No doubt at some stage the credit crunch will hit bibliophiles and books will increase in price, and hard choices will become cultural dilemmas, even existential crises. Now instead of thinking twice, I might have to think again before deciding that a particular book is a necessity as well as a luxury. It isn't the odd paperback that's the problem – it's those works of art, those cultural artefacts we call academic monographs, usually published in a small print run and still built as a book that's meant to last through years of reading and regular loving use. I count a high quality commentary in that bracket – serious scholarship, encased in a book that is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
It's an interesting question whether we are more disposed to the contents of a book if its construction, quality of materials, format and layout are part of the way the author's writing is presented to us. Should that recognisably no nonsense navy blue buckram, the high quality paper and discreetly strong stitching, the elegant font and ungrudging space for footnotes, along with the gold crest of Oxford, give an assumption of authority and serious, lasting importance, to a book such as The Countess of Huntigdon's Connexion. A Sect in Action in Eighteenth Cenutry England? And is it worth the price? I can just hear the answers – (most of them I've rehearsed in my own head) –
What? Pay that for a book?
What's wrong with libraries?
How many times do you have to read a book to make it worth the price?
Are you sure you need this, or do you just want it?
To all of which I can construct answers which merely rationalise a decision already made somewhere deep within, in that place where personal indulgence, common sense stewardship and valid personal choice argue out in a process that eventually identifies what, for us, matters more than money. Membership of a golf club or gym, a CD collection, an upper range car, the holidays abroad, the shirt with the small telling logo (which tells others it was expensive); I can do without these if now and again I can have a book like this. See. Told you. Anybody can rationalise when they put their minds to it.
Which is just as well. Cos I've just done it again. Bought an expensive book. Possible alternative routes for the money spent give urgency to the process of post purchase rationalisation. Commentaries now come in all sizes, written for every niche market you can think of, and some of them for niche markets you would never have thought of. Just how many commentaries does any one person need on a biblical book? That is, I think a key question – and being less tongue in cheek, there is now a real danger that too many commentaries eclipse the text they are meant to clarify. For example, a niche set of commentaries with applications, illustrations, not too technical, aimed at preachers, – encourages intellectual and spiritual short-cuts, which eventually short-change both preacher and congregation. Or, on the other hand technical critical commentaries which absorb information like a paper sponge, and expand to pages and pages of information less and less pertinent to the text, merely give commentaries a bad name amongst those who need them most.
Sam Balentine is a Baptist. He is a professor of Hebrew Bible. His commentary on Job arrived yesterday. It wasn't cheap. It was worth every pound. Yes it is beautifully produced; and yes Balentine is a very good writer, deeply conversant with the text, at ease in the world of critical, literary and theological scholarship; yes, he has spent years on this volume, it isn't one of those quickly assembled cut and paste previous stuff and shape it into a commentary efforts, justto* fill the publisher's list. This is the real thing. A commentary that wrestles with text – the text of Scripture, the text of human experience, and does so in a commentary format that is in my view way ahead of the game. (* decided to leave this typo as a new word which refers to those actions of others which are justto impress others!)
The Smyth and Helwys series includes sidebars with relevant and richly sourced comment from literature such as novels and poetry, the text has windows in which important background or social comment offer further interpretive perspectives, illustrations from art and other cultural ways of conveying human responses to God. And all of this in a volume that uses several colours to highlight text, that has imaginative and user friendly layout, and that is simply a joy to read, use and work with. You can see the details of the series here (www.helwys.com/commentary)
No series is worth investing in uncritically. There are strong and weak entries in this series as well. But Terence Fretheim on Jeremiah, Sam Balentine on Job, Walter Brueggemann on Kings, C H Talbert on Romans – these I have used, and for me they are self recommending, as authors I've learned to trust – not because they are always right, but because reading their other work, they have always been important conversation partners. I'm looking forward to some conversations with Balentine and Carol Newsom (in the New Interpreter's Bible) over the summer, about this book which sits in the middle of my Bible like a great chunk of theological granite likely to outlast any question I'm ever likely to ask.
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