Very sad news

I got back from ATLA late Friday night and didn't check e-mails until last night. The first one I checked was an e-mail from Jim with the sad news that Michael Patrick O'Connor had died. This is truly sad news. Not only was he a great scholar, but he was a personal friend and a great friend to Eisenbrauns, editing one of our series-LSAWS-and also authoring one of the first books we published, Hebrew Verse Structure. I remember when it was first published while I was in graduate school. Every day Dennis Pardee would walk into our Ugaritic class and be arguing with what he had just read in the book :)

I will miss his wonderful sense of humor, and I am sure the company as a whole, and Jim especially will sorely miss him. If I knew how to do it, I would drape this whole blog in black. But, maybe it is as well that I can't since the promise of I Corinthians 15 says that death is swallowed up in victory.