Category Archives: Review

A very productive comment from my friend Doug has convinced me to post a set of notes I started taking on Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart’s bestselling little book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Zondervan, 3rd ed: 2003). So, here are the notes, headed by the quotations from the book onContinue reading “More on Fee/Stuart”

Moving on now to a more vague category, pre/early Christian Jewish-related stuff. Richard Hess, Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey (Baker Academic Books, 2007). This is a weird book, which is not to say that it isn’t good, but it’s certainly odd. I’d say that if the subtitle were switched around to “A BiblicalContinue reading “Further autumnal abundance of reviewlets”

Well, I’ve been remiss in posting anything about the very interesting things I’ve been (re)reading over the last few months. I suppose one gets into that kind of rut a bit too easily, thinking, “I’d rather read than write about my reading, and who cares what I think, anyway!” But there is at least someContinue reading “Catching up: autumnal reviewlets”

Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950, Mark Mazower (Knopf, 2004). Aaron Taylor, who lived for a time in Thessaloniki, recommended this book to me. As the title implies, it’s a history of the city from 1430 until approximately 1950. What we have here is not just the tale of some kind ofContinue reading “More summer reading reviewlets”

Well, summer is slipping away with barely a peep on things that matter from this source. I apologize to you, my longsuffering readers. It’s certainly the case that once one breaks the habit of daily writing that it is difficult to get back to it. Nonetheless, I have many things to write on. This postContinue reading “Reviews of this summer’s reading”

I present here some examples of the translation of texts in two different English translations of the Philokalia of Saints Makarios of Corinth and Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain. The text marked Faber & Faber is the translation of the Philokalia undertaken by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (of which translatorsContinue reading “The Philokalia Englished”

I have received a copy of The Philokalia: A Second Volume of Selected Readings, the continuation of the translation of Constantine Cavarnos. As in the case of the previous volume, the translation style is lucid and yet solid. The texts included come from the first, second, and fifth volumes of the Greek Philokalia. The textsContinue reading “Some more book notes”

I’ve been very busy, but even so, I apologize for not keeping up with posting here. Blogs have their (hopefully temporary) lulls from time to time. My break was, however, remarkably productive. I have left a mere 143 pages of checking and indexing OTP citations. Woo. Hoo. Yet I have been onlinely slack! Not onlyContinue reading “Book Notes”

There’s a new one out from Eamon Duffy: Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (Yale, 2009). This be ye blurbe: The reign of Mary Tudor has been remembered as an era of sterile repression, when a reactionary monarch launched a doomed attempt to reimpose Catholicism on an unwilling nation. Above all, the burningContinue reading “Yea, verily, Magister Duffy doth rock”

At long last, I am the happy owner of a copy of Menachem Stern’s Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974). My years of patience paid off, and I have a beautiful, like new set of the volumes that were also not exorbitantly priced. For those unfamiliarContinue reading “Happy new homes for lovely new books”