Fred Jenkins > Recent Status Updates

Always a jolt to move from the jagged prose and random grammar of Mark to Luke's Greek.

In the weeks and months that followed Molly would sometimes wonder if she had ever left the labyrinth. It seemed large enough to contain forests and rivers, streets and signposts, even entire cities. Maybe all the strange and confusing things she was to encounter later were only more rooms in the more rooms in the endlessly forking maze, each a tableau cunningly arranged by whoever had invented this.

"This is why I say to the flood of doomsday predictions on the future of the book: hold on a minute. There aren't too many millenary artifacts left among us. The remaining ones are survivors and difficult to displace (the wheel, the chair, the spoon, scissors, the glass, the hammer, the book ...). Something about their basic design and their pure simplicity leaves no room for dramatic improvements."

"Feeling a certain amount of discomfort is part of the experience of reading a book; the reader has far more to learn from being troubled than being relieved. We can send all the literature of the past into the operating room for cosmetic surgery, but then it will no longer explain the world to us."

"papyruses"? really? This is painful to read. The plural is papyri. I am assuming that this is the ignorance of the translator, not the author, who should know better. Vallejo mentions the recovery of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, but not the great story that it was found in a mummified crocodile.

Vallejo is certainly more optimistic than I am about libraries preserving books. Based on my experience, American libraries are more interested in throwing out books to create empty spaces. Maybe it is better in Europe.

Finished rereading Matthew, on to Mark. One of the benefits of reading the Greek is seeing the use of words, phrases, themes throughout. E.G., the Lord's Prayer summarizes much of Mt, looking back to the temptation in the wilderness, forward to Gethsemane with various parallels. Peter, the only apostle we really get to know, always comes across as the slow student who has to keep calling attention to himself.

Vallejo on silent reading in antiquity, while largely accurate, somewhat overstates what the evidence supports. She cites only the famous passage from Augustine's Confessions (she only cites primary sources directly). Since her bibliography lacks most of the key scholars on this (e.g. BMW Knox, Paul Saenger), it is hard to have much confidence. Nice portrait of Oxford Libraries, but not very germane.

I am trying to make up my mind about this book. Relatively little on papyrus or books so far. Too many random free associations and excessive reading of antiquity through modern ideologies.

Most of the way through the Sermon on the Mount (through Mt 6). One of the most striking things this time through is noticing the frequent dreams (κατ’ ὄναρ, in a dream, occurs only 6 times in the NT, all in Matthew). Four give Joseph direction (he seems to need a lot), one each for the Magi and for Pilate's wife. Why do people only get dream messages in Mt?

Not a book to read fast.