moses, which were traditionally translated in Alexandria at the behest of Ptolemy II Philadephus by a group of seventy or seventy-two Jewish translators. Thus the septuaginta, Latin for “seventy”, or its numeric representation LXX, or as in Greek, εβδομηκοντα, or its numeric representation Ο’. The other texts are referred to as the Old Greek versions. But “Septuagint” is commonly understood to include the Septuagint proper and the Old Greek texts. The vast majority of Old Testament citations in the New Testament are fromThe Septuagint is also the Old Testament of the Early Church, and is still the Old Testament for Greek Orthodox Christians, and all other Orthodox Christians, whose versions were translated from it or edited to conform to it. And while St Jerome, in his work translating the Hebrew Bible into Latin, was adamant about the value of the Hebrew text, he also repeatedly and explicitly stated that he had no intention of displacing the Latin translation of the Septuagint in common use, as it was universally recognized as the Old Testament of the Church. This comes up often in the Prologues to his various translations, which prologues or prefaces I’ve translated and made available here. Of course, St Jerome’s protests, we know in hindsight, were in vain. The Latin Vulgate Old Testament became the Old Testament of the West by the end of the first millennium, and remained so until the Reformation. Even so, the Septuagint has always had its admirers, and continues to garner more of them.

I got me a . . .


Aaron Taylor at Logismoi has awarded me with a Superior Scribbler Award, for whatever reason.

Now, although there are a number of conditions attached to further spread this award, these strike me as too close to something of an electronic version of a chain letter. So, in this particular instance, the buck stops here. I can say that every writer I link to in my sidebar is someone I consider worthy of a Superior Scribbler Award, or I honestly wouldn’t read them or link to them. I can also say that I honestly had hoped to avoid one of these, as I didn’t want to have to be such a party-pooper in not creating more work for others. I am nonetheless thankful to Aaron for his appreciation and his kind comments.

The award originated with The Scholastic Scribe, that is, Melissa B., a high school journalism teacher. It’s a really fun idea, a peer-driven award based entirely and simply in reader appreciation.

My regards to my readers!

I greatly delight in the popularity of this blog, and hearing that people find it (and the things on my bombaxo website) useful. I appreciate all the comments and the links and all of the email I’ve received from all of you.

Looking through my statistics for July, I was amazed to see the variety of places that people are checking in from. Below is the list of countries of my readers coming from everthing outside of .com and .edu addresses, in descending order of the number of addresses from each.

Thank you all for reading! Send me a message sometime, if you haven’t already!

United Kingdom
Australia
Netherlands
Denmark
Canada
Germany
Brazil
Malaysia
Czech Republic
Israel
Italy
Russian Federation
Non-Profit Organization
Greece
Poland
Argentina
France
Sweden
US Government
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Japan
Switzerland
Norway
Ireland
Finland
Belgium
China
Old style Arpanet (arpa)
Hungary
US Military
India
Romania
New Zealand (Aotearoa)
United States
Mexico
Portugal
South Africa
Philippines
Indonesia
Taiwan
Singapore
Slovak Republic
Estonia
Turkey
Chile
Austria
Latvia
Yugoslavia
Spain
Croatia (Hrvatska)
Moldova
Colombia
Ukraine
Trinidad and Tobago
Lebanon
Bulgaria
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Thailand
Iceland
Luxembourg
Dominican Republic
Fiji
Bahamas
Honduras
Seychelles
Egypt
Jordan
Belarus
Syria
Uruguay
Lithuania
Kenya
Cambodia
Korea (South)
Aruba
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Hong Kong
Cayman Islands
Morocco
Niue
Peru
Cyprus
Ghana
Nicaragua
Viet Nam
Zambia
International (int)
United Arab Emirates
Netherlands Antilles
Costa Rica
Laos
Monaco
Macedonia
Nepal
Tuvalu

A mysterious conversation

It was nearly a quarter of a century ago. The teenaged boy and his mother went to the newly restored Mission La Purisima near Lompoc, California, the full name of which is Mision La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima. It was a beautiful Easter Sunday morning, warm and clear, and the nave was so full that it was standing room only by the time they arrived. Not long into the service, however, the young man, overdressed for the heat and suffering from the closeness of the centuries old, unventilated church, began to feel unwell. Though he was distressed at leaving in the midst of Holy Mass, he was afraid that he might become sick in the church itself, which was not an option. So he excused himself from his mother and stepped outside. Finding a bench in the shade near a small fountain in the gardens, he sat down to catch his breath and allow his stomach to settle. Not long afterward, a woman in a sky-blue nun’s habit joined him on the bench opposite. The young man thanked her, of course, for her concern for his well-being, and the two continued to talk for some time, with the young man feeling better as time passed. At one point, he saw his mother briefly leave the church and approach, checking on him. She returned to the Mass and her son continued to talk with the kind nun. Eventually taking his leave of the sister, he rejoined his mother for the rest of the Mass. On the way home, the young man mentioned the conversation with the nun, and how much he enjoyed it. His mother, surprised, noted that she didn’t see anyone talking with him on the other bench by the fountain, which fact surprised him indeed. For the woman was there, as plain as day, and they had a good conversation.

Yet to this day I can’t remember what we talked about for all that time….

Only one book saved!

I’ve been tagged again. This one involves this scenario: if your house were burning down (God forbid!) and you could only save one book, which would it be?

Of course, there’s always this proviso these days “aside from the Bible.” But I very likely would grab one of my Bibles which was extremely expensive several years ago and difficult to find: a New International Version Pulpit/Lectern Bible. It’s heavy, thick, and got a fantastically beautiful font. It’s also entirely out of print and still in demand. I’d have trouble replacing it.

If I really had to play along, and not grab at least one of my Bibles (why? because the fire would make me insane?), I’d probably grab one of the following: my beautiful edition of Christina Georgina Rossetti’s Complete Poetical Works which formerly belonged to famed New York book collector George Zabriskie, a gold-tooled butterscotch marbled leather with gilded pages; my second edition parts one and two of Sefer ha-Aggadah, printed in Odessa, 1912, before Ravnitsky and Bialik emigrated to Israel; or my first edition (a second is supposed to be out this year) of the Ash Tree Press collection A Pleasing Terror, the annotated ghost stories of Montague Rhodes James, which also commands a high price these days.

But, in the end, I suppose I’d grab the notebook in which is my work for a complete scriptural index and concordance to Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha volumes. And a folder in which I keep the handwritten list of errata (24 pages so far, kids, and that’s not even the entire first volume). That’s for all the time involved, as I would never, ever want to go through this kind of project again, being heartily sick of the tedium of it. And if some guy is standing by the door to make sure I can only take one, I’d punch his clock and use him to beat off the flames so I could save the other books listed above, and then some. So there.

Quirky Bibles

The 1562 folio edition of the Geneva Bible, at Matthew 5.9, read “Blessed are the place makers.” The same edition had an erroneous subject title at Luke 21: “Christ condemneth the poore widowe.”

Several Robert Barker editions of the Geneva Bible read “Judas” for “Jesus” in John 6.67.

The first octavo edition of the King James Bible, 1612, read at Psalm 119.161: “Printers have persecuted me without cause.”

Another Robert Barker edition, of the King James Bible in 1631, is the most notorious. At Exodus 20.14, it reads “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

A 1653 edition of the King James Bible by John Fields of London included, among numerous other errors, the following at Romans 6.13: “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness.” And at 1 Corinthians 6.9: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?”

A 1682 edition of the King James Bible printed in Amsterdam includes numerous errors, one of which is “if the latter husband ate her” at Deuteronomy 24.3.

An Edinburgh edition of 1689 likewise contained many mistakes, including “ye were not servants of sin” at Romans 6.17.

Thomas Bensley of London issued a 1795 edition of the King James Bible which reads at Mark 7.27 “Let the children first be killed.”

An 1801 Bible became known as The Murderer’s Bible, for having “murderers” instead of “murmurers” in Jude 10.

In 1806 an edition appeared which at Ezekiel 47.10 reads “It shall come to pass that the fishes shall stand upon it.”

The Wife-Hater Bible of 1810 was named for its text of Luke 14.26: “If any . . . hate not . . . his own wife also.”

A Douay-Rheims Bible issued in Dublin in 1816 includes “the weakness of God” in 1 Corinthians 1.25.

In 1950, volume 1 of the Old Testament published by the Episcopal Committee of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine included “skunk” in Leviticus 11.30. The typesetter “corrected” the intended skink, a kind of lizard.

The 1966 Jerusalem Bible, at Psalm 122.6, instructed readers to “Pay for peace.”

The year 2008 saw the publication of The Slop Bible. The Orthodox Study Bible reads at the beginning of Luke 10.2: “Then He said to slop”.

Most of the above amusing typographical errors are culled from Bruce Metzger’s delightful 1995 Presidential Address to the Society for Textual Scholarship, which is available in two places: 1.) Text: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies. 9 (1996): 1-10. 2.) Reformed Review 48.3 (September 1995): 230-238. I used the latter, pp 231-232.

Three Reasons for Blogging

Nick Norelli done tagged me! The latest meme is quite a fun one. Here are the rules:

Rule 1) List three reasons for your blogging.
Rule 2) List these rules.
Rule 3) Tag three others with the thread.

Reason 1:
Originally I just had things to say that didn’t really fit in the context of group discussion boards or mailing lists or comments on other blogs. Topics that would draw out lengthier essay-like musings simply need a home of their own. And since blogs are so easy to set up these days, it was an easy thing to do. My first substantial post, Sun, Moon, and Storms, shortly and sweetly suggests a solution to a problem that many don’t recognize exists. I’m still quite happy with my suggestion.

Reason 2:
I remember way back when, when weblogs were a new thing, looking at various different ones (long before there were any biblical studies blogs) and thinking, “God, the ego of these people! Who on earth cares to read this stuff?” Yikes. What a meany. But blogging really is a way to make connections with many different people. I’ve had a really enjoyable time “meeting” all the various people I have through our blogging and mailing list connections, all of which seem to have taken off into a new level lately, particularly with the very recent launch of The Biblicalist. There are a number of very well-known scholars I’ve met through my blog, some still only electronically, but a number in person, and I’m even working on a book with one of them now (and I mean right now, as in a “the books are on the desk around the computer and I need to finish this post and get back to it!” kind of now), which is exciting, and for another I’ll be proofreading his next book later this year or early the next. I’m also having fantastic conversations via email with scholars I’ve learned much from, who’ve written in response to something I’ve written on my blog. These things certainly would not have happened had I not been blogging. I’d not still be learning at such a satisfying level, either.

Reason 3:
I’m enjoying writing much more than I used to because of the blog, and that makes me want to write even more, just for the act of writing. I’m enjoying not just the wordplay that people have sometimes mentioned they enjoy in my writing, but the very act of constructing essays, which blog posts really are. The essay is not a form that’s well-used anymore. I’ve heard, though, that it’s coming back into appreciation precisely because of the widespread interest in blogging. Short, tightly constructed, and pointed writings are difficult to successfully achieve, which is what the essay is meant to be. Blogging is a kind of writers’ workshop, really. The more the better. The goal is to be able to toss off an essay on any given topic, which may sound like a party trick, but will be very helpful if not necessary for something that’s coming up for me (more on that later!).

So, I tag my Orthodox brother, well-crowned in words, Esteban; my recuperating friend and fellow moderator Iyov; and another friend and fellow moderator, John “Big Daddy” Hobbins. Have at it, gents!