Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible will be out soon, and reviews are beginning to appear online. I haven’t seen a copy, but the reviews are all good and it promises to be a good resource. Obviously the way in which one approaches the Bible will colour what we exegete from it, but the exegesis can be effected by how we understand that the Bible views itself.

Scot McKnight noted the other day that according to an article in Christianity Today, the Vatican has decided to remove the word Yahweh from liturgy — or at least its pronunciation.

“In recent years the practice has crept in of pronouncing the God of Israel’s proper name,” said a June letter from the Vatican. “As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronounceable and hence was replaced during the reading of sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: Adonai, which means ‘Lord.’” In August, U.S. bishops were directed to remove Yahweh from songs and prayers.

When I noticed Steve Bishop recently asking, “What do your New Testament Commentaries say about you?” and listing the applicable volumes in his library, I decided to do the same. It only follows naturally that I’d proceed to the Old Testament, where my collection is weaker — the list is shorter despite the text being longer. As I said before, I haven’t read all of these, I just tend to pick up used titles here and there where I can, as collecting is part of the fun. ;^) Not all of are selections I’d particularly recommend, and in many cases I lack what are accepted to be the best work on each book. With that in mind, I welcome suggestions on what my short-list for acquisitions should include for particular OT books. And again, feel free to go ahead and suggest what my OT Commentaries actually say about me…

The catch line was more along the lines of, “So a priest and a rabbi walk into a used bookstore…” not just because it sounds like the lead-in to a good joke, but because it’s actually what happened. I’ve said before that I have trouble keeping up with podcasts. I don’t take the bus anywhere, and in front of a computer I tend to prefer to read instead, which means if I start the computer playing something I still end up reading while it plays, and I miss stuff from the podcast. I tried listening while washing dishes, but (a) dishes don’t take that long and (b) people keep talking to me in the kitchen. But I really wanted to listen to the podcast of an event I was sad to have missed, from the Idea Exchange series last season: Rabbi Larry Pinsker and Jamie Howison — “A Rabbi and a Priest in conversation on how we read the Old Testament.” Fortunately, I had a perfect opportunity while last month on the flight to Vancouver en route to Seabeck for the Allelon Missional Order conversations.

When I left off, I had just been quoting from page 1 of Walter Brueggemann’s, The Land: Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, and we noted on the walk of the Christian faith, we are not the only ones in places of exile. We left off saying that we can least afford to lose the promises we’ve been made which connect who we are with where we’re bound — the three things our stories are to remind us of while we’re in exile. We’re intent on remembering who we are, which connects us with our story and the promises made to us — and in connecting with the past, we are assured of a future. Part of that is illustrated in our interconnectedness with our family. Somewhere there’s a photograph when I was an infant, with me and my mother and my grandmother and my great-grandmother and my great-great-grandfather that was printed in the newspaper under the heading “Five Generations.” Things like this were once taken note of, especially in smaller communities. We’re down to just three generations now, but someplace we have photographs of my kids with their great-grandfather. We have old family photographs copied, someplace, with names written on the back as best anyone could remember who they were, knowing that if we didn’t write them down now, they’d be lost. (Not this photo!) And we have some stories. Connecting with the past is important for a people in exile.