Saturday, March 14, 2015

What I'm reading right now

I'm reading too many books right now! I usually have 1–2 books going at a time, but right now I'm in the midst of, well...too many. As usual, an eclectic list of eccentric books, all delightful!

First off, I'm in the midst of Chip Hardy's dissertation, Diachronic Development in Biblical Hebrew Prepositions: A Case Study in Grammaticalization. Chip was kind enough to forward it to me. As you can probably guess by the title, it is heavy on the linguistics. This was written under the direction of Dennis Pardee at the University of Chicago. Dennis was my Ugaritic professor when I was at the OI; his dissertation was on the Preposition in Ugaritic, so he knows a bit about these things : ) I'm on page 160 of 400+ pages—right in the middle of the detailed evaluation of each preposition. Good stuff!

Second, I just picked up a few books from interlibrary loan. I started A Brief History of Ancient Greek by Stephen Colvin. This really is a brief history—only 200 pages long! But does he ever pack a lot into those 200 pages! It is very readable, assuming minimal knowledge of both Greek and linguistics. If you are interested in the history of ancient Greek, this would be a good book to start with. Of course, finding it might be a problem! There isn't a single copy in the entire Minnesota library system. The one I'm reading came from Wheaton.

The two other books that came with the previous one are Ethics at the Beginning of Life, which I mentioned last week. It looks very interesting. The third book is Theory of Functional Grammar, Pt. 1. This is a 400 page whopper. I'm hoping it isn't too dense—if I start quoting from it, you'll know it was readable : )

I'm also about halfway through Scot McKnight's Kingdom Conspiracy. A very good book that you will see excerpts from sometime soon. Scot's a good theologian with a very accessible writing style.

I'm still rereading Steve Runge's Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament. I must admit, I'm not being too diligent about reading it, though. It really is an excellent book and if you have any Greek whatsoever, you should read this. It will assist you in understanding why and how Greek syntax works.

Think I'm done listing books? Nope. Not yet.

Jeffrey Gibson was kind enough to forward me a copy of his forthcoming book The Disciples’ Prayer The Prayer Jesus Taught in Its Historical Setting. I've just glanced at it so far, but am looking forward to reading it. He explores the "Temptation" petition in the Lord's Prayer, which I mentioned in an excerpt from David Parker's dissertation on the Lord's Prayer.

Lest you think I only read scholarly stuff...I just finished My Side of the Mountain, On the Far Side of the Mountain, and Frightful's Mountain by Jean Craighead George. I had read the first one as a kid and then reread it when our kid's were young in conjunction with the second one. I didn't even know the third one existed until a few week's ago. It was a wonderful ending to the series. I highly recommend it if you like the outdoors.

And, finally, I just finished Konrad Schmid's little treatise on Old Testament Theology, Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible?. A quick little read that I wish he had been able to develop further—but that's the nature of that series: quick little overviews of complicated subjects. He covers a lot of ground in about 150 pages, and does it well.

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