New Books

I am alone this weekend so for the first time since August I have retrieved 8 new books from the library. Here they are.

Ruth - Kirsten Nielsen, translated from the Danish. There are few commentaries on Ruth at the library so I got most of them. This one has a serious weakness in chapter 1. I hope it improves.
The Five Scrolls commentary by Wesley Fuerst, Cambridge University Press 1975
Ruth - Vol 7 in The Anchor Bible by Edward Campbell, also 1975
Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World, Ed. de Lange, as recommended by my son-in-law Marcus Tomalin
History of Linguistics, Giulio Lepschy - I bet John Hobbins has this one because most of his work is in Italian. This is another of Marcus's recommendations.

I watched a few of the philosophy lectures that John Anderson recommended. Crenshaw's response to Hare impressed me (Hare didn't) so I braved the amazing population of rabbits at UVIC and got two of James Crenshaw's books out - Defending God (who needs to?) and his ABC commentary on Joel. Too bad I can't read it before morning when I have to teach on the prophets for an hour. (I think I liked what I heard of Curley but Louise Antony was not up my street.)

I also found a commentary on Judges by Marc Zvi Brettler - I liked his grammar book (Biblical Hebrew for Students of Modern Israeli Hebrew, 2002). And he responds to Lemche, Thompson and others - so it looked like a good educative read. We'll see.

I have prepared a bunch of scrolls (I hope to find a recipe for edible scrolls) and also a selection of verses from the prophets - but which I will discuss I do not yet know!  I think I will begin with Ticciati's suggestion of the prophet as mediator between God and Israel in that period. I will also look at Moses and Jesus as prophets. If the mediator role is the definition of prophet whether for warning (Ezekiel), rebuke (Nathan), sarcasm (Micaiah), hope (Isaiah), promise (Jeremiah), intercession (Moses), etc etc - no footnotes, then it is clear why no further prophets are required from the point of view of those who are in Christ - for he is the mediator risen from the dead who ever lives for us if speaking to us or on our behalf.