These books cost twice as much as my first car, and will last longer!

Caution – long sentence looming. When someone spends more than half their life studying one of the Gospels, and takes over twenty years to write a three volume commentary of 1750 pages on Matthew, and remains an enthusiastic learner and teachable interpreter of all things Matthean, and writes out of a deep faith commitment and a familiarity with the vast range of previous Christian scholarship on the text, and the books themselves are the last word in sumptuous, crafted, book production….well then, it’s hard not to gloat without guilt, to handle each volume with exaggerated care, to imagine that the weight of knowledge must at least be equivalent to the heft of the book, to make space on the desk to lay it down, but carefully,to open it and do what you always ought to do with a good book and a piece of refined art, read it, contemplate it, enjoy it, let its truth soak into whatever part of you is thirsty.

So I did!

And so I have since these volumes thudded onto my desk a couple of months ago. Ulrich Luz has gifted to the church one of the greatest commentaries ever written on a Gospel. For years I’ve used his commentary on chapters 1-7 of Matthew. But now it’s been revised and expanded and along with the two other volumes completes the Hermeneia commentary on Matthew. The liturgical year 2007-8 focuses on the Gospel of Matthew – it will be serious fun and intellectual joy exploring the lectionary readings on Matthew, with Luz as guide.

A couple of months ago I played around with a few Haiku verses on the Hermeneia commentaries and posted them on Sean the Baptist’s blog, cos Sean is just as much of a bibliophile as I am, just as much of a Luz fan, and just as fond of the aesthetic pleasures of handling, reading and affectionately caring for beautifully produced books. Later this week I’ll post my Hermeneia Haiku as a celebration of these volumes, magnificent in content as in form. And come Advent I’ll take time to learn from Luz, about genealogies, annunciations, the baby called Jesus and three magi whose GPS Sat-Nav went on the blink and they found themselves in Bethlehem.