Happy Monday! No new books in the mail today, but I did get the IVP Academic Catalog for spring 2012. Below is my list of “must haves” from the catalog:

• Ezekiel, Daniel (Reformation Commentary on Scripture), Edited by Carl L. Beckwith (March 2012)
• The Wonder of the Universe, Karl W. Giberson (April 2012)
• A Week in the Life of Corinth, Ben Witherington III (May 2012)
• Christ-Centered Biblical Theology, Graeme Goldsworthy (May 2012)
• Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views, Edited by Stanley E. Porter & Beth M. Stovell (June 2012)
• Dictionary of the Old Testament Prophets, Edited by J. Gordon McConville & Mark Boda (June 2012)

Welcome to day 4 of the 4th Annual 12 Days Before Christmas Book Giveaway! Today’s giveaway is sponsored by Accordance Bible Software, InterVarsity Press and Zondervan. We have three prize packs up for grabs, which will be explained below. The resources featured in today’s giveaway are:

	The Scholar’s 9 Introductory Level offers a basic Greek and Hebrew study package at an affordable price. Perfect for the seminary student on a limited budget, the Scholar’s Intro includes the Greek New Testament (NA27) and Hebrew Bible (BHS) with full grammatical tagging, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon and Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, the King James with Strong’s numbers, your choice of an additional modern English Bible, and a basic package of study aids. That’s the equivalent of $585 worth of print resources for a retail price of just $149***Click here to find the answer to question 4.
	This volume focuses on five views of justification and calls on representative proponents to set forth their case and then respond to each other. The five views are:Traditional Reformed (Michael S. Horton) Progressive Reformed (Michael F. Bird) New Perspective (James D. G. Dunn) Deification, or Theosis (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen) Roman Catholic (Gerald O’Collins and Oliver Rafferty)
	For over twenty years, Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels has provided a useful antidote to many of the toxic effects of skeptical criticism of the Gospels. Offering a calm, balanced overview of the history of Gospel criticism, especially that of the late twentieth century, Blomberg introduces readers to the methods employed by New Testament scholars and shows both the values and limits of those methods. He then delves more deeply into the question of miracles, Synoptic discrepancies and the differences between the Synoptics and John. After an assessment of noncanonical Jesus tradition, he addresses issues of historical method directly.
	Uncovering this North African tradition and offering it to a wide reading audience is the task that Tom Oden sets for himself in this fascinating tour de force. The book, originating as lectures delivered at the Islamic Da’wa University in Tripoli in 2008 and later expanded as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures in 2009 at Dallas Theological Seminary, has been expanded and refined to provide additional insights and references, surveying the texts, architecture and landmarks of this important period of Christian history. It also serves as a valuable companion to Oden’s earlier offerings in How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind and The African Memory of Mark.***Click here to find the answer to question 3.
	Spirituality often evokes images of quiet centeredness, meditative serenity and freedom from life’s pressures. It’s become a chic commodity, with its benefits evoked by images of sunrises and secluded retreats. Contrast the apostle Paul, who promotes a cross-shaped spirituality for fools making their way though life’s trials.As he explores this ancient spiritual path, Rodney Reeves probes our understanding of what Christian spirituality should be. And to illuminate its transformative power, he gives us living illustrations of what it means to follow Paul as he followed Christ. Here is a book that joins a deep understanding of Paul with a pastoral and spiritual wisdom born of experience. ***Click here to find the answer to question 2.
	According to author Con Campbell, making a small, regular time commitment and utilizing the right tools can make all the difference in preserving and improving the abilities Greek students work so hard to obtain. This primer sets out the basic practices pastors and former language students can follow to retain their Greek language skills.***Click here to find the answer to question 1.

Today’s Prizes

This contest is now closed. Winners will be announced soon.

Below are the books that caught my eye in the Winter 2012 IVP Academic Catalog.

You can view the full catalog below:

Many thanks to the kind folks at InterVarsity Press for sending along a review copy of Early Libyan Christianity: Uncovering a North African Tradition by Thomas C. Oden.  This is the third book in a series that calls the western church to consider the rich church history to be found on the continent of Africa.  I will be devouring Early Libyan Christianity as soon as I complete my review of The African Memory of Mark:  Reassessing Early Church Tradition (IVP, 2011). In the meantime, you can see my review of How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind (IVP, 2008) here:  LINK.  You can get a sense of where Oden intends to go with Early Libyan Christianity with this brief description from the IVP web site:

“Buried for more than a millennium beneath sand and the erosions of time are the remnants of a vital, formative Christian presence in Libya. From about A.D. 68 till the Muslim conquest of A.D. 643, Libya housed a vibrant, creative Christian community that contributed to the shape of the faith even as we know it today. By the mid-190s A.D., Leptis Magna could claim favorite sons as the Roman pontiff, Victor the African, and as the Roman emperor, Septimius Severus.

A rich and energetic community produced a wide variety of key players from early martyrs to great thinkers to archheretics. Tertullian, the great theologian, and Sabellius, the heretic, are relatively well known. Less well known are the martyrs Wasilla and Theodore and the great poet-philosopher-bishop Synesius of Cyrene.

Uncovering this North African tradition and offering it to a wide reading audience is the task that Tom Oden sets for himself in this fascinating tour de force. The book, originating as lectures delivered at the Islamic Da’wa University in Tripoli in 2008 and later expanded as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures in 2009 at Dallas Theological Seminary, has been expanded and refined to provide additional insights and references, surveying the texts, architecture and landmarks of this important period of Christian history. It also serves as a valuable companion to Oden’s earlier offerings in How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind and The African Memory of Mark.”

About the Author:
Thomas C. Oden (Ph.D., Yale University), formerly Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology at The Theological School of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, is now director of the Center for Early African Christianity, at Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He is the general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and the Ancient Christian Doctrine series as well as the author of Classic Christianity, a revision of his three-volume systematic theology.

Related Books:

I have come to strongly respect the scholarship of Thomas C. Oden during my previous encounters with his work including How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind (IVP, 2008) and the Ancient Christian Commentary Series (IVP, 2010).  Many thanks to the kind folks at InterVarsity press for sending me a copy of this new title for review, allowing me to dig even deeper into Oden’s work and research.  In The African Memory of Mark, Oden builds on the work he began in How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind and explores the broader picture of the author of Mark’s Gospel that is found within African tradition.  Oden compels his audience to consider a fresh portrait of Mark that vividly comes to life with this reassessment of early church tradition.

Key topics covered in the book are:

• Call for a fresh assessment of early church tradition from Africa
• Examination of parallels between the New Testament and the African account
• Review of historic archaeological evidence from Alexandria
• Readers are introduced to African synaxaries and other written sources often neglected in the West

The African Memory of Mark is widely available from Amazon and other book retailers.

Update:  I just got word from IVP that they will sponsor a giveaway in conjunction with my review.  Stay tuned for the upcoming giveaway I’ll be hosting for 5 copies of The African Memory of Mark, the week of August 22nd.

From the back cover:

The book of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are rooted in the order created by the one true God. Their steady gaze penetrates to the very nature of created reality and leads us toward peace and human flourishing. Craig Bartholomew and Ryan O’Dowd tune our ears to hear once again Lady Wisdom calling in the streets.

“Craig Bartholomew and Ryan O’Dowd have given the church a theology of Wisdom literature that is like apples of gold in settings of silver. Its apples of gold are its profound, penetrating and accurate insights into Old Testament wisdom. These are set in the silver settings of discerning evaluations, an engaging style, and the best of ancient and modern scholarship.”

—Bruce Waltke, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Regent College, and Distinguished Professor of Old Testament, Knox Theological Seminary

“Be not misled: this is much more than a theological introduction to the Old Testament wisdom books. It is a wide-ranging survey of their significance against their ancient Middle Eastern background and in the context of modern study. It stresses and explicates their poetic nature, and it makes illuminating links with modern and postmodern thinking.”

—John Goldingay, Fuller Theological Seminary

You can learn more about this new Old Testament resource at IVPress.com: LINK.

The kind folks at InterVarsity Press have furnished me with a copy of Jesus, Paul and the People of God:  A Theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright.  This book is the product of the 2010 Wheaton Theology Conference, where N.T. Wright and nine other scholars dialoged on the state of scholarship regarding Jesus (Part 1:  Jesus and the People of God) and the state of scholarship regarding the apostle Paul (Part II:  Paul and the People of God). If you’d like to examine the content more deeply, I encourage you see the google preview of Jesus Paul and the People of God.

I was excited to receive a copy of Arthur G. Patzia’s The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text & Canon, Second Edition from the kind folks at IVP Academic.  I am always on the lookout for new books relating to scribal practice and textual development, so this book will be a welcome addition to my resource library.  This new edition is an update to the original, which was published in May 1995.  I’ve included the back cover copy below as it gives a nice synopsis of what readers can expect to find in this updated and expanded edition.

The story of the making of the New Testament is one in which scrolls bumped across cobbled Roman roads and pitched through rolling Mediterranean seas, finally finding their destinations in stuffy, dimly lit Christian house churches in Corinth or Colossae. There they were read aloud and reread, handled and copied, forwarded and collected, studied and treasured. And eventually they were brought together to make up our New Testament.

This revised and expanded edition of The Making of the New Testament is a textbook introduction to the origin, collection, copying and canonizing of the New Testament documents. Like shrewd detectives reading subtle whispers of evidence, biblical scholars have studied the trail of clues and pieced together the story of these books. Arthur Patzia tells the story, answering our many questions:

• How were books and documents produced in the first century?
• What motivated the early Christians to commit teaching and narrative and vision to papyrus?
• How were the stories and sayings of Jesus circulated, handed down and shaped into Gospels?
• What do we know about ancient letter writing, secretaries and “copy shops”?
• Why were four Gospels included instead of just one?
• How were Paul’s letters, sent here and there, gathered into a single collection?
• Who decided–and by what criteria–which documents would be included in the New Testament?

The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text & Canon, Second Edition is available for purchase from Amazon.com, IVPress.com, and other Christian book retailers.

Many thanks to Adrianna Wright for sending along a copy of The Challenge of Jesus (with DVD) by N.T. Wright.  In this volume, N.T. Wright joins in the quest for the historical Jesus, challenging his readers to both grow in their understanding of Jesus within the context of first century Palestine and to follow Jesus more faithfully in the postmodern twenty-first century.  This special edition includes a fifty-minute DVD Resurrection, that was shot on location in Israel, Greece and England.  IVP offers a free group discussion study guide for the Resurrection DVD.  It is available as a PDF download at IVPress.com:  LINK.  The Challenge of Jesus (with DVD) is available from Amazon.com, IVPress.com, and other Christian book retailers.

Book Details:

• General Editor: Thomas C. Oden
• Category: Reference, Commentary
• Publisher: InterVarsity press (September 2010)
• Binding: CD-ROM
• ISBN: 978-0-8308-2480-9

Recommendation:

• Review Date: 2/6/2011 by Shaun Tabatt
• Rating: Highly recommended

Review:
If you have followed the reference works published by InterVarsity Press over the past few years, you have no doubt noticed that they are making a concerted effort to expose a whole new generation to the writings of the church fathers.  One series that has been an important part of this resurgence is the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture edited by Thomas C. Oden. My first encounters with the early volumes of this series was during my college days. You could often find one or more of these volumes open on my desk as a trusted source for my exegesis papers and other research. The twenty nine volumes making up the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture span both the Old and New Testaments as well as the Apocrypha. Given the time and language barrier that exists between today’s reader and the church fathers,  there certainly are gaps that need to filled in as we attempt to learn at the feet of the fathers.  The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture does an exemplary job of helping to bridge that gap, making the exegesis of the church fathers readily accessible to today’s pastors, scholars, and bible students.

There was clearly a lot of planning and forethought put into the organization and layout of this commentary set.  As I say with any reference work, be sure to read all of the introductory material in order maximize your use of the resource. One important feature to note is that the scriptural text is divided into periocopes. Each pericope is followed by an overview, providing a succinct summary of the patristic commentary that follows. Besides the actual meat of the commentary, there are also many useful features to be found at the close of each volume.  Depending on your level of research and interest, you may well be able to make use of some or all of the following:

• Appendix:  Early Christian Writers and the Documents Cited
• Biographical Sketches
• Timeline of Writers of the Patristic Period
• Bibliography of works in the Original Languages
• Bibliography of works in English Translations
• Author/Writings Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index

As a hopeless bibliophile, I often struggle with the question of whether to buy reference works electronically or in print.  If shelf space and budget were both limitless, I would suggest doing both.  The reality of the situation is that this typically is not the case.  The full twenty nine volume Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture set retails for $1450.00 in print and $385.00 on CD-ROM.  The significant cost savings alone is a good argument for picking this set up on CD-ROM.  If there is a particular volume that relates to a focused area of research or study, you may want to consider purchasing that particular volume in print in addition to the CD-ROM version.  For me, that is especially true when it is a volume I want to read from cover to cover.  Besides the cost savings, a second major incentive for purchasing this and other reference works electronically is the ease with which you can search.  In the case of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture set, it is available for both LOGOS Bible Software and Accordance.  The third major incentive for the CD-ROM edition is the ease with which you can create footnotes and bibliographic entries for the references you are copying into your papers.  I’m an avid user of LOGOS Bible Software and this feature alone has revolutionized my writing. Having never used Accordance, I am unable to speak to whether or not they offer the same level of convenience when creating footnotes or bibliographic entries. My suspicion is that it is equally as helpful.

Regardless of whether you choose to go with the print or CD-ROM version of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, either one will be a welcome addition to your library. If you are looking for a wonderful birthday, Christmas,  or graduation gift, every pastor, scholar, and Bible student would be greatly blessed by the opportunity to add this resources to their collection.

General Editor Information:
Thomas C. Oden (Ph.D., Yale University) formerly Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology at The Theological School of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, is now director of the Center for Early African Christianity, at Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He is the general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and the Ancient Christian Doctrine series as well as the author of Classic Christianity, a revision of his three-volume systematic theology.

Disclaimer:
This CD-ROM was provided by InterVarsity Press for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Purchase Options: Amazon.com, Christianbook.com, InterVarsity Press