The Haiku New Testament Introduction is two thirds complete – that is, 18 books of the NT have been Haiku’d! As Catriona will be relieved to note, my NT has returned to being a 27 book canon.
The nine that are still to be rendered into Haiku are:- I Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 John, Jude.
Below is my own contribution – on I John. I have immersed myself in this short letter over the years, because of the profundity and possibility of its theology, because of its importance in the formation of Christian character, because of its importance in the spirituality and theology of John and Charles Wesley, and because it has been treated by some of the best commentaries on my shelves. Robert Law’s Tests of Life, a hundred years on is still a beautifully written theological reflection to be reckoned with, and from the pen of a Scottish scholar greatly admired by James Denney – nuff said; John Stott’s Tyndale NT Commentary, still in my view his best NT Commentary; Howard Marshall has never written a better commentary for preachers than his volume in the NICNT; Raymond Brown’s massive Anchor Bible is much too detailed, and posits a convoluted history of the Johannine community, but I’ve still spent hours fascinated by eight hundred pages of lexical, grammatical, historical, textual, social, rhetorical, theological, spiritual comment on this short occasional letter to a wee community under a bit of pressure.
1 John
Walk in light and love!
Holy love will cast out fear
from hearts made perfect.
Jim Gordon
Andy Jones was beginning to develop a dependency on this project so some of you others help him out by distilling the essence of the remaining NT books to 5x7x5 Haiku form. Hope to have the whole NT available for Christmas. Some have been done more than once so an editorial decision will be made as to which is accepted into the haiku canon. I may then publish the others as non-canoncial literature, but important alternative perspectives!
It will be the shortest, most accessible, NT Introduction available, a kind of biblical studies concentrate – probably not sufficient for exam purposes, but with allowances for the Scottish traits of self-deprecation, and understated achievement, some of them are nae bad!
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