Musings of a Snickerdoodle

I often sense a tendency in myself to take having an English translation of the Old and New Testaments for granted.  But, as Harry Freedman demonstrates in his book, The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning, I shouldn't take it for granted and should appreciate all the more the effort and sacrifice that went in to getting the written Word of God into a book that ordinary people could read.  In this book Freedman does an excellent job at writing, he grasps and keeps one's attention, and it flows nicely.  He takes you through history, beginning with the translation of the Old Testament and then goes on to include the New in the focus as well.  Translating God's Word into the common vernacular of any people was often very tumultuous and controversial, and we see this down the passage of time that the author takes us through and we also see this as we look through the viewpoint of different translators who took many r...

The Tunnels by Greg Mitchell is a book about escape tunnels that were built under the Berlin wall during the Cold War.  Though many tunnels and tunnel escapes are looked at, the focus of the book is on one particular tunnel that was funded by NBC in exchange for filming the construction of the tunnel and any escapes that would happen by means of the tunnel. I picked this book to review simply because I thought that it sounded rather interesting, I didn't realize how absolutely riveting it would be.  I started reading it to myself, got a little way into it and then started reading it out loud to one of my sisters. By, probably the middle of the book, several of my siblings were listening in with fixed attention.  This book is very well written, Mitchell really seems to give one the perspective of the people involved in these escapes so that you feel along with them as they attempt their dangerous work.  We all got pretty tense with every tunnel...

From Heaven:   A 28-day Advent Devotional with excerpts from the works of A.W. Tozer, is one of the strangest devotionals I have ever encountered (though I haven't looked at or read many).   Strange in a good way though.   When I think of devotionals, I think of generally light portions of readings per day, with a verse of Scripture that is contemplated at a high level and that is then meant to be applied to oneself in an extremely personal way.   Tozer's devotional, like any devotional, has a small reading for any given day, but the content of the reading is anything but small and goes much further than provoking one to mere introspection, it provokes one to contemplate the true awesomeness of our God and His love and grace. There are things in this devotional that I was delightfully surprised to see in a Christmas devotional (or any devotional for that matter), like, " Put the emphasis where the Bible puts it, on the Christ at the right hand of God, not on the...

Discovering the Septuagint - A Guided Reader - by Karen Jobes is a very nice resource for those looking for an introduction to the Greek of the LXX (The Septuagint).  There are chapters dealing with selected passages from 9 books of the LXX, in each chapter there is an introduction telling you about that particular book and its translation techniques.   Then follows the  Rahlfs-Hanhart Greek text of an excerpt from that particular book and a brief examination of certain key words and phrases in each verse, notes on vocabulary and syntax. Then comes another excerpt of the Greek text and the notes on the various verses…etc.  After all of the selected texts are done being examined, then comes the NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) version of the passage(s) so that one may read the whole thing in English. And then finally, if verses from the chapter are cited in the New Testament, they have a table showing where in the NT the passage is referred t...

The Reader's Bible (this one is the NKJV) is designed as a single column, "paragraph style" Bible, with no verse or chapter numbers, just the names of the Books.  This makes it so that you read the Bible more along the lines of how it was originally put together in a codex, which did not have all of the numbered chapter divisions in the books of the Bible that we have today. This Bible is definitely reader friendly, it is easy to read through without the potential distraction of verse numbers (though they are handy) and it is a unique experience to have the historical narrative filling the whole page as one column rather than as two, more like how a regular book of history book or biography is put together.  You can keep a general track of where you are in any given book by looking at the bottom corners of the pages which tell you which chapter is on the page you are reading.  The only thing that I don't like is that they kept the chapter breaks (without ...

The Cultural Background Study Bible is a Bible that contains a lot of information about the times in which the various sections were  written.  It has many pictures, maps and diagrams, and of course, commentary.  The Bible is pretty large and heavy, but that is to be expected with so much extra content being added to it.  I must say that this Bible, or rather the extra content of this Bible, had a lot of unnecessary things, and even absolutely indecent things.  First, the pictures.  I don't remember if I've ever reviewed a Bible that had so many indecent pictures in it. There's the obligatory Adam and Eve (as usual, depicted before the fall of man with conveniently placed leaves), there are ancient artistic depictions of women exposing various body parts, including the lower half of the body,  there are ancient depictions of men being circumcised…and so on.  And get this, there's even a clay depiction of a...

Tillie Pierce:  Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg by Tanya Anderson gives a very interesting perspective of the battle of Gettysburg.  As the title indicates, Tillie was a teenager at the time the Confederates invaded her state (Pennsylvania) and thence ended up at her hometown of Gettysburg.  As the danger grows Tillie's parents allow her to go with a neighbor who desires to flee, with her two children to a safer spot at her own parents farm.  Ironically, their refuge ends up being a not-so-safe place with war taking place around them and nearby on the Round Tops. Tillie and her friends accept the situation in which they are placed and end up helping with the wounded and helping give water to active soldiers and in so doing she meets various soldiers participating in the battle (including General Meade) all the while worrying about her own family back in the main town.  The book is filled with interesting facts about the Civil War and many ...