Silly Books

Here’s something I wrote to a Facebook group in response to a question about Charlotte Mason’s view of children reading silly books, and specifically whether silly books, since they aren’t what Mason called “living books,” are therefore what she called “twaddle” that children shouldn’t read:

No, silly books are not (necessarily) twaddle, even though they are probably not living books.

One big misconception some have is the idea that any and every book is either a living book or it is twaddle, one or the other. But that’s not at all the case.

In fact, Charlotte Mason writes about silly books:

Books of “comicalities” cultivate no power but the sense of the incongruous; and though life is the more amusing for the possession of such a sense, when cultivated to excess it is apt to show itself a flippant habit. Diogenes and the Naughty Boys of Troy is irresistible, but it is not the sort of thing the children will live over and over, and “play at” by the hour, as we have all played at Robinson Crusoe finding the footprints. They must have “funny books,” but do not give the children too much nonsense reading (Home Education, 151-152).

She does not say that these books are twaddle. She does not say that these books ought to be prohibited for our children.

She does warn that too much of such books can result in flippant attitudes, as you see with the person who has “too much” of a “sense of humor” and, through weakness of will, can’t be serious when he ought to be, is always joking around, turns everything you say into a joke, can’t watch a movie with you without making wisecracks about the characters and “wouldn’t it be funny if” and cracking up even in the saddest scenes, etc.

There is a time to laugh and there is a time to be serious, and so Mason is cautioning against raising a child who treats everything as a joke. Silliness is fun, but it shouldn’t be the steady diet, she says.

But twaddle is not silliness. It’s not light fiction. It’s not fun reading. It’s not genre fiction, like mysteries or fantasy novels. It’s not series fiction. It’s not immoral fiction (as if morally good vs. morally bad corresponds to living books vs. twaddle).

Usually, when people say, “I’m okay with my child reading some twaddle,” I suspect what they mean is “I’m okay with my child reading light fiction” or “reading something fun.” But that’s a misunderstanding of what twaddle is.

When Mason talks about twaddle, she talks about it being condescending, about “goody-goody story books,” about how children don’t like twaddle because they don’t like being talked down to (“All who know children know that they do not talk twaddle and do not like it, and prefer that which appeals to their understanding”), about “reading-made-easy” history books that dumb everything down instead of being written with “literary power,” about teachers presenting “little pills of knowledge in the form of a weak and copious diluent” (i.e., diluted with so much extra talk), about “a single grain of pure knowledge” drowned in a “worthless flood” of talk (e.g., “Now children, we’re going to talk about butterflies. Have you ever seen a little butterfly, boys and girls? Look at the picture! Look, look! See the little butterfly’s wings? How many wings does he have? Two! The butterfly has two wings! Do you have two wings? No! No, you don’t. That’s because you’re a boy or a girl and not a butterfly. But the butterfly has two wings. They’re like little fairies, aren’t they? And maybe when you aren’t looking, they turn into fairies? Isn’t that a fun idea? Aren’t they beautiful? God must love butterflies very much, don’t you think, to dress them in such beautiful wings. Let’s all take our crayons and draw pictures of butterfly wings, and then we’re going to flap them and sing a little song about being a butterfly”).

But even though Mason does say that a child should never read twaddle, she says elsewhere that maybe it does us good when we’re weary:

We need not ask what the girl or boy likes. She very often likes the twaddle of goody-goody story books, he likes condiments, highly-spiced tales of adventure. We are all capable of liking mental food of a poor quality and a titillating nature; and possibly such food is good for us when our minds are in need of an elbow-chair; but our spiritual life is sustained on other stuff, whether we be boys or girls, men or women (School Education, 168).

Notice, too, that here she distinguishes “twaddle” (“goody-goody story books”) from what she calls “condiments” (“highly-spiced tales of adventure”). She doesn’t want a steady diet of the latter any more than she does of silly books. If all you read are adventure stories, you aren’t being nourished either. But she doesn’t see adventure stories as being “twaddle,” probably because adventure stories don’t talk down to you. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys might fall into the “condiments” category, if we were to treat these as technical categories, but they aren’t, in CM’s usage, “twaddle.”

Twaddle and Other Categories

It seems to me that educators influenced by Charlotte Mason may sometimes try to pack too much into the term “twaddle,” as if the distinction between twaddle and living books is the only distinction that matters, or as if these are the only two options and a book must be one or the other.

In fact, there are several other ways of classifying books, none of which are the same as the twaddle vs. living book distinction:

(1) Poorly written vs. well-written. A book may be poorly written — the author doesn’t tell his story entirely coherently; it doesn’t flow as well as it could; there are grammatical errors — and yet not be twaddle.

For instance, the diary of an American pioneer might not be well written, a great work of literature, but that doesn’t mean that it is then twaddle. It might, in fact, be a living book, full of interest and ideas and observations and life.

On the other hand, I suppose a book may be relatively well written — at least as far as grammar an syntax are concerned — and still be twaddle because of its tone and the way it talks down to the child. The condescension may be grammatically correct, but it’s still condescension.

(2) Easy reading vs. more challenging reading (and, of course, everything in between). What is easy reading for a 9 year old may not be for a 6 year old, mind you. But being easy reading doesn’t make something twaddle. Arnold Lobel’s Frog & Toad story “Cookies” is easy reading, but it’s certainly not twaddle and as an adult, I still enjoy it.

(3) Light fiction vs. “heavier” fiction: Light fiction isn’t just easy reading; in fact, it may use just as many big words or complex sentences as “heavier” fiction. But it’s written more for fun, while what I’m calling “heavier” fiction is more serious, often dealing with weightier or “darker” topics.

P. G. Wodehouse’s books are light fiction and are certainly not twaddle, and Wodehouse is regarded by many as one of the greatest writers — the greatest English stylists — of the 20th century. National Review, when they heard that the Modern Library was trying to list the best 100 novels of the 20th century, wrote: “P. G. Wodehouse wrote 96 novels. What are the other four?”

I suspect that when some people say, “I’m okay with my kids reading some twaddle,” they really mean “I’m okay with them reading light fiction, not sticking only to the classics.” But light fiction isn’t necessarily twaddle or poorly written or not worth spending your time on.

(4) Big themes vs. little themes: A book may deal with some very small themes and yet be a living book. Similarly, a book may tackle big themes and yet not be a living book. Many children’s Bible story books deal with some of the biggest themes of all, but they’re still twaddle because, for instance, they’re written down to the children. Encyclopedias deal with big themes, too, but while they aren’t twaddle, they also aren’t living books.

(5) Serious vs. fun/light-hearted: Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and Dostoevsky are very serious writers, and they’re worth reading. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and P. G. Wodehouse are often *not* serious, certainly not somber, often very funny — and they’re worth reading, too. None of these authors wrote twaddle.

Interestingly, Charlotte Mason wrote:

Books of “comicalities” cultivate no power but the sense of the incongruous; and though life is the more amusing for the possession of such a sense, when cultivated to excess it is apt to show itself a flippant habit. Diogenes and the Naughty Boys of Troy is irresistible, but it is not the sort of thing the children will live over and over, and “play at” by the hour, as we have all played at Robinson Crusoe finding the footprints. They must have “funny books,” but do not give the children too much nonsense reading” (Home Education, 151-152).

As far as I can tell “Diogenes and the Naughty Boys of Troy” is actually Wilhelm Busch’s “Diogenes and the Naughty Boys of Corinth,” which is a poem and cartoon strip. CM would probably have known it in the form it appears in Busch’s A Bushel of Merrythoughts.

We might glance at this and declare immediately that it’s twaddle. But not Charlotte Mason. She calls it “irresistible,” thinks it’s fine for children to read, but doesn’t think they’ll “live over” it. In short, CM doesn’t think it’s a living book, but she also doesn’t seem to think it’s twaddle either and certainly doesn’t want such a silly book rejected (“They must have ‘funny books'”).

This is very important to understand: CM apparently doesn’t think that a book is necessarily either twaddle or living, or that if a book isn’t living it is therefore twaddle. In this passage, at least, she identifies a book as a “must have” in a sense, though it isn’t a living book. Not living, not twaddle. Just a sort of book you don’t want to give too much of to your child.

(6) Genre fiction vs. whatever the opposite of that might be: Some people, I suspect, think that just because a book is a mystery or science fiction or fantasy or horror or a western or a thriller, it’s not literature and therefore is, by default, twaddle. And yet much of the world’s greatest literature really is genre fiction.

So just because a children’s book is fantasy and light fiction at that (e.g., Edward Eager’s Half Magic) doesn’t mean that it’s twaddle.

(7) Formulaic/predictable fiction vs. non-formulaic, outside the box, groundbreaking fiction.

C. S. Lewis points out that in the Middle Ages, creativity wasn’t seen as dreaming up something brand new, inventing a brand new literary style, telling a story that had never been told before. Rather, creativity involved reworking older sources and doing something new with them.

Arguably, Lewis’s own novels were creative in just this way, drawing on and responding to (including responding negatively to) other people’s works.
A great writer may write something more or less predictable or even formulaic, but still add literary quality and depth and freshness to it.

So, for instance, August Derleth’s The Moon-Tenders is a fairly formulaic children’s mystery novel. There are two boys who are close friends who discover something strange happening and who solve the mystery, after a certain amount of peril.

But what makes the novel outstanding is both the depth of characterization — these are real people, not cardboard cutouts, and in fact are based on Derleth himself and his closest friend — and the way the setting is described.

Derleth is known today, I suspect, primarily as the writer who edited and published and added to H. P. Lovecraft’s work, but he himself would have told you that he had devoted pretty much his entire writing career to describing life in and around Sauk City, Wisconsin, which he in all of his works called Sac Prairie, and that devotion underlies all the little details that make Sac Prairie — seen through the eyes of a boy around twelve years of age — so vivid in The Moon-Tenders.

Formulaic and predicable? Yes, in one sense. But also far richer than the Hardy Boys.

Similarly, Margery Fisher, in Intent Upon Reading, talks about various children’s mystery novels and points out how certain ones are outstanding, how some break free from the formula but how others, while working within the basic formula, shine because of the beauty of the writing, the depth of characterization, the balance and proportion of the novel, the authenticity of the historical or geographical setting, and so forth.

(8) Series fiction vs. stand-alone novels: Yes, many series decline in quality and become repetitive as they go on. That may be true, for instance, of The Boxcar Children. But it’s not universally true. Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin series lasted for 20 volumes, each of which is extremely well-written, none of which is repetitive.

(9) Immoral books vs. moral: A book may be literature, not twaddle at all, and yet be immoral in that it encourages readers to enjoy or even embrace immoral behavior.

For instance, there might be a novel in which a character commits adultery and the reader is expected to see that as a liberating choice, the woman breaking free from her dull, boring husband and “discovering herself,” or something like that. No matter how well written the book is, it’s aimed at promoting something immoral.

On the other hand, you might have a very moral book, a book aimed at promoting good behavior in children, that talks down to children, that’s smarmy and goody-goody … and it seems to me that in at least some passages, these are in particular the sorts of books CM spoke of as twaddle.

I hasten to add, too, that a moral book is not a book about good people doing good things. A moral book may, in fact, be a book about wicked people doing wicked things. On this, see G. K. Chesterton’s essay “Tom Jones and Morality.”

(10) “Bad” books … or just okay books vs. great books: Here “bad” and “good” aren’t moral categories but refer rather to the overall quality of the book. C. S. Lewis, in An Experiment in Criticism, says that the test of a good book is whether you can read it again with enjoyment and profit.  The science fiction and fantasy author Gene Wolfe has said, “My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.”

As a general rule, I don’t buy books I don’t intend to reread or have one child after another read (and reread). If it’s a “read only once” book, we can get it from the library.

(11) Minor vs. Major: There are major authors, authors whose names and books are instantly identified as “classics,” authors such as Chaucer and Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, Austen and Dickens.

But there are also minor authors, authors whose books are worth reading but who don’t quite reach the heights of greatness that some other authors do. I suspect few critics would regard Charlotte Yonge as highly as Jane Austen, but that doesn’t mean that Yonge isn’t worth reading, let alone that she doesn’t write “living books.”

Furthermore, even great authors do not consistently turn out great books. Barchester Towers is a great book, a classic, but not everything Anthony Trollope wrote is up to that standard. Some of his other works are major, but some of them are decidedly minor.

That’s true even of a writer as great as Shakespeare: Macbeth and King Lear and Hamlet are major plays; Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a minor work — and even Henry V, beloved by so many, is (as my Shakespeare prof said) really not a play but a series of great speeches tied together by some summaries of what’s happened in between.

You’re also not going to have your child read every play by Shakespeare. Some are just not suitable for children, and some of his plays are just not all that great (e.g., Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus), and some are suitable only for older children (I’d put Romeo and Juliet and Othello in that category, although they are great plays!).  Charlotte Mason and the PNEU had students read a lot of Shakespeare, but only certain plays were assigned.

But as with minor writers, so with minor books by an author. They are still worth reading. Just because something is a minor book — or even a minor book by a minor author — doesn’t mean it’s not a “living book.”

For that matter, it can even be a delightful thing to track down some minor writers, to discover good books by writers now long forgotten whose works are not numbered among the classics.

You might really enjoy a minor writer, even more than a major writer. You might find that you prefer Mrs. Oliphant or Charlotte Yonge to Thomas Hardy. You may prefer a work that people think of as “minor” to one that people think of as “major.”

Everyone thinks of Jane Eyre as Charlotte Bronte’s major work, but I enjoyed her novel Shirley — her minor novel — more. For that matter, my favorite Bronte isn’t Charlotte (Jane Eyre) or Emily (Wuthering Heights) but their lesser-known sister, Anne (Agnes Grey, Tenant of Wildfell Hall). She may be regarded as minor, but she’s the one I like best.

Not one of these classifications is the identical to what CM meant by “twaddle vs. living books.” But I think it’s good for us to keep these ways of categorizing books in mind — and there may be several other classifications, as well — so that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that, e.g., if our daughter is reading an Agatha Christie novel, which is light fiction and genre fiction and part of a series, she must be reading “twaddle.”

Past Them (Mark 6)

When Jesus walks across the water through the storm (Mark 6), he wasn’t intending to get into the boat with the disciples or to calm the storm. He intended to go past them, so that they could see him and follow him and keep rowing in spite of the storm.

The Sign of Jonah (2)

A follow-up to my previous post about the “sign of Jonah” (drawing still on Jakob van Bruggen’s Matteus):

If “the sign of Jonah” isn’t Jesus’ death and resurrection, then why does Jesus go on to talk about Jonah’s being in the belly of the sea-monster for three days and three nights and link that up with Jesus himself being “in the heart of the earth” for three days and three nights?

The answer is that Jesus is not here identifying what he means by “the sign of Jonah.” Again, as I said in the previous post, there’s no indication that anyone in Nineveh had a clue about Jonah being in the belly of the fish, so that wasn’t a sign to them at all.

But the point is rather this: Jonah tried to run away from his calling and ended up “dead’ in the belly of the fish, but that wasn’t the end of his mission. After three days and three nights, he was vomited out and his mission continued. His “death” didn’t end his mission to Nineveh. His death didn’t stop him from being a sign to them.

And neither will Jesus’ death. The scribes and Pharisees are already plotting Jesus’ death in Matthew 12, and when they do arrest him and crucify him and bury him — the three days and three nights includes everything from his arrest on — they will think that they have gotten rid of him.

But they will find that his mission continues. After three days and three nights, he will rise again, like Jonah, and continue to be a sign to them, a sign of their need to repent and trust in him before it is too late.

The Sign of Jonah (Matthew 12)

When the scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign, does he give them one?

In Mark 8, he refuses: “No sign shall be given to this generation.”

In Matthew 12, he says: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”

Does that mean that Jesus changed his mind and decided he would give them one sign? Not at all. Jesus gives no sign to this generation, no sign of the sort they were requesting, no sign to prove that his authority comes from God.

But the sign of Jonah is a sign of a different sort. What is “the sign of Jonah”?

People often take it to be Jonah’s being swallowed by the fish and then vomited out again, which they (rightly) link up with Jesus’ death and resurrection.

But the sign of Jonah is a sign for the people of Nineveh, and there is no indication in Scripture whatsoever that the people of Nineveh ever knew about Jonah’s being swallowed by the fish and vomited up again. It’s not as if they saw that happen: Nineveh isn’t on the coast. And it’s not as if Jonah came into Nineveh strewn with seaweed and bleached or tanned by the fish’s stomach acids.

If you were a Ninevite and Jonah came preaching “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed” and you said, “Before I repent, I want a sign to prove that you’re really a prophet,” would you get a sign like that? No.

The “sign” that proves Jonah’s a prophet is going to come all right. But it’s going to come in forty days … thirty-nine days … thirty-eight days…. And you don’t want to wait to repent until you experience that sign, because by then it will be too late. There is going to be proof that he’s a prophet, and the proof is that his word comes to pass, but that word is your destruction.

And so, too, with Jesus. If scribes and Pharisees and others in Israel refuse to repent till they see a sign, they won’t receive an authenticating sign until it’s too late and destruction has come upon them.

But they do get a sign of another type. They get “the sign of Jonah.” What was the “sign of Jonah” to the Ninevites? It was the sign that was Jonah himself. (For you grammar nerds, the genitive here is epexegetical.) So in Luke 11, we are told explicitly that *Jonah* became a sign to the Ninevites.

The sign is that there is a prophet coming to them, preaching to them, warning them of the destruction to come. That’s all the sign they get.

And Jesus gives to the people of Israel “the sign of Jonah,” Jesus himself coming to them, doing his works, warning them of the coming judgment, proclaiming the good news of the coming kingdom and doing the works of the kingdom, and calling them to repent and trust in him. That is all the sign they get.

[For much of this exegesis, I am indebted to Jakob van Bruggen’s Matteus.]

Dressing Like the Tabernacle

Sometimes Aaron the high priest wears his most glorious garments and sometimes he does not.

“Curiously,” says Carmen Imes (Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai),

Aaron was not to wear the most elaborate of his official vestments (breastpiece and ephod) when it would seem most appropriate to do so — while entering the Most Holy Place.

He wore them only when performing regular sacrifices and maintaining service in the Holy Place, implying that his representation of Israel to God pertained to the sacrificial system and the ongoing maintenance of the cult; he did not ‘bear the names’ of the sons of Israel into the Most Holy Place.

When he appeared in the Most Holy Place on the most holy day [i.e., the Day of Atonement], he had to come humbly, without status or pretense, and in so doing symbolize Israel’s undeserved access to YHWH’s presence (166).

He does, however, wear his turban with its inscription:

Most importantly, Aaron’s diadem signified what was true of the entire nation — namely, that they were “holy, belonging to YHWH.” On that basis, he appealed to YHWH for forgiveness of their sin (166).

But it’s also important to notice, as Imes does, the correspondence between Aaron’s garments and the tabernacle itself. In his full vestments, Aaron represents the whole tabernacle, turned inside out: linen on the inside, and a breastplate corresponding to the Most Holy Place on the outside. But on the Day of Atonement, Aaron wears clothing that corresponds, not to the Most Holy Place, but to the courtyard.

To wear only [‘arag] garments (cf. Exod 39:27), which corresponded to the outer curtains of the tabernacle courtyard, concretized Aaron’s mediatorial role. He brought the outer courtyard into the inner sanctum, representing every Israelite as he approached YHWH.

On regular days, Aaron did the reverse, in effect wearing the elaborate furnishings of the Most Holy Place as he moved about the Holy Place and the courtyard, representing the glory of YHWH to ordinary priests and laypeople via richly colored and ornamented fabrics, gold, and gemstones. This interpenetration of spheres was an essential component of Aaron’s ministry (166-167).

Fixed in His Memory

The thirteenth-century theologian Bonaventure once said that the difficulty with interpreting scripture accurately is needing to have so much of it memorized before one can even begin.

“No one will find this an easy task unless, by constant reading, he has fixed in his memory the text of the Bible to the very letter; not otherwise shall he ever have the ability to interpret Scripture.”

Bonaventure assumed that the Bible can only be understood in light of itself, and that such understanding requires having a great deal of scripture in one’s memory so that, as one reads along, word associations and connections will leap to mind.

Our easy access to the printed word, so easy that now many of us have searchable copies of the Bible with us at all times on our phones and tablets, is a great gift, but such access discourages memory, meaning that we often miss the interconnectedness of the text.

When we read that an event in the biblical narrative took place at Shechem, most of us do not immediately remember all the other events that occurred at Shechem in the course of biblical history. The first writers, readers, and hearers of the text would have thought of those connections.

Those first writers, readers, and hearers were immersed in a great system of symbols that enriched their communication and their understanding of the world. Most of us are deaf to that system of symbols as we read the Bible, and we therefore miss large portions of the meaning.

When we read a story about Gideon putting out a fleece and inspecting the dew that had fallen or had not fallen on it, we need to be aware of the meaning of a fleece and the meaning of the dew if we are to hear all that was there for the first hearers.

I make no claim to having mastered this system of symbols, but I have caught enough hints of it to believe that it cannot be learned apart from approaching the Bible as a unified whole. — Laura Smit, Judges & Ruth, 7-8. (She’s quoting Bonaventure’s Breviloquium, trans. Jose de Vinck [Paterson, NJ: St Anthony Guild Press, 1963], 18.)

Saying the Name

Does the Third Word prohibit pronouncing the name “YHWH”?

That can hardly be the case. As Carmen Joy Imes (Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai) writes:

“The Psalms are replete with exhortations to know YHWH’s name (Ps 91:14), call on the name (Ps 63:5[4]; 105:1; 116:4), declare the name (Ps 22:23[22]), cause his name to be remembered (Ps 45:1 [17]), bless the name (Ps 100:4; 145:1), sing to his name (Ps 66:2; 68:5[4]), and praise and exalt the name (Ps 7:18[17]; 34:4[3]; 54:8[6]; 96:2; 113:1; 148:5)” (26n87).

But then she adds this:

“In addition, people of faith deliberately used the name by including YHWH theophorically in personal names. Biblical texts testify that Yahwistic theophoric names were common in Israel from the monarchic period forward. These echoes of the name ‘YHWH’ suggest that its pronunciation was not considered taboo, even in the exilic and post exilic periods” (26n87).

For instance, consider names like Joshua (“YHWH saves”), Hezekiah (“YHWH is strong”), Elijah (“My God is YHWH”), and, after the exile, Nehemiah (“YHWH has comforted”).

There’s no reason to think that godly Jews went around naming their children “Nehemiah” and then refusing to pronounce the last syllable because it is the name of God.

Taking YHWH’s Name

What does the Third Commandment mean when it says not to “take the name of YHWH in vain”? It doesn’t say “Do not say the name.” It says not to take it in vain, using a verb that normally means “to pick up, take up, bear, carry around.”

Many treatments of this commandment assume that “take up the name” is an ellipsis, that is, that there are missing words. The full form, they say, should be “take up … on your lips,” so that the commandment has to do with swearing oaths or even just with speaking the name “YHWH.”

Others think it’s an ellipsis where what’s missing is “your hand,” so that the expression in full form is “lift up your hand in YHWH’s name.” Lifting up the hand in the Bible is sometimes a way of taking oaths. And again, this commandment is taken to prohibit certain kinds or ways of using YHWH’s name in taking oaths.

But what if there’s no ellipsis? What if it really is speaking of bearing or carrying around the name?

What’s interesting is that that exact expression does occur elsewhere in the Bible. As Carmen Joy Innes (Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai) says,

“The high priest was to ‘bear the names’ of the 12 tribes on his person to signify his role as their authorized representative before YHWH (Exod 28:29)” (2).

Innes goes on to explain the parallel:

“While he physically carried, or bore, their names, he served as an analog of Israel’s bearing of YHWH’s name, which was conferred on them by the high priest when he blessed them (Num 6:27). As YHWH’s chosen people and ‘kingdom of priests’ (Exod 19:5), they represented him among the nations” (2).

I learned to read the Third Commandment this way from Jim Jordan, and it’s also found in John Frame’s treatment of the Ten Commandments.

But — surprise! — you don’t find this passage about Aaron’s garments discussed in most treatments of the Third Commandment. In a footnote, Innes writes:

“Most interpreters routinely overlook these passages. For example, Miller … dismisses Exod 28 as ‘not relevant’ to the interpretation of the NC [Name Command] without explanation, even though the description of Aaron’s high priestly garments offers the closest lexical and contextual parallels to the NC” (2n5).

Favorite Books Read in 2018

Here are some of the books I enjoyed most this year:

* Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility. I sometimes baulk at reading a classic when there are so many other more immediately gripping books calling out to me. So I experimented this year with reading a few pages of a classic every day. This was the first classic I read that way.

* John Blackburn, The Gaunt Woman. A page-turner; very well done.

* John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle. I had the great pleasure this year of introducing my children to John Buchan’s works, reading these two aloud. Can’t wait to get on to Mr. Standfast in the new year.

*James Branch Cabell, The Line of Love: Dizain des Mariages. All the stories were good, even surprisingly good, but my favorite was probably “Love-Letters of Falstaff.”  Cabell does an amazingly good job of putting quasi-Shakespearean language in Falstaff’s mouth and the story might break your heart.

* G. K. Chesterton, Robert Browning. Excellent. Almost every page quotable.

* August Derleth, Restless Is the River. If Derleth is known for anything these days, it’s for publishing the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Derleth himself wrote popular fiction: mysteries, eerie stories, boys’ adventure novels — his Steve & Sim series are like the Hardy Boys with more three-dimensional characters and a strong sense of place. And sense of place was closest to Derleth’s heart, particularly the Sauk City, Wisconsin, area, which he loved (and which, in so many of his books, he called Sac Prairie). Restless Is the River follows the equally excellent Wind Over Wisconsin, both of them historical novels set in the days when Sauk City was only a twinkle in the eyes of its founders.

* Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. Very good, though I quibble with a few things here and there.

* Rosalie K. Fry, Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry. This is the novel behind John Sayles’ beautiful film, The Secret of Roan Inish. We had watched the movie as a family, but this year we read the novel aloud.

* Shirley Ann Grau, The Black Prince and Other Stories. Very good; the title story may be the weakest in the collection.

* David Hansen, Loving the Church You Lead: Pastoring with Acceptance and Grace. Some very good passages.

* Adolph L. Harstad, Joshua. In the Concordia Commentaries series. The best commentary I’ve read on Joshua.

* David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context. Best book I’ve read on the subject; extremely helpful, but flawed in some significant ways, chief among them this: I-B thinks “hardness of heart” means a refusal to repent, so that divorce is legitimate only in the case of the guilty party’s refusal to repent; if he repents, he is to be forgiven and then no divorce should take place.

* James B. Jordan, Slavery in Biblical Perspective.

* Jane Lane, He Stooped to Conquer and His Fight Is Ours. Well-written historical fiction, the first about the massacre at Glencoe and the second about the aftermath a generation later. Lane seems to accept the mytho fo the Highland tradition — kilts, bagpipes, Ossian, the Highlanders being the Caledonians who fought the Romans, and so on — but that aside, she does a masterful job of getting us into the mindset of the Highland Jacobites.

* Peter J. Leithart, The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church. Very, very good.

* Janet Lewis, The Wife of Martin Guerre. This is historical fiction, but based on a true case from the French courts in the 1500s, to my mind surely one of the most fascinating legal cases ever. I went on to read Natalie Zemon Davis’s history, The Return of Martin Guerre, and some of the discussion of that book online, because I wanted to know more about the story.

* Charlotte M. Mason, Home Education. So good.

* Allan Campbell McLean, The Hill of the Red Fox. Like a John Buchan novel, but written for young adults.

* A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner. Every time I finish this or Winnie-the-Pooh, I say to myself, “I have to read these books every year.”

* Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion Versus Power Religion. I’m not on the same page with North in several regards, but there’s a lot of great stuff in here. The chapter on the rule of law was particularly valuable.

* Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons. Read aloud to the kids; we loved it.

* Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human?. Two great essays. Very thought-provoking.

* Margery Sharp, Miss Bianca. Another one I read with the kids.

* James Stoddard, The High House. I cut my eyeteeth, as it were, on the old Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, edited by Lin Carter and so did James Stoddard. Had it appeared a few years earlier, this novel would have had the Sign of the Unicorn on its cover like the others in that series. It is like nothing else I’ve ever read before, though with hints of, well, many other things I’ve read before (for instance, you might be able to identify Sir Clive from Nianar). I loved it enough that I slowed down my reading, allowing myself only a few pages a night, to make it last longer. What’s it about? A big somewhat magical, somewhat allegorical house and the man it chooses to be its master and what he has to do to reclaim it from the powers of anarchy and … well, none of that does justice to it.
* Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician (formerly known as The Dying Earth) and The World Thinker and Other Stories. I discovered that it’s possible to get the Vance Integral Library volumes by InterLibrary Loan and I had a lot of fun with these, the first two volumes of that set.

* Stanley J. Weyman, The New Rector. The ending was a little too pat, perhaps, but I enjoyed the story.

* John R. Wilch, Ruth. Another in the Concordia Commentary series. Very good, thorough commentary on Ruth — the best I read — with an interesting and, to my mind, persuasive approach to the problems of Ruth 4.

Poetry!

There are two common ways of presenting the text in most Bibles: in verses (as in the KJV) and in paragraphs, as text appears in a novel, so that while the verses are marked they’re really not noticeable as the main unit into which the text is divided.  The former is the old standard, but the latter is becoming more and more popular.

But in Hebrew, the text not only appears in verses; it also comes in lines. Some modern translations put the psalms and various songs in the Bible into lines (which is an advance on the KJV), but they don’t for what they consider prose. But why not stick with the way it’s written in Hebrew?

An example: I was reading from 1 Chronicles 11 and it occurred to me that even though the translation I was reading didn’t present this bit of narrative as poetry, it certainly conformed to Hebrew poetic patterns. Notice the parallelism in the following:

And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, which is Jebus,
where the Jebusites were, the inhabitants of the land.
But the inhabitants of Jebus said to David, “You shall not come in here!”
Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion (that is, the City of David).
Now David said, “Whoever attacks the Jebusites first will be chief and captain.”
And Joab the son of Zeruiah went up first and became chief.
Then David dwelt in the stronghold;
Therefore they called it the City of David.
And he built the city around it, from the Millo to the surrounding area.
Joab repaired the rest of the city.
So David went on and became great,
And Yahweh of hosts was with him.

Notice how the second line balances and (generally) parallels the first throughout? That’s Hebrew poetry, right there in one of the “prosiest” of passages.  My ideal translation wouldn’t just be in verses, like the KJV and certainly wouldn’t be in paragraphs like a novel but rather would be in lines, just like this.

Kindergarten

The catchy title of the book All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten unfortunately reflects the attitudes of some Christians toward growing in knowledge in their Christian faith. They think they learned all they needed to know in the early days of their church schooling and are complacently apathetic about progressing beyond their elementary knowledge. Many would just as soon leave faith and doctrine to others, who then dictate to them what they need to believe. The result is that they remain woefully ignorant about what they believe and why and have only a dim awareness of God — David E. Garland, Colossians, 69.