It's nearly two weeks since I arrived back in this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. Though actually, after I'd been here for two days I promptly departed for the Emerald Isle to watch my cousin get married to an Irish girl in Dublin.

I have taken lots of photos which illustrate some of the highlights of the trip so far but sadly failed to bring with me the requisite piece of technology for transferring these to the computer so I'll have to do my best to paint the pictures with my words.

Fish and chips. Prawn crackers. Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Lamb passander with pilau rice and naan bread. Roast pork with crackling. British strawberries.

Okay, so there are other wonderful things aside from the food...

Roads that don't go in straight lines. A public transport system that, though it may not be the most reliable in the world, does at least allow you to travel the length and breadth of the country without a car. Light drizzle. Mottled hedges stuffed with cowparsley. Irony. Understatement. Radio 4.

Not to mention the people.

I was going to list all the people I've seen in the last two weeks, but I don't want to get RSI. But it's been specially lovely to see Sally and Ivo, unexpectedly over from Germany for the weekend at just the right time. And it was deep joy at lunchtime to meet someone who is literally the brother of a man I've been admiring on facebook for a while. Paul Parry has literally gone from A (somewhere in Norway, I believe) to B (in Nebraska) on a tandem. He's now planning to literally paint a town red and fail to teach an old dog new tricks.

I'm looking forward to a few days at home and some more leisurely visits in the next week or two.

I read this somewhere recently and over the past few days have agreed with it often.

The difference between an Englishman and an American is that an Englishman thinks a hundred miles is quite a long way whereas an American thinks a hundred years is quite a long time.

It's the middle of the night here in England and, having slept for most of the day I'm now wide awake. So I've had some tea and toast (simple pleasures are the best when you've been away) and now I'm blogging. I've been sadly neglecting the blog lately (work and all that) but I'm very excited to announce that I Have A Question has been rocketing up the rankings at Unspun:

I was at #12 until I put my rankings in which seem to have shot David Field up the list and me downwards. I think that's probably a good thing. Unspun is lots of fun. You can make lists about anything, rank things, vote, watch the stats change. There is a list for 'Best Theologian' which currently has Jesus in second place - be good if everyone voted and that changed. I tried to make a list of Best Female Theologians but couldn't think of anyone to put on it. Leave me some suggestions!

It was hot and sunny in Philadelphia yesterday. The pilot announce that when we arrived in Manchester it would be overcast with light drizzle. I think I was the only one grinning at the thought of some real 'summer' weather. Pleasingly, the plane was half empty so lots of room to stretch out and read my book and even sleep a little.

I do have a number of things I've been meaning to blog about with photographic evidence including my trip to Hartford and my birthday dinner but the last few weeks have just been overwhelming with work and other commitments. Maybe I'll get round to it while I'm home.

I'm not sure I've ever read Alter's chapter on the Psalms before today. Anyway, it turns out to be as perceptive and thoughtful as all his other reflection on the biblical poetry. Here's what he has to say about poetic language:

At this point I must confess allegiance, repeatedly confirmed by my own experience as a reader, to a notion about the language of poetry that was central to the American New Critics a generation ago and that more recently has been corroborated from a very different perspective by the Soviet literary semioticians: that poetry, working through a system of complex linkages of sound, image, word, rhythm, syntax, theme, idea, is an instrument for conveying densely patterned meanings, and sometimes contradictory meanings, that are not readily conveyable through other kinds of discourse.

...it need not be an act of 'idolatry of the text' to claim, on the evidence of countless poems ancient and modern, that poetry is a way of using language strongly oriented toward to the creation of minute, multiple, heterogeneous, and semantically fruitful interconnections in the text.

... The psalms are of course poems written out of deep and often passionate faith. What I am proposing is that the poetic medium made it possible to articulate the emotional freight, the moral consequences, the altered perception of the world that flowed from this monotheistic belief, in compact verbal structures that could in some instances seem simplicity itself.

This is just what's
needed at this time of year.

(HT: Pete Jackson)

So Tom Wright thought that PFoT should have had more biblical theology, especially of a NPP kind.

He writes an article, roundly denouncing the book, despite the fact that he himself holds to the doctrine it aims to defend.

Which provides more grist to the mill for those whose main goal in life seems to be to attack Oak Hill. For which, see the letter from the former DDO in this week's Church Times.

I don't know whether to shout or cry.

Those clever guys at the WTS bookstore have just 'discovered' Vaughan Roberts. This is their current book of the week:

God's Big Picture

Perhaps all my UK readers would like to leave helpful comments about all of Vaughan's books, commending them to an international readership.

They're also having a sale of some CCEF classics this week - check out those bargains.

Incidentally, I was ten clicks short of earning a reward last month. You know you want to help a penniless PhD student - go on, follow the link!

Skimming through a book on the Septuagint, I notice that one of the early manuscript sources is a papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. This is commonly known as POxy. I thought that was pretty funny. But I bet I'm the only one.

I believe it was Pete Matthew who first introduced me to the concept of Structured Procrastination. In this very wonderful system for getting things done, the trick is always to have something seemingly important that you're putting off doing to act as motivation to get on with other things that need to be done.

I have been employing this system to good effect all semester with respect to the OT reading course I'm doing. Gerhard von Rad's two volume 'Old Testament Theology' has been glowering at me from the shelf above my desk, spurring me on to read all kinds of dull and long books and articles, comforted by the knowledge that at least I'm not reading that, even if I am just delaying the inevitable.

Well, we're reaching the end of the line. I'm sitting the exam next Monday. I have half a dozen other books still to read. Fishbane's 'Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel' and Wellhausen's 'Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel' are supplanting von Rad. I'm really not looking forward to reading them, so I'm going to have to take the plunge.

Maybe it won't be so bad as the anticipation.

Just came across this from E. M. Forster:

We have entered a universe that answers to its own laws, supports itself, internally coheres, and has a new standard of truth. Information is true if it is accurate. A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. Information is relative. A poem is absolute.

This is hilarious. I especially like the woman with the 'shaven' head being attacked with swords.

(HT: Ed Drew)