We had planned to post an excerpt today from Oliver O’Donovan’s Self, World, and Time.
That was our plan, at least, until we noticed WordPress’s note of congratulations yesterday on our 499th post — meaning that today’s post is our 500th on EerdWord.
Five hundred posts. Can it be so many? How time flies! It seems like just yesterday that Bill Eerdmans officially opened this blog with a story about his first dinner with Jimmy Dunn and a reflection on our unusual (and unwritten) mission statement – “unhidden in plain view in our catalogs, ‘speaking volumes.’”
Over the past two and a half years, we’ve published a huge range of content here: book trailers and video interviews; news releases and news roundups; excerpts from both adult and children’s books; memories from our first 100 years; polls, contests, and giveaways; peeks into the hidden world of book publishing; and more.
The heart and soul of EerdWord, though, is as it has ever been: original contributions from authors, Eerdfolks, and others. It is these that have filled us with the greatest pride and delight throughout our 500-post journey — and it is these that we are most excited to continue publishing throughout our next 500 posts and beyond.
And so, in honor of our 500th post, we’re looking back today on a few of the most memorable original posts from our first 499.
(Please forgive our exuberance if this post runs a little long — we had a really hard time narrowing down our list of favorites!)
From authors . . .
Joel Green
I still have the short letter – signed “Fred Bruce,” prepared on what must have been a Royal typewriter with a smudgy ribbon – inviting me to write the replacement commentary on Luke. By the time I received that letter in the late 80s, I had completed an M.Th. at Perkins School of Theology and a Ph.D. under Howard Marshall’s supervision at the University of Aberdeen, and I had begun my career as a teacher and scholar. Scot McKnight and I were about to begin our work on the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, work that would help to nurture my study of and teaching on Luke’s Gospel.
– from Introducing the New General Editor of the NICNT
D. A. Carson
How does the government think its stance can withstand a First Amendment challenge, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion? As far as I can see, the government believes it can win by redefining what is included under the category of “religion.” Corporate worship may be religion, but ethical stances about abortion are not, and are therefore exempt from the protection of the First Amendment. In other words, the government is making an unprecedented move to define religion more narrowly so that it can impose by the use of coercive force its own agenda, and those who refuse on grounds which in the past would certainly have been considered religious will simply have to be crushed. In historical terms, that is called intolerance.
– from More Examples of Intolerant Tolerance
Peter Enns
Just as reading the epilogue brings us to say to Qohelet, “Yes, you are right, but there is something more,” so too does our postresurrection vantage point bring us to look at Ecclesiastes as a whole and say, “Yes, you are right, but there is something more.” The difference, of course, is that the “something more” of the epilogue is a reiteration of Israel’s traditional categories of fear and obedience. For us, the “something more” is the complex realization that, however bound we are to traditional categories, they are now reconfigured in the crucified and risen Christ, who paradoxically embodies and transforms Israel’s story.
– from Reading Ecclesiastes Christianly
F. Scott Spencer
What’s a nice, male, middle-aged Baptist seminary professor doing messing around with feminist approaches to studying the Bible? Isn’t there some biblical law against mixing things that don’t belong together (like “not wearing clothes made of wool and linen woven together” [Deut. 22:11])? While I’ll confess that being a “Male Feminist Biblical Scholar” is not the most “natural” identity in the academic world, it’s also not quite as crazy as it may sound.
– from Confessions of a Male Feminist Biblical Scholar
Barry G. Webb
Rightly or wrongly (that is another issue), Judges is patriarchal: leadership by men is the norm. But it is also, and fundamentally, a theological work, and when that fact is acknowledged a rather different perspective on women emerges. The “evil” that people do, both men and women, is abandoning Yahweh for other gods and taking on the ways of the Canaanites. And as that movement away from covenant faithfulness progresses through the book, the status and welfare of women deteriorates.
– from Judges and Misogyny
Katie Quirk
In Tanzania in the late 1990s, higher education was anomalous, an extreme privilege. When students ran short on funds, their villages and religious communities pooled money so they could keep their one and only college kid enrolled. That’s why students never dropped out if they could help it. This was true even, as in Mari’s case, when a student was under threat of death.
– from Real ‘Girl Power’: Courage and Hope in East Africa
Gregory Mobley
I write for that demographic of congregants who still somehow believe, and who, Jacob-like, refuse to let go of the angel until they have wrested a blessing. I write for those who stand at the threshold of every door of culture, unafraid of ideas and discourse, say “What-the-hell,” and dare to cross, crazy enough to hope that every chamber of existence is yet another room in the Father’s House.
– from A Word to the Readers of The Return of the Chaos Monsters
Ben Witherington III
Work, from a biblical perspective, is not a curse. The story of Adam reveals that before the fall ever happened God assigned him tasks to do, and even after the fall God still considered work a good thing, though it had become more difficult and dangerous. In the Bible, work is seen as neither the curse nor the cure of what ails us.
– from Ben Witherington on a Biblical Theology of Work
C. Clifton Black
In Mark 4:35-41 a sudden squall scares the snot out of the disciples in a boat. They wake Jesus up: “Teacher, we’re dying! Don’t you care?” After stifling the wind, he asks them, “Why are you scared? Do you still have no faith?” Some scholars argue that Mark’s fingerprints are all over that story. He likes putting Jesus in boats. The disciples are snotless morons. Jesus berates them. Mark has twisted a miracle story to beat up the Twelve.
– from The Eighth Day of The Disciples according to Mark
. . . and from Eerdfolks
Jon Pott (editor in chief)
I was always struck by his thoughtfulness — if I had to choose, I’d say that is the word that characterizes him best. His thoughtfulness, and perhaps also his purposefulness. He wasn’t a kick-back schmoozer in my experience, and he never wasted any time. Yet he was purposeful without ever coming off as stiff or pedantic — and without ever, ever losing his cordiality or a kind of patrician grace.
– from Jon Pott on John Stott
Tom Raabe (editor)
Couple that movement with the secular tsunami that washes over all we see or do, which encourages clerics to make the faith more marketable, less countercultural, more feel-good about yourself and less feel-bad about your sins, more upbeat and Oprah-ific (possibly even Chopra-ific), and repentance-centered worship becomes an endangered species. Self-fulfillment becomes the goal of worship, getting in touch with the divine by getting in touch with your feelings, by thinking holy, warming, welcoming thoughts, by nurturing . . . spirituality.
Sundberg pops that bubble with a few pinpricks of liturgical sanity.
– from Getting in Touch with Your Anfechtungen
Milton Essenburg (editor, retired)
So what is my advice to those who want to know which of these two fine commentaries to buy? If I had to choose one, I would lean heavily toward Cockerill, though if I had the wherewithal, I would buy both commentaries. To speak in biblical language, a good householder has in his treasure box both new things and old things (Matthew 13:52). Cockerill offers a wealth of fresh insights; Bruce offers teachings that have stood the test of time. Serious students of the Epistle to the Hebrews need both.
– from Bruce or Cockerill? Which Hebrews Commentary Should You Buy?
Kathleen Merz (EBYR managing editor)
The greatest risk of publishing international literature is that a book will be too far outside what the U.S. market is accustomed to and not be able to find an audience. But in a way, this is also the joy of it — that we have the chance to publish something fresh, something edgy, something altogether unexpected. Something that stretches in some small way the boundaries that readers hold rigid around them without perhaps even noticing that they do. Or maybe just something delightful that children in the U.S. should have the chance to read.
– from Soldier Bear, the Batchelder, and the Risky Business of Publishing International Literature
Tom DeVries (subsidiary rights manager)
The story of the Chinese translation of A River of Words is particularly illuminating. This book is an award-winning picture biography of William Carlos Williams, a doctor and poet from New Jersey who died fifty years ago. Not exactly a known figure around the world. However, the captivating illustrations by Melissa Sweet and the engaging story told by Jen Bryant, along with the original poetry from Williams caught the attention of a literary agent in Taiwan with whom I work from time to time. From that little spark, a push to translate this book developed.
– from Picture Book Diplomacy, Part 1
Rachel Bomberger (Internet marketing manager)
I’ll never forget my own husband’s ordination, almost three years ago — the happy day I watched him kneel before the altar and receive blessings from the hands of a dozen other pastors. I’ll never forget hearing him recite the Words of Institution over the Lord’s Supper for the first time, while the church seemed to echo with joy. I’ll never forget kissing him goodbye the morning after and watching him drive off for his first day in his new office, both of us confident that his grueling four-year seminary education had indeed equipped him well for the day-to-day realities of pastoral work.
We had no idea how much he didn’t know.
To say the learning curve for a new pastor is steep is like saying Facebook is popular or Charlie Sheen has issues. It’s completely true — yet it’s true in a completely understated way.
– from Revisiting Two Old Books for New Pastors
Laura Bardolph Hubers (copywriter)
In the end, though, the main reason I couldn’t put this book down for long is the personal stories that fill it — the ones that made it hard sometimes to eat lunch and go to meetings like everything was normal. Like there weren’t real people in the world suffering and dying for their faith even as I went through the motions of my everyday life.
– from Review of Rupert Shortt’s Christianophobia
Victoria Fanning (publicity assistant)
I understand that your manuscript is your baby and that you are eager to get it published. But paying extra money to overnight your work to the publisher isn’t going to help much. The truth is, submissions take several months to process, so paying to get your manuscript in a couple days earlier probably won’t make a difference. No doubt you’ll see a season change while your manuscript is being considered.
– from So You Want to Publish a Children’s Book: Advice from an Insider
To all of you who have come along with us on part or all of this crazy, wonderful, 500-post ride, thank you. We’ll keep posting as long as you keep reading, in the sure and certain hope that the best is yet to come.
And if you’re keen to read that Oliver O’Donovan excerpt we had originally planned to publish today, never fear. It’s coming on Monday.
Lucky and Nopi manage to escape, but must continue fleeing. Even after they are reunited with their parents, they both know the pieces of their lives will never fit together like they used to. When will the war really be over, and when will they get to have the childhood they still dream about?
