Saturday, November 2, 2013

Book Notice: The Unrelenting God

A nice surprise came in the mail today, a festschrift that celebrates Beverly Gaventa and her scholarship, The Unrelenting God: God's Action in Scripture: Essays in Honor of Beverly Roberts Gaventa (Eerdmans).

The volume looks excellent, as editors David J. Downs and Matthew L. Skinner are to be applauded for putting together an all-star cast of such luminaries as William S. Campbell, Joel B. Green, Richard Hays, Francis Watson, Martinus C. deBoer, to name just a few.

Especially valuable is the reflection of J. Louis Martyn, who along with Raymond E. Brown, were Gaventa' s professors at Union Theological Seminary. Martyn writes "A Personal Word" that I quote here in full:

A venerable piece of wisdom has it that the true gift to the teacher is the genuine student whose learning process reaches out and engages the teacher, thereby causing both parties to emerge changed, enriched in ways anticipated by neither. Student becomes teacher and teacher student, as both are surprised by new vistas opened up precisely in their instructive comradeship. It is an event of grace; and so it was to be a teacher to Beverly Gaventa. (x).

High praise indeed.  I'm looking forward to digging into this one.

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