Grace & Knowledge Blog

Today we stopped by the public library for a book sale.  There was not as much available this time as at there was at the bigger sale at the end of the summer.  I picked up three hardbacks and a paperback for $3.50. including 

• Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World ;
• a spiritual memoir;
• a book about a heist
• a collection of short pieces by Garrison Keillor

Tags: books, oxford library sale

Back in Dec 2013, I posted some comments on a subgenre that might be called "Christian time travel fiction".  At that point I had read 3 books in which someone travels back in time to first-century Palestine.  

Recently I read a fourth one, The Resurrection Wager by Christopher Coates.  In this short novel, a research institute in Boston develops time travel technology and decides to test it out by sending a team back to document the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  In the process, they find out firsthand the potential of time travel to alter history.  

I enjoyed the book, although the writing was pretty clumsy.  (I gave it 3 stars at Amazon.)

Tags: books

This year the public library in Oxford held its used book sale a month later than usual.  But as usual, there were lots of good bargains with hardback books at a dollar apiece and paperbacks at 50 cents.  I spent $9 this year on five hardbacks and eight paperbacks, including

• a World War 2 spy story.
• a book on early Christian history.
• a book on the history of science.
• a book of witty paradoxical sayings.
• a novel by P.G. Wodehouse.
• a "theography" of Jesus.
• a memoir by an historian.
• a collection of Jewish folktales.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

On March 23 the Center for Judaic-Christian Studies in Dayton will be sponsoring a series of lectures on Christology by Bible scholar Michael S. Heiser.  Dr Heiser will be explaining the biblical and historical roots of the high Christology of the first Christians and the New Testament.  This is one of the topics he covers in his book The Unseen Realm.   

To help set the stage for these lectures, I wrote an article for the Center's March 2019 Haverim Update giving a quick summary of the topic.  I have also posted it in Issue 34 at the Grace & Knowledge website.

Tags: books, grace and knowledge articles, lectures

At the Oxford public library's annual book sale, I picked up one hardback book and 8 paperbacks for $5.  Some of them were

• a book on the misapplication of Gen 9 to support American slavery.
• a book about American fascination with end-time prophecy.
• a couple of classic baseball books;
• a book on Christian missions;
• Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Poetry;
• a collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories.
• a book on big issues.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

The best resource that I have found on immigration and the Bible is Dr. James Hoffmeier's book The Immigration Crisis (Crossway, 2009).  Hoffmeier is a leading Egyptologist, and his discussion of ancient Egypt's immigration policies is especially interesting.  I have posted a short article on Hoffmeier's book at the Grace & Knowledge website.

Tags: books, grace and knowledge articles

The public library in Oxford had a used book sale on Feb 2, 2018.  I stopped by and picked up 6 books for $4, including, 

• Abraham Joshua Heschel's God in Search of Man; 
• a book on Pauline ethics; 
• Richard Rubenstein's Aristotle's Children;
• a book on Passion Week chronology;
• a book on the problem of evil;
• a book on Leibniz and Spinoza.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

Today was the annual book sale at the public library, still with hardbacks for a dollar and paperbacks for 50 cents.  This sale usually seems to coincide with the annual yard sale along US highway 127, which passes within about 7 miles of Oxford.

I just picked up a few things this year, including paperback copies of Barbara Tuchman's Bible and Sword and Alister McGrath's Christian Theology:  An Introduction. 

Tags: books, oxford library sale

One excelllent recent book of popular-level Christian apologetics is The Case for Jesus:  The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ by Roman Catholic scholar and apologist Brant Pitre.

Pitre makes a strong argument for the historical reliability of the canonical Gospels and for the proposition that those Gospels teach the deity of Jesus.

In one chapter, he gives some examples of how the Synoptic Gospels hint that Jesus is God incarnate.  One example is the episode recorded in Mark 4:35-41, where the disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat and run into rough waters.  They wake up Jesus, who is asleep on the boat, and he quickly calms the water with a few words.  

This passage in Mark seems to be making reference to Psalm 107:23-32, where some mariners run into a storm at sea and cry out to God, who calms the water with his word.

I have posted a short article on this episode.   

Tags: books, grace and knowledge articles

In reading the prophetic books of the Bible, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of who the speaker is in a given passage.  The identity of the speaker can change abruptly.  Sometimes the prophet will be talking, and sometimes God will be speaking directly.

And then there are times when there seem to be two divine figures speaking.  Early Christians noticed a number of such passages and saw them as evidence for the deity of Jesus. 

There is a new book on this phenomenon--recognizing more than one person of the Godhead in a biblical passage.  The technical term for this is prosopological exegesis.  I believe "prosopological" means "having to do with persons."

Tags: books, words

It's the end of July--time for the Oxford public library book sale.

With the library set to move to a new building at the end of September, they thinned their collection in preparation for the move.  That meant there were more library discards than usual in this year's sale. I picked up 10 hardbacks in half an hour, spending $10.  The books I picked up included

• a book on the history of flat earth belief
• a book on the medieval warm period
• a book on the Emancipation Proclamation
• a book on medieval history
• a book pondering the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
• a book on end-time furor
• a book on the Protestant Reformation
• a book on the Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries.
• a book on our fascination with Native American spirituality
• a book of articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls..

Because there was a good selection, I came back later in the day and spent another $7.  Among the books I picked up were

• Victor Davis Hansen's book about the Peloponnesian War
• a book about the role of the plague in the decline of Rome.
• a book about key figures who fled Budapest to escape Hitler....

Tags: books, oxford library sale

The Gospel of John reports that on the day of the crucifixion, when Jesus had been beaten and clothed in a purple robe and a crown of thorns,  Pilate presented Jesus to his accusers with the words, "Behold the man." (John 19:5)

As D.A. Carson notes in his commentary on John, Pilate was mocking both Jesus and his accusers, in effect saying, 

"Here is the man you find so dangerous and threatening.  Can you not see that he is harmless and somewhat ridiculous?'  

However, some who heard Pilate may have made a different connection, to a statement made by the prophet Zechariah about 550 years before, during the time when the Second Temple was being built.

A delegation of Jews had come from Babylon, bringing along a gift for the new temple.  (Zech 6:10)  God instructed Zechariah to make a special crown from the gold and silver that had been brought from Babylon.  The crown was to be placed on the head of  Joshua the high priest, symbolizing a future ruler of Israel who would be both a priest and a king: 

"Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the...

Tags: books

Today the local public library is having its semiannual used book sale, with hardbacks for a dollar and paperbacks for 50 cents.

My daughter Rebekah asked me to gather up some books for her middle school students, so I concentrated my efforts at the children's book table this year.  

But I also picked up some other things, including 

• a popular book on science and faith; 
• another book on the history of English for Emily;
• one of Laurie R. King's mysteries;
• a copy of Guns, Germs, and Steel;
• a Michael Chabon novel;
• another popular science book by Mark Buchanan;
• one of the books on the KJV that came out in 2011;
• a book on Andrew Jackson's presidency;
• a book on the search for truth by the founder of the Veritas Forum; 

Tags: books, oxford library sale

A few weeks ago I was browsing the new books at our local public library.  I did a double take when I saw the title of the latest novel by Dave Eggers:

Your Fathers, Where Are They?  And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? 

The reason for my surprise is that this title comes from Zechariah 1:5, and by some coincidence, I had been reading that passage just the night before.  

I'm going to have to check this one out sometime, if only to find out the significance of the title.  

Tags: books

Dr. Marvin Wilson, who visited Oxford in March, was back in southwestern Ohio on June 28. 

To mark the publication of his new book, Exploring our Hebraic Heritage, he gave three lectures that morning, then a sermon that evening at Church of the Messiah. 

The sermon provided an overview of the book of Micah, a very appropriate complement to the Minor Prophets study at Church of the Messiah this year. 

Tags: books, church of the messiah, grace and knowledge articles, lectures

The public library had an extra book sale today, smaller in scale than the big one in August, but still with a good selection.

I stopped by on my way to work and spent $4 on 3 hardbacks and 2 paperbacks, including

• a copy of Ben Witherington's The Jesus Quest in excellent condition;
• a book about the Kabbalah;
• a book of short pieces on American history from CSPAN's BookTV;
• a book of essays by Thomas Sowell;
• a book about the English language for my daughter Emily, who is interested in linguistics.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

If you had a time machine, what time and place would you visit.?

One of the leading answers may be first-century Palestine, perhaps because we all have a lot at stake in what happened there.  

I am aware of at least three time-travel novels where that is the destination:

• Randy Ingermanson's Transgression, in which a man goes back in time in hopes of killing the Apostle Paul, and two others, an Israeli and an American Messianic Jew, follow to try and stop him;
• Amy Deardon's A Lever Long Enough, in which the Israeli government sends a team back in time to try and film the theft of Jesus' body from the tomb;
• Tim Ferguson's The God Portal, in which an engineer who suffers from terminal cancer goes back in hopes of being healed by Jesus.  A rescue team is sent back to retrieve him.  

Tags: books

Last week I spent a couple of days in Rochester,  New York, giving a math lecture and visiting a friend at RIT. 

My trip home included flights from Rochester to Newark, then Newark to Dayton.  Because of rainy weather, the first flight left Rochester two hours late, and I just barely missed the connection to Dayton.

Initially I was a bit angry.  With all the flights running late, why did that particular one have to leave on time?  Now I was faced with several hours at the Newark Airport.

But I had my Kindle with me, so I opened up an old P.G. Wodehouse novel, The Indiscretions of Archie (1921).   The protagonist, Archie Mahoom (pronounced "Moom"), is a typical Wodehouse character--a member of the British upper classes, educated at Eton and Oxford, with no apparent professional skills.  After serving in the infantry in World War I,  Archie has to figure out what to do with himself. 

Hoping for better prospects, he comes to the United States and visits some friends of his family.  On the trip he meets --and promptly marries--Lucille Brewster, the daughter of a wealthy New York hotel owner.  The young couple stays at the hotel wihile...

Tags: books

All of a sudden the students have returned to Oxford. Ready or not, it's time for a new academic year at Miami University. Classes start on Monday, August 26.

The first event of the academic year is Convocation, attended by the entire freshman class and anyone else who would like to come. The keynote speaker of this event is usually the author of the book that has been chosen for the Freshman Summer Reading Program. (The first-year students are given a copy of the book in June at summer orientation.)

This year's book has the provocative title Reality is Broken. Such a title would be appropriate for a theological discussion of the consequences of sin. The book's subtitle,: "Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World" , gives an idea about the actual topic of the book.

The author, Dr. Jane McGonigal, explains how important games have been throughout human history. Her definition of game is a broad one---games have a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.

McGonigal talks about how various aspects of life can be enhanced by using principles of game design. Setting up ways to take on bigger goals, putting...

Tags: books, campus life

Today is the first Friday in August, so it is time for the annual Oxford public library used book sale.

This year I spent $9 on 8 hardbacks and 2 paperbacks. Among the things I picked up were

1. A book on high-tech archaeology.
2. Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City.
3. David McCullough's 1776.
4. A popular-level book about logic.
5. A book about the unlikelihood of life on other planets.
6. One of Christopher Buckley's comic novels.
7. One of Donald Westlake's comic novels.
8. One of Athol Dickson's novels.
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
10. One of David Horowitz's books about political indoctrination at American universities.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

Knowing that operations research (operational research in Britain) began during the Second World War, I have long been curious to know more about who its original practitioners were and what kinds of problems they studied.  So I was glad to see a presentation on BookTV back in March 2013 about the book 

Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare

by its author, Stephen Budiansky.   After seeing the presentation, I checked out the book from the public library.

In his book, Budiansky explains that the OR practitioners in World War II were an eclectic group of very talented scientists and mathematicians, six of whom would go on to win Nobel prizes. Physicist Patrick Blackett had the vision to see where these men could make the greatest contribution to the war effort. Working on antisubmarine warfare, they considered questions like: Why aren't our planes spotting more submarines? Where should planes aim their depth charges to maximize the chances of hitting their targets? What is the optimal size of a convoy of merchant ships, and how many destroyers should escort a convoy of a given size? What maintenance schedule will maximize the number...

Tags: books

Schneider (God in Proof, p. 48) reports that Anselm received a challenge to his ontological argument from another  monk named Guanilo. 

Guanilo pointed out that the same proof would work if, say, the set T is defined to be the set of all islands that one could imagine,  R is replaced by the set of real islands, and G is the best island that anyone could imagine.  Then  we would reach the conclusion that the best island anyone could imagine would have to actually exist in reality.

Guanilo has a point.  The problem in this case, I think, is that assumption (1), the existence of a best possible island G, is not so believable here.  Describe to me the best island you can imagine, and I can imagine a better one (by putting one extra cocoanut in the cocoanut tree, for example). 

Tags: books

Lately I have been enjoying Nathan Schneider's book God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet. The book intertwines the story of the quest for proofs of God's existence with the story of the author's personal spiritual quest.

One of the most famous proofs of God's existence is the ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109). Anselm defines God as "a being than which nothing greater can be conceived"--the greatest thing that can be thought of.

The object of the proof is to show that God is real. Anselm posits that unreal things that can be thought of are not as great as real things.

To prove that God is real, suppose that God is not real. Then there is something that can be thought of that is greater than God, contradicting the definition of God. Therefore God is real.

To make sure I understood the proof, it helped me to formalize it mathematically.

Let T be the set of all things that can be thought of. We suppose that T is endowed with an ordering >, where the notation A > B means that A is greater than B. We also suppose...

Tags: books

The advent of ebook technology is enabling authors to make their out-of-print books available to new audiences.  If the authors charge, say, a buck or two for the books on Kindle, they can supplement their incomes nicely.  And they can pick up some extra reviews for their books by occasionally making them free for a short time.

I follow a blog that gives daily lists of free kindle books, xome of which I end up enjoying.  Today while proctoring a calculus exam I was looking at one of the kindle freebies, a novel about an English professor/private detective in Los Angeles named Simeon Grist.  Author Timothy Hallinan originally released the series back in the 1990s.

Popular fiction doesn't usually offer much in the way of vocabulary building, but this book at one point used the word "inspissate", which means to thicken.  While looking up the word in the Kindle's dictionary, I remembered that a year ago I ran across another interesting word, floccinaucinihilipilification, while reading one of Paul Levine's Jake Lassiter novels, another series from the 90s.

Tags: amazon kindle, books, words

One big trend in books over the past decade has been the profusion of detective stories from various countries.

The most famous example is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I haven't read. But I have read a couple of good ones recently.

One is The Ambassador's Wife by Jake Needham, a book set in Singapore and Thailand. When the body of a brutally murdered woman is found in a supposedly unoccupied suite of the Marriott in Singapore, the case is assigned to veteran police detective Samuel Tay. Tay is a quiet middle-aged guy who has trouble being arouind corpses. But he is also very tenacious. After it is determined that the dead woman is the wife of the American ambassador, the American embassy wants to handle the case itself, and there doesn't seem to be much Tay can do about it. But he refuses to give up and eventually gets to the truth.

I picked this one up free on Kindle. It is not available in hard copy..

Another one, even better, is Thom Satterlee's The Stages, a novel set in Copenhagen. The story is narrated by Daniel Peters, an American who has lived in...

Tags: amazon kindle, books

A highlight of this weekend's BookTV schedule was a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute with the authors of the book

Persecuted:  The Global Assault on Christians.

 Persecution has been increasing in majority Muslim countries because of the rise of radical Islam.  It also continues to be bad in Communist countries, especially North Korea.

In conjunction with the book, a website on religious persecution has been launched.

Tags: books

In the 1960s there were several famous assassinations in the U.S.---JFK, RFK, MLK. 

One that is not as well known--at least to me--occurred on Feb 12, 1966 in a Detroit area synagogue.  That morning 23-year old Richard Wishnetsky walked into a Sabbath service with a gun.  After reading a prepared statement condemning the wealthy congregation's materialism and hypocrisy, Wishnetsky shot Rabbi Morris Adler, then shot himself in the head.  Both died from their wounds shortly thereafter.

The story behind the Adler assassination is told in a compelling way by T.V. LoCicero in Murder in the Synagogue (1970), a book that has long been out of print but is now available in ebook form.

This book is, in part, a tribute to Rabbi Adler, one of the best known and most beloved religious leaders of his era. 

But mainly it is a richly detailed and sympathetic case study of one man's descent into mental illness.  Richard Wishnetsky was a bright young man, an honor student at the University of Michigan who won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to support graduate work in political theory.  Then, in his first year of graduate school (1964-65) he suffered a psychotic break, had to drop out...

Tags: books

Here's a sentence from a thriller I was reading recently:

"She's an attractive woman, dressed respectively but not pretentiously."  (Steven James, Placebo, p. 352)

How can someone dress "respectively"?  I can imagine two women wearing skirts that have stripes and polka dots, respectively.   Or two people dressed pretentiously and unpretentiously, respectively. 

But then I don't know much about fashion.

Tags: books

With a new season of Criminal Minds starting this week, I am reminded of how popular serial killer stories are these days.  There must be at least 10 times as many of these stories as there are actual serial killers.

In a quick browse through my Kindle archive today, I counted 13 books in this genre, all of them offered for free at some point during the past three years. 

What makes them so popular?  It may be the excitement of following the investigators in their race against time, trying to identify and locate the killer before someone else dies. These stories tend to move at a frenetic pace.

I reached a saturation point a couple of years ago and took some time out from this genre.  Then I read another one recently.  That may be enough for awhile.

Tags: books

When I started The Search for Melchizedek last weekend, I thought it would be an archaeological thriller.  At the beginning of the book, a rare book dealer is murdered by people who are looking for some for some ancient manuscript fragments.

But the book turns out to be more of a supernatural thriller, somewhat in the spirit of Charles Williams. 

Early in the book it comes to light that Melchizedek, the Canaanite priest-king who blessed the patriarch Abraham, is still alive.  He has spent thousands of years chronicling the rise and fall of the world's great empires and keeping his mission a secret from all but his friends.  Over the centuries he has accumulated a great deal of expertise and wisdom.

Various parties are anxious to find Melchizedek.  One rich man hopes to exploit him to find the secret of eternal youth and immortality.  A government seeks to have him killed, fearing the political implications of his knowledge.  But he is found by two people who, motivated by love, seek only to serve him.  

Jeffrey Tiel, the author, uses the Melchizedek character to discuss a range of issues in history, philosophy, and theology, and communicate eternal truths.  I found...

Tags: books

Over Labor Day weekend I've started reading The Search for Melchizedek, an archaeological thriller written by Dr. Jeffrey Tiel, a philosophy professor at Ashland University.

Tiel makes a good plug for a liberal arts education, and the study of philosophy in particular, early in the book.  His protagonist, FBI agent Roger Quarston, likes to read and reread Plato's Republic to help him think about the nature of justice and morality.  So it looks like this investigation should be in capable hands.

Tags: books

Colleges and universities will often run special courses relating to current events. 

For example, Miami has a one-hour course this fall on the 2012 American presidential election campaign.

And Penn State is running a course on the 2012 Mayan Calendar mania.  A book has been written for the course by  Professors Matthew Restall and Amara Solari.  It's called 2012 and the End of the World:  The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse.

The book gives a clear, concise explanation of how the Mayan calendar worked.  By some coincidence, December 21, 2012 begins a new cycle in that calendar. 

But the Mayans didn't think that the end of a cycle of their calendar would mark the end of the age.  Worrying about the end of the age is a notable characteristic of Western Christian culture but wasn't a part of Mayan culture. 

There are some later Mayan documents, written after the arrival of Franciscan missionaries--and long after the Long Cycle calendar had fallen out of use--that use apocalyptic language, but the ancient Mayans weren't prophecy nuts.

My only criticism of the book is that it shows signs of having been written quickly, perhaps to take advantage of the interest in 2012. ...

Tags: books

It's August again, and that means the annual book sale at the Oxford public library.

This year I picked up 3 hardbooks, 10 paperbacks, and 4 books on tape for $10.

One book from the batch that  I have enjoyed is 

Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky.

When the author was a student at Hampshire College back in the 1970s, he found that he needed to learn Yiddish in order to study his Jewish culture and heritage.  He and some friends found a faculty member who could teach them.

Finding YIddish books to read turned out to be more difficult.  In starting the search, Lansky soon realized that much of the world's literature in Yiddish was in danger of being lost.  From there he found his purpose in life--saving YIddish books.  The story of how  he has carried out that purpose is very inspiring, and definitely worth the 50 cents I paid for the book.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

Each year the members of the new freshman class at Miami University are asked to read a book over the summer before they arrive.  They then discuss the book in small groups on the Friday before the beginning of classes. 

This year's book is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.  It is the story of William Kamkwamba, a young man from Malawi who is now an engineering student at Dartmouth.  William grew up with a passion to learn, especially to find out what makes radios, automobiles, and other machines work.  He also had quite a knack for using the materials he had at hand to build things.

After a drought and famine in 2001/2002, William's family could not afford his secondary school tuition.  William spent time in a small library in the local primary school, where he found three fascinating science books.  One, called Using Energy, helped give him the idea of building a windmill to bring electric power to his home.  (Only about 2 per cent of the people in Malawi had access to electricity at the time, according to William.) And even though he had very little to work with in the way of money...

Tags: books, campus life

There have been some interesting presentations on BookTV this weekend. 

I particularly enjoyed historian Eric Foner's conversation with Amanda Foreman about her new book A World on Fire about Britain's role in the American Civil War.

From a World War II museum in New Orleans there was an informative lecture about how Nazis escaped Europe after World War II

It turns out that a number of Nazis fled to a German-speaking section in northern Italy, then obtained travel documents from the International Red Cross and left on boats to various countries.

Another lecture, from a bookstore in Austin TX, told about J. Frank Norris, who pastored an early megachurch in Fort Worth.  Norris had national political ambitions that were derailed when he shot a visitor to his office in 1926.  He was prosecuted for murder but acquitted.

Tags: books

This morning I went to our local public library's annual book sale.  I ran into a professor emeritus of physics who is another regular at the sale.  He compared the event to Christmas morning.  I told him I always enjoyed the sale too.

This year I picked up 3 hardbacks and 6 paperbacks for $6.  The books included 

• a copy of Brad Young's dissertation, written under David Flusser, that looks at how rabbinic parables can shed light on Jesus' parables.   I borrowed this book via Ohiolink and read it years ago, and I was glad to pick up a copy of my own for 50 cents.
• one of the Body Farm forensic anthropology novels by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson.
• a copy of Edwin Yamauchi's book on New Testament cities of western Asia Minor.
• one of mathematician/sci fi novelist Rudy Rucker's science fiction novels.
• Rucker's novel about painter Peter Bruegel.
• a copy of Fee and Stuart's How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.
• Ben Mezrich's book about the MIT blackjack team.
• a collection of early patristic sources in English translation.
• a popular-level book about neurobiology.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

Methodist publisher Abingdon Press has been especially generous in providing free electronic copies of their recent titles. 

One book that they made available a few weeks ago is an archaeological thriller called Shrouded in Silence by Robert L. Wise. 

This novel has an interesting premise, the search for a solution to one of the most intriguing New Testament textual questions--the sudden ending of Mark's Gospel.

Some have speculated that the original ending was lost, perhaps accidentally torn off the scroll.  The main characters in the novel, Jack and Michelle Townsend, come to Rome hoping to find such a missing scroll fragment.  When a newspaper article publicizes their quest, a man comes forward who says he can help the Townsends.  But there are others who want to stop the Townsends, including an anti-American terrorist and a Gnostic Nazi.

I really liked the ending of this novel.  On the minus side, the writing is often clumsy, and the bad guys are rather cartoonish.  But I'm not going to complain about a free book.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

Everybody who grows up in Ohio hears something about John Chapman (a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed), an itinerant planter of apple seeds who spent quite a bit of time in Ohio in the early 1800s. 

But I can't say I really know much about the guy, other than that.  So I made sure to catch one of these weekend's presentations on BookTV on C-Span2.  A writer named Howard Means has recently completed a biography of Chapman called Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story.  About a month ago Means talked about his new book at Urbana University in western Ohio. 

It turns out that there is a  Johnny Appleseed Society located at Urbana,  and I soon found out why.  Chapman was an enthusiastic disciple of Emmanuel Swedenborg, and Urbana U. was founded by Swedenborgians not too many years after Chapman's death.

Means has been criticized for saying in his book that Chapman was probably insane.  But all seem to agree that he was at least very eccentric. 

Lots of nature lovers can identify with his desire not to cause harm to living things.  Apparently he preferred to grow apple trees from seeds because he believed that grafting techniques caused pain to the trees. 

Tags: books

One of the attractive benefits of the Amazon Kindle is the frequent opportunity to download free books.

Recently an archaeological thriller called Elisha's Bones was free for a short time.  I picked up a copy and finished it today while I was giving a calculus exam. 

This book takes inspiration from a tantalizing scriptural passage:

" Elisha died and was buried.  Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man's body into Elisha's tomb. When the body touched Elisha's bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet."(2 Kings 13:20-21, NIV)

Nothing else is said about Elisha's bones, leaving us lots of room for imagination.  Don Hoesel, the author of the book, imagines a scenario where a terminally ill billionaire believes the bones have been preserved over the centuries and hires an archaeologist to find them.  The search for the bones leads the archaeologist to exotic locations on three continents. 

It was a fun book, one I would have picked up at ten times the price.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

It often happens that multiple books on a particular topic will appear at  around the same time.  Apparently when a certain topic is "in the air", several people will grab it and run with it. 

For example, recently there've been a couple of books on the Loyalists, the American colonists who chose to stay loyal to Great Britain at the time of the American Revolution.  

One book that I really enjoyed reading last fall was Moses' Women by Shera Tuchman and Sandra Rapaport.  This book gives detailed coverage of Jewish traditions on Moses' mother Jochebed, his sister Miriam, his wife Zipporah, and the daughter of Pharaoh who rescued the baby Moses from the Nile.  Yesterday I spent some time working on an article on this topic.  It's about halfway done. 

Today I found out about a Christian book on a very similar topic.  Touched by Greatness: Women in the Life of Moses by Dorothy Kelley Patterson.  I wonder if Mrs. Patterson was moved to write her book after reading Moses' Women?  Or is the topic just "in the air" right now? 

Tags: books

There's an interesting article over at  The Bible and Interpretation by Colum Hourihane, director of Princeton's Index of Christian Art.

Hourihane has written a book about how Christians have viewed Pontius Pilate through the centuries, as portrayed in Christian art.

Tags: books

It's the end of July, and time for the annual Oxford Lane Library book sale.  Just like last year, I looked around for an hour or so  and spent exactly $10.  This year's finds included:

• a book about the 1918 flu epidemic.
• an English translation of Pirke Avot with rabbinic commentary.
• a book about gerrymandering  of electoral districts in the US.
• a book about a thief who stole rare maps.
• collections of columns by Dennis Prager and (Miami alumnus) P.J. O'Rourke.
• David Klinghoffer's memoir about his spiritual journey to orthodox Judaism.
• David Berlinski's critique of the arrogance of the New Atheists.
• a Teaching Company course on the Late Middle Ages.
• a book about music and the brain.
• a book about Israel's rescue of the Ethiopian Jews.
• a book about the Albigensian Crusade.
• a Dover collection of mathematical puzzles.

Tags: books, oxford library sale

A number of books on history were featured over the 4th of July weekend on BookTV.

I especially enjoyed hearing Englishman Nick Bunker, who has written a definitive study on the Mayflower Pilgrims called Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History.  Bunker was speaking in Maine, and he explained why he spent a lot of time in Maine when he was researching his book.  The Plymouth colony became profitable in 1628 because the price of beaver pelts quadrupled, making it very lucrative for the colonists them to ship the pelts of Maine beavers to England.  When the Plymouth colony prospered, more settlers soon came to New England.

He also had plenty of details on the faith of the Puritan Separatists who sailed on the Mayflower.  They were, among other things, enthusiastic readers of the Pentateuch, and they enjoyed rabbinic Torah commentary. 

Tags: books

Boaz Michael and Toby Janicki from First Fruits of Zion visited southwestern Ohio on June 24, 2010,  to promote interest in a new project, a continuation of the work of a great Christian scholar of the nineteenth century.

Franz Delitzsch (1813-1890) was a conservative Lutheran scholar.  I was familiar with his name because I have often read quotes from the Keil and Delitzsch commentary on the Old Testament, a conservative Protestant commentary that is still read today. 

But Delitzsch is also known for his efforts in the cause of Jewish evangelism, in particular his careful translation of the New Testament into Hebrew.

Which brings us to the new FFOZ project, the publication of a Hebrew/English edition of the gospels, with Delitzsch's Hebrew translation and an English version on facing pages.  It will be a beautifully produced book some 600 pages long, with listings of Hebrew idioms and parallel passages in the Mishnah.  Boaz and Toby shared an excerpt, the Sermon on the Mount from Matt 5-7.

FFOZ hopes that this editiion of the gospels will serve multiple purposes.  They would like to continue Delitzsch's evangelistic work, believing, like Delitzsch, that the best way to intrroduce a Jewish audience to the...

Tags: books, church of the messiah, ffoz

Tags: books

There is a blog that provides frequent updates on the latest free Kindle Books. 

Its entry on March 26, 2010 mentions that Lois Tverberg's Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus is free for a limited time.  I hope that this promotion will serve to expand the readership of a very worthwhile book.

Tags: amazon kindle, books, lois tverberg, rabbi jesus

I like to check out the Amazon Kindle bestseller list frequently. 

One way that publishers are promoting their authors is to offer the Kindle version of one of an author's books for free for a short time.  Those free books tend to quickly find their way to the bestseller list.  

Among the free books i've picked up recently are:

• thrillers by Joseph Finder, Steven James, Randy Singer, and Noel Hynd.
• books by J.I. Packer on the Apostle's Creed and the nature of the atonement.
• Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis. 
• a biography of John Newton, mentor of William Wilberforce and author of the hymn "Amazing Grace".
• The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher, a satirical novel about a real estate agent who, although not a Christian, decides to start a megachurch in an Oklahoma town.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

Yesterday I received an email from Amazon about a mathematical monograph that will be published in February.

I  had a chuckle when I got to the final sentence of the "product description":

"The final part of the book is consecrated to the applications of the convex duality theory in the field of monotone operators."

This illustrates the minefields one encounters in working in an unfamiliar language.  (Remember "Ich bin ein Berliner"?)  Perhaps the author of the monograph has a dictionary in which "consecrated" is listed as a synonym of "dedicated" or "devoted".  But it's harder to get a feel for the distinctions among the ways these words are actually used in English.

There's certainly a sense in which the author's clumsy English is appropriate.  I anticipate that there is some beautiful mathematics in the monograph, and mathematical creativity is one of the highest expressions of  the abilities God has given us as creatures made in his image.

So anyway, if I contact the author, will he send me an anointed copy?

Tags: books, humor

My daughter Emily and I enjoy watching the Monk detective series on TV.  Sherry, on the other hand, has never been crazy about it.  (She says she deals with enough crazy people on the job as a 211 and suicide hotline operator..)

My favorite episodes of the TV series are those in which Monk is publicly humiliated and seemingly paralyzed with fear but still manages to do what has to done for the sake of someone in need.  The episode called "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut" falls into that category, as does one of the final episodes of the series, "Mr. Monk Takes the Stand. "

The last season of the TV series ties up lots of loose ends.  Captain Stottlemeyer remarries.  Lietenant Disher moves to New Jersey to be with Sharona, Monk's former nurse, and work as a police chief.  Monk finally achieves his dream of being reinstated as a San Francisco police detective but concludes that he really prefers to be a consultant.  And in the finale, Monk solves Trudy's murder and learns about a stepdaughter he never knew he had.

There'll be no more episodes of the TV series, but Lee Goldberg, who has written 9 Monk novels, is under contract to write two more.  One will take...

Tags: books

I was pleased to learn about a week ago that some of P.G. Wodehouse's early novels can be downloaded to the Amazon Kindle for free.

About 15 years ago, Sherry and I had a great time reading through all of Wodehouse's Jeeves stories.  I'm now reading to her Uneasy Money, a romantic comedy that was first published in the U.S. in 1916 after appearing in installments in the Saturday Evening Post. 

Although this novel was written during World War I, it mentions nothing directly about the war.  Wodehouse's characters are concerned about things like golf, baseball, and marriage, but they live in a world without wars and rumors of wars.  His readers, who were weighed down enough by world events, no doubt appreciated the opportunity to escape temporarily from the bad news reported daily in the press. 

Uneasy Money was made into a silent movie in 1918.  There's enough physical comedy (e.g., a pet monkey that throws eggs) and twists and turns of plot in the book to support a good silent movie, but there's no way the movie could have done justice to Wodehouse's dextrous use of the English language, the thing that makes his writing so much fun to read.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

In 2008 my son Timothy gave me a wonderful Father's Day gift--an Amazon Kindle ebook reader.

It didn't take me long to fall in love with this amazing little gadget, which I find is often as pleasant to read from as a conventional book.   (There are exceptions. The Kindle doesn't do well with pictures or graphs,  and I can't imagine trying to deal with a mathematical monograph in this format.) 

 My favorite features of the Kindle include:

• the ability to adjust the font size, effectively making every book a large print book.
• the ability to easily look up endnotes with a simple click.
• the fact that free samples are available. Most samples include about a chapter.  One very generous one--for the recent book Newton and the Counterfeiter--gives the first 60 pages or so.
• the fact that a number of classic literary works can be downloaded free of charge, and many others are just a few dollars.
• the fact that one can order a book or free sample and start reading it right away.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

Yesterday the public library in Oxford held its annual used book sale.  Hardback books were a dollar, paperbooks fifty cents.  I browsed for about 90 minutes and picked up 6 hardbacks and 8 paperbacks for a total of $10.

I look forward to this sale every year.  Since I've been to 25 of them now, I suppose I must have accumulated around 300 books from them all together.  Out of all of these books, the one I've used the most has been a hardback copy of the NRSV, with apocrypha, that I picked up in excellent condition one year.  (At that point, hardbacks were probably 50 cents.) 

Some of the best bargains over the years:

• Edersheim's Bible History , an old 7-volume set in decent condition, for $1.50.
• James R. Newman's four-volume anthology, The World of Mathematics, in good condition for a dollar.
• A 1969 edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia in good condition for a quarter (back in the 1980s when hardbacks were a quarter and paperbacks a dime).

Along with the gems I've picked up some junk that I'd never have purchased if the prices were higher.  It is for a good cause, and funding for public libraries in Ohio is being slashed...

Tags: books, oxford library sale

Last July a colleague at work found out that he had cancer.  It was detected early, and it was a type of cancer that , if treated promptly, had a nearly 100 per cent cure rate.  He decided to undergo the treatment. 

The chemotherapy would keep him away from work for a couple of weeks, however, and so he needed to find someone to teach his precalculus class.  I was available, so I filled in.  Afterward, the colleague thanked me with a $25 gift card from a prominent book store chain.   

Since I love bookstores, I was very happy to receive the gift card.  But I don't often visit malls and suburban shopping centers, so the gift card gathered dust on my desk for almost a year.  Finally, a few days ago I happened to be in the neighborhood of an outlet of the book store chain and took the opportunity to stop by. 

 I spent a blissful hour checking out what the store had.  The selection wasn't especially impressive, but it was good enough to enable me to spend $25 with no problem.  I picked up Resurrection:  The Power of God for Jews and Christians by Kevin Madigan and Jon D. Levenson, a book I've heard lots of good...

Tags: books

I've been reading War in Heaven, one of the seven novels written by Charles Williams, friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.  (Amazon has several of these novels available in Kindle editions for just $3.19 apiece.)

Early in the book, Williams has one of the characters thinking that Christianity

"was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist."

I think there's some real insight in this observation.  When we understand that we're living in a fallen world, we're not going to expect more from the world than it can realistically provide.  At ths same time, we're not going to be overcome with despair at the extent of the brokenness of the world, because we know that God is carrying out his plan of restoring his good creation. 

Tags: amazon kindle, books

The Copper Scroll contains plenty of material for writers of adventure stories.  It lists 64 stashes of hidden treasure that include large amounts of gold and silver.  But the locations given for the treasures are vague enough that no one knows exactly where they are. 

Then there are those mysterious sequences of Greek letters after a few of the entries in the list--e.g., Kappa Epsilon Nu after the first entry.  Is this treasure the property of the Kappa Epsilon Nu fraternity on some college campus?  (Perhaps at Marshall University, where Indiana Jones was a faculty member. )   The 17 talents of silver in that batch of treasure could finance a few keg parties.

It's no wonder that the Copper Scroll is showing up in novels--like Gold of Kings by Davis Bunn, a new thriller published by Simon and Schuster.  

In this story, an antiquities dealer named Sean Syrrell is murdered at the beginning of the book.  It turns out that he has found clues to the possible location of some of the Copper Scroll treasure.  He bequeaths the clues to his granddaughter, who along with a treasure hunter and a federal agent set out in search of  Sean's killer and the treasure.   

It's an entertaining story.  It includes enough action--e.g., car crashes--to...

Tags: archaeology, books

Recently, while  my wife was watching "The Bourne Supremacy" on TV, it occurred  to me that any four-syllable noun could potentially  generate a title for another book/movie in this series.  For example:

• The Bourne Prosperity---Bourne finally remembers where he put his wallet.
• The Bourne Ventriloquy---Bourne throws his voice around.
• The Bourne Spectroscopy---the plot of this one includes a range of elements too numerous to mention here.
• The Bourne Philately---enemy operations stamped out.
• The Bourne Monotony---a marathon of these movies shown one after another.
• The Bourne Lobotomy---the end result of watching The Bourne Monotony.

Tags: books, humor

A few years ago I wrote a review of A Skeleton in God's Closet, a novel by Prof. Paul Maier, a history professor at Western Michigan University. This 1991 novel is one of the first examples of the genre of "archaeological thrillers."

Now there are a growing number of books in this category, including:

• Cross Bones (2005), one of the Temperance Brennan novels by Kathy Reichs (the books on which the TV series "Bones" is very loosely based). James Tabor, a colleague of Reichs at UNC Charlotte, was a consultant for this one.
• The Lazarus Effect (2008) by biblical scholar Ben Witherington III and his wife Ann.

I was at the public library yesterday and found a copy of Bunn's book on the shelf of new fiction. I'll see if it lives up to its hype.

Tags: archaeology, books

Since last May I've been "playing chicken" with Garrison Keillor (unbeknownst to him).  As big a fan of his as I've been over the years, would I really be willing to lay down $40 to see his one man show in Oxford?

 As March 18, the day of the performance, approached, the pressure mounted.  What comments would he make about Miami University?  What song would he have his audience sing?  To find out, I would need to buy a ticket.

 Finally, about 6 hours before the show, I flinched.  I relented and purchased a ticket.

It turned out to be a great show, full of stories, sonnets, and songs.  My favorite line was his reference to contemporary praise and worship anthems as "7/11 songs"---7 words repeated 11 times.

The monologue culminated with a retelling of the main plotline of his novel Pontoon.  

I enjoyed that book, and  it was fun to hear him rehearse the story personally.

I'll post a report at Grace and Knowledge.

Tags: books, garrison keillor, humor, lectures

One of the great joys of an academic life is easy access to lots of great books. 

In Ohio, all the college and university libraries belong to a statewide system called Ohiolink.  Anyone with borrowing privileges at a member library has access to the whole system.

So  when I hear about a great new book, chances are that it's  in the system somewhere.  

Some books I've been working on:

• God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World by David Rowe, the first academic biography of William Miller. After reading this excellent biography, I went back and checked out Rowe's dissertation on the Millerite movement in New York, which is also very good.  I hope to complete an article on Miller over the next couple of months.
• Hamas vs. Fatah:  The Struggle for Palestine  by Jonathan Schanzer.  Schanzer has lectured at Miami a couple of times.  He's quite an expert on the Middle East, and his book highlights one of the biggest problems in the Israeli-Palestine conflict:  How can a  peace be negotiated if there's no legitimate representative of the Palestines for the Israelis to negotiate with?
• The Deniers by Lawrence Solomon.  Solomon is a Canadian...

Tags: books, climate change