Dicken's 200th Birthday

Today is Charles Dicken's 200th birthday. There was a celebration at Westminster Abbey already today where Prince Charles and two of Dicken's descendants placed flowers at his grave. I have long been a fan of this Victorian writer, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol being two of his more well-known books. Little Dorrit, Nicholas Nickelby, and A Tale of Two Cities are among my favorites. I am currently reading a new excellent biography of Dickens by Claire Tomalin. I am not quite half-way through, but the book is a great read.

You can find an interview with Claire Tomalin on A Christmas Carol at the Guardian website "Charles Dickens at 200."

Popular posts from this blog

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Jesus, Bruce Fisk

Image
I have just finished Bruce Fisk's enjoyable and fun A Hitchhiker's Guide to Jesus: Reading the Gospels on the Ground (Baker Academic, 2011). I saw the book in a Baker Academic announcement a couple weeks ago, and since I am teaching a course on Jesus and the Synoptic Tradition this coming fall, I thought I should check it out (not to mention that Bruce Fisk teaches at my alma mater Westmont College). After reading the first chapter, I was hooked and knew that I would be placing the book on the required reading list for my course. When my copy first arrived, I read through the comments from an impressive list of academics and was a bit skeptical of what seemed like overly positive praise. Rereading those comments now, they are right on. For example, Gary Burge states: "Bruce Fisk has possibly written the most creative, fascinating, and informed book on the Gospels in a generation..." For me, what makes this book so appealing is the way in which Fisk weaves together ...
Read more

John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel -- Second Edition

Image
I have recently finished reading through John Ashton's second edition of his work Understanding the Fourth Gospel (OUP, 2007), and it is not merely the Technicolor version of the original publication (1991), although it may look that way. His introduction has had a significant overhaul in the second edition that streamlines the discussion, but the first edition's introduction may offer further background for readers on the state of play prior to Ashton, especially regarding Bultmann's contribution. The second edition has some rearrangement of chapters and four new excursuses. John Ashton's overall study remains the same: he argues for the importance of the theme of revelation in John's Gospel and disagrees with Bultmann's conclusion that all Jesus reveals is that he is the Revealer. Ashton concludes that the mode of the revelation, the gospel, has a part to play in the revelation. For the Fourth Gospel, revelation is not just about Jesus' words or the...
Read more