My Desk in the Morning

Overtime I have accustomed myself to study in the mornings as during the day Im usually busy with many other things. I think I started with just reading the Bible in the morning, after that Rashi on the Torah portion and as you can see it has expanded quite a bit.

So now I have three commentaries I study for the weekly Torah portion; Rashi, a Turkish commentary (Mose Farsi) and since recently Nechama Leibowitz. In addition to the portion I also work my way through Biblical Hebrew by Kittel et al., which I have almost finished. At the end of every lesson theres an assignment where you have to translate a passage from the Hebrew Bible and so I have Rashi on Nach (Prophets and Writings) (I wrote Tanakh but its actually minus Torah). Besides that I use the KJV for looking up whether my translation matches, I dont have a particular reason for using the KJV other than that the other English Bibles are in use by my parents. I actually noticed my translation more often matches with Artscroll’s than the KJV. And then there is of course the Hebrew dictionary, which I use quite a lot.

Other than that as you can see I have my portion on Church doctrines; its so dense that I decided it would be better to read everyday a page or two as otherwise I wouldnt be able recall anything afterwards. Below that is The Ways of the Righteous which is a mussar (ethics) book on character improvement. Its really quite nice.

On the right of that is a pocket version of the Mishnah (Zeraim and Moed), I recently started to read one chapter a day, its mainly for practicing my Hebrew and as Im kind of familiar with the Chumash I have a sort of auto-complete function which I dont have yet when reading the Mishnah making it more a challenge.

Lastly is a book by Geza Vermes I am reading at the moment.

So thats all for my morning:)

Oh yes and for the careful looker the picture frame contains my lovely girlfriend:)

Great book!

In Israel I bought a book by Elie Wiesel titled Wise Men and their Tales.

My first reaction after about 40 pages is that its a must-read!

What an amazing writer. Its been a long time since a book filled me with such excitement!

In the Mail

Received today a package from Amazon.com containing two books that were long overdue on my reading list

• Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008)
• Martin Hengel, The Son of God (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2007)

Hengels book is a very short read, or so it seems, the book is at most 100 pages but perhaps it is densely written making up for that. Bauckham’s book I definitely look forward to reading, I have heard his arguments in several places already and once on the radio as well and think its about time I read them. Also I wanted to read his arguments and those of Hurtado before reading McGrath’s The Only True God.

Recommendations: Introduction to the Hebrew Bible?

Im searching for a nice introduction to the Hebrew Bible but so far havent been able to find one that is suitable for my purposes.

What Im looking for is a book that is short, non-academic, enjoyable and mostly focused on laying out the story that is contained in the Hebrew Bible.

I found one by R. Joseph Telushkin titled Biblical Literacy: The Most Important People, Events, and Ideas of the Hebrew Bible which fits my purposes but is kind of big (500 pages).

Any recommendations?

In the Train

Yesterday I was sitting in the train heading home after a long day in Rotterdam. Usually when Im in the train, Im reading a book, as its one of the few places I find myself being able to read without feeling guilty that I should be studying or working, or be more social:P

Oftentimes while reading I look a bit around and when I see someone else is reading a book, I try to check out the cover without making it too obvious:)

Yesterday an old lady was sitting next to me and I tried to read some sentences of what she was reading. To my surpise I saw the words: Father, Son, Jesus, but also Tao? And some references that reminded me of gnosticism.

After a while I asked her what she was reading, which was admittedly a bit bold but she responded friendly and showed me the cover, it being The Gospel of Thomas. I was quite interested how an old lady like herself would ever come to read that so I asked a bit whether she liked it, how she got it and whether she often read books like that.

She told me she found it at a book fair for only 1 euro and that it was very difficult for her to understand. This seemed only likely to me as one that hasnt read much about gnosticism and its background would have a difficult job understanding the ‘gospel’. She told me that the authors in the introduction say the religion in our country is more materialistic while this gospel was more spiritual. Which is a nice way of marketing for gnostisicm I would say;)

In the end I asked her whether she more often read stuff like that but she said, “no the Bible is sufficient for me”, which was very nice to hear but somehow made me doubt whether she had a clue about the heretical status of what she was reading:)