A 2024 Reading Retrospective

I logged 36 completed books in 2024, my highest tally in six years of Reading Retrospectives. Sixteen of them were audiobooks—also a record—and I counted Sandra Boynton’s hilarious introduction to chocolate, which is perhaps cheating. Why so many audiobooks? A few (overlapping) reasons:

1. I wasn’t putting as much listening time into Greek and Hebrew;
2. I managed to be more active for part of the year;
3. I seldom sit down just to read books anymore. In fact, I now look for an audio version even for books in my field because I am more likely to get through them that way. When I sit (or stand) at my desk, I am typically preparing for class, grading assignments, trying (when school is not in session) to write something more substantial, or wasting time on blog posts like this. Or I am on a device reading blogs, scanning the news, doom scrolling on the site formerly known as Twitter, window shopping for a new fountain pen—God knows there are enough needless distractions in my life. Maybe that will change this year.

Reading Highlight: Because it is not available as an audiobook, I asked for and received Peter Brown’s massive intellectual autobiography, Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History (Princeton University Press, 2023) for Christmas in 2023. The book’s 99 short chapters were my bedtime reading for the first six months of the year. Perhaps because I do not aspire to be Peter Brown, I found his account of his life in Sudan, Ireland, Oxford, Berkeley and Princeton, his travels in Iran and Afghanistan, and his language learning completely fascinating. One of several ways it expanded my intellectual horizons was to help shift my mental map of the ancient world: Instead of locating Judaea on the periphery of the Roman empire, I now place it in the center, with the Mediterranean on one side and the Parthian empire beyond the Euphrates on the other. That, I find, changes everything. It also resulted in a new map of the Middle East—another present—that now adorns my office wall.

As usual, here is my lightly annotated list, organized this time by broad category (Biblical Studies, Biographies / Memoirs, Other Non-Fiction, and Fiction):

Biblical Studies

Adler, Yonatan. The Origins of Judaism An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal. AYBRL. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. 

[Good evidence, but the argument didn’t quite live up to its billing, imo]

Avioz, Michael. Legal Exegesis of Scripture in the Works of Josephus. LSTS 97. London: T&T Clark, 2021. [Book review here]

Bauckham, Richard. Jesus: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. [Textbook; re-read multiple times]

Brock, Brian, and Bernd Wannenwetsch. The Malady of the Christian Body: A Theological Exposition of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Volume 1. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016.

________. The Therapy of the Christian Body: A Theological Exposition of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Volume 2. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018. 

[A genuinely fresh take on 1 Corinthians. Like its exemplar, Barth’s Römerbrief, this stimulating two-volume theological commentary is by turns insightful and unpersuasive.]

Cohen, Shaye. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. 3rd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014. [Textbook; re-read multiple times, still worth reading]

Finger, Reta Halteman, and George D. McClain. Creating a Scene in Corinth: A Simulation. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Herald Press, 2013. [A nice concept; but I won’t be using it again]

Hays, Richard B. First Corinthians. Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox, 1997. [Textbook; re-read multiple times]

Henze, Matthias, and Rodney A. Werline, eds. Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters. SBL Press, 2020. [A worthy successor to its 1986 predecessor]

Jipp, Joshua W. Reading Acts. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018. [Textbook; re-read multiple times]

Levine, Amy-Jill. Jesus for Everyone: Not Just Christians. HarperOne, 2024. 

[Audiobook; Scot McKnight’s book of the year; effectively punctures multiple Christian misconceptions of Jesus’ Jewish context]

Oliver, Isaac W. Luke’s Jewish Eschatology: The National Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 

Memoirs and Biographies

Boucher, David, and Teresa Smith, eds. R. G. Collingwood: An Autobiography and Other Writings: With Essays on Collingwood’s Life and Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

[Cheating a little: I re-read the autobiography in 2023, and finished the essays, which are long enough for a volume of their own, in 2024.]

Brown, Peter. Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.

________. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. 

[As my bedtime reading for the second half of the year, I turned from Brown’s autobiography to the biography of Augustine that launched Brown’s academic career; completed on December 30.]

Butterfield, Rosaria Champagne. Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey Into Christian Faith. Pittsburgh, Pa: Crown & Covenant, 2012. [Audiobook]

McCaulley, Esau. How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. New York: Convergent Books, 2023. [Audiobook]

Smith, James. On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019. [Audiobook]

Westover, Tara. Educated: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 2018. 

[Audiobook; I first heard about Tara Westover’s story while living in Cambridge; I met one of the characters in her story – a professor at Brigham Young University – in Washington, D.C. this spring.]

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Marion Wiesel. 2d ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. [Audiobook; 1st published in English in 1960]

Other Non-Fiction

Bergen, Doris L. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. 3d ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016. 

[Audiobook; see this post for the reasons why I think everyone college age and up should read it]

Boynton, Sandra. Chocolate: The Consuming Passion. Random House, 1992.

Cline, Eric H., and Glynnis Fawkes. 1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024. 

[A mark of my intellectual seriousness: I read the ‘graphic novel’ version not the monograph.]

Horn, Dara. People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021. [Audiobook]

Lawler, Andrew. Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City. New York: Anchor, 2021. [Audiobook]

Payne, Leah. God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. [Audiobook]

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. [Audiobook]

Trueman, Carl R. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Crossway, 2020. [Audiobook]

Watkin, Christopher. Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Academic, 2022. [Audiobook]

Fiction

Laurence, Margaret. The Stone Angel. 40th anniversary ed. Toronto: McClelland & Steward, 2004.

Schaefer, Jack. Shane. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954.

Smith, Alexander McCall. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. New York: Vintage, 1998. [Audiobook; the first three books in the series became this fall’s comfort reading]

________. Tears of the Giraffe. Anchor, 2000.

________. Morality for Beautiful Girls. Anchor, 2001. [Audiobook]

Wiesel, Elie. Dawn. Translated by Frances Frenaye. Hill and Wang, 1961. [Audiobook]

________. Day. Translated by Anne Borchardt. Hill and Wang, 1962. [Audiobook]

Well-filled Corinthians and Sated Israel: Overlooked Echoes of Hosea in 1 Corinthians 4:8

Two weeks from today I am scheduled to present a paper in the Intertextuality in the New Testament section at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in San Diego. Here is the abstract:

Paul's sarcastic description of the Corinthians as wealthy, reigning kings in 1 Cor 4:8 is often regarded as a reference to popular Stoic philosophy (e.g., Conzelmann, Hays, Thiselton). With “kings” as the point of comparison to the ideal Stoic wise man, Paul’s initial reference to the Corinthians’ satiety amounts to little more than a rhetorical flourish. In this paper I will argue that all three descriptions of the Corinthians—their wealth, their reign, and their satiety—draw on Hosea’s prophetic denunciation of rebellious Israel. “Already you have become rich” (ἤδη ἐπλουτήσατε) in 1 Cor 4:8 recalls Ephraim's claim, "I have become rich" (πεπλούτηκα) (Hos 12:9]); “apart from us you have begun to reign” (χωρὶς ἡμῶν ἐβασιλεύσατε) echoes Hosea's reference to those who “ruled for themselves and not through me" (ἑαυτοῖς ἐβασίλευσαν καὶ οὐ δἰ ἐμοῦ) (Hos 8:4); and the sated (κεκορεσμένοι), arrogant (φυσιοῦσθε) Corinthians of 1 Cor 4:6 and 8 resemble the sated (ἐνεπλήσθησαν), proud (ὑψώθησαν αἱ καρδίαι αὐτῶν) Israel of Hos 13:6. These close verbal and conceptual links are supported by the direct citation from Hos 13:14 in 1 Cor 15:55, other proposed echoes of Hosea in 1 Cor 6:18 and 1 Cor 15:8, and by more general thematic parallels between the biblical prophet and the apost
le. Like Hosea, Paul is concerned about the problem of covenant unfaithfulness that finds expression in idolatry and immorality. Identifying Hosea’s influence on Paul’s thought places into starker relief the prophetic threat of divine judgement that undergirds Paul’s address to the Corinthians.

Now for one good weekend to finish writing the paper! 

Unrelated Photo: Buffalo Pound (20 Oct 2024)

A prayer for Donald Trump

A deep-fake image of a kneeling Donald Trump showed up in my Facebook feed recently. That image and the accompanying caption prompted this prayer: 

Dear Lord, bring this godless man to his knees, expose his lies, and prevent him from causing more harm to the United States and the world. 

Bring to their senses the so-called Evangelicals, who have turned for their deliverance to a "splintered reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it," who have abandoned the pursuit of righteousness, justice and the love of God in exchange for political power, and who have forgotten that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. 

Lord have mercy. 

Amen. 

I touched on the reasons for my profound dismay over Evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump here. For more detail, see this excellent post by Chris Gehrz: "Is History Rhyming?" 

Helter Skelter Take 21

Hard to believe I am at the beginning of my 21st year on faculty at Briercrest College. This semester looks to be another doozy: four different courses plus a conference paper to write on a topic unrelated to anything I will be teaching this fall. And, alas, two summers on, I have not quite finished work on my response to Jason Staples's reading of Josephus. 

On the positive side, I've taught all four classes multiple times before, I'm grateful to get paid to study the Bible and to teach it to students who care about what they are learning … and I'm looking forward to a sabbatical in the winter semester. Bring it on!

Unlike two earlier beginning-of-semester posts from fifteen and sixteen years ago, the aspirational soundtrack for the semester is not U2's cover of the Beetle's song that lends this post its name, but this rather more tame ballad by Randy Stonehill: 

In other news ...

We arrived in the small college town we still call home on 14 July 2004, twenty years ago today.

Charlotte Brontë and Gabriel Wyner on Pronunciation and Efficient Language Learning

Notice the emphasis on (1) conversation, (2) memorizing texts not just isolated vocabulary, and (3) pronunciation in this passage from Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre:

Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot, as often as I could, and had, besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher—I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. - Jane Eyre (Oxford World Classics), 102 

Polyglot Gabriel Wyner has “learn pronunciation first” as the first in his list of “three keys to language learning.” Why?

• “[W]hen you’re not sure about the way your language sounds, you’re stuck learning two languages instead of just one” (54).
• “If you can build a gut instinct about pronunciation, then every new word you read will automatically find its way into your ears and your mouth, and every word you hear will bolster your reading comprehension. You’ll understand more, you’ll learn faster, and you’ll spare yourself the hunt for broken words” (57)—words that we think are “pronounced one way, but [that are] actually pronounced a different way. These words can’t be shared between the written language and the spoken language, and as a result, they break up our little circle of friends” (55).
• Quotations from Gabriel Wyner, Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It (New York: Harmony, 2014).

Substitute your preferred dead language (Greek, Hebrew, Latin) for French, and carry on.

Reading the Bible after the Holocaust

I consumed a steady diet of (audio)-books about the Holocaust this spring, including Doris Bergen’s War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel’s powerful memoir, Night, his two holocaust novels, Dawn and Day, and, most recently, Dara Horn’s searing People Love Dead Jews. The reading (or listening in this case) began as preparation for a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum faculty seminar on “Reading the Bible after the Holocaust” in Washington, DC.

Doris Bergen’s textbook was recommended as an introduction to the Holocaust for those who needed a refresher. Turns out I did. General awareness over a lifetime can fool you into thinking you know more than you do. For me that included reading the stage version of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl and watching Corrie Ten Boom in grade school, reading a selection of James Michener and Leon Uris novels in grades 8-10, a summer tour of Europe in high school that included a visit to the Dachau concentration camp, and a belated visit to Yad Vashem in 2009. But these vague impressions from decades ago did little to help me speak intelligently about the Holocaust and antisemitism to college students who, one suspects, may never have heard that six million Jews were murdered in Europe during World War II—much less that Christians had anything to do with it. Bergen’s Concise History was just what I needed, especially when paired with a tour of the Holocaust Museum’s permanent exhibit. My reaction: Everyone should read this book.

Bergen mentions Elie Wiesel, who I had, of course, heard about, but never read. So I added Night to my audio playlist. The book’s conclusion will forever be linked in my mind with a morning walk from my hotel, past the White House and the Washington Memorial, to the Holocaust Museum where the seminar was held.

The seminar had an extensive required reading list of its own on the topic of “Reading the Bible after the Holocaust.” We looked at antisemitism in biblical scholarship before the Holocaust, Jewish and Christian theological responses to the Holocaust, including sermons by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, a Warsaw Ghetto rabbi whose sermon manuscripts were discovered after the war. We also discussed post-Holocaust biblical scholarship on texts about Jews in the New Testament, and genocide in the Hebrew Bible. It was tremendously valuable to be prompted to learn about the Holocaust, and then to have the chance to reflect on it in relation to my primary fields of teaching and research (Biblical Studies, ancient Judaism) in an interdisciplinary context. The combination of well-chosen texts, skilled facilitators and a diverse group of scholars made for an exceptionally rich experience that will continue to influence my thinking and teaching in significant ways.

But I left thinking less about biblical scholarship and more about similarities between Hitler’s rise to power and the rise of authoritarian movements today, where populist leaders once again stoke fear and hatred with lies and conspiracy theories, and, sadly, gain a following among Christians more enamored by power and force than love and the way of the cross.