I mentioned in the previous post my commentary on Galatians chapters 1 and 2 and that I owned over 200 commentaries on Galatians. I also mentioned J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889), the former Bishop of Durham. Why 200+ commentaries? My writing philosophy is that of Lightfoot: “Before you write a book on something you must first read everything on the subject.” This I did, and not just commentaries, but scores of articles and books about Galatians that were not commentaries. Galatians 1 & 2: Exposition, Commentary, Application was written during the years 2000-2001, but not published until 2010. After a preface and introduction, Galatians chapter 1 is covered on pages 1-57 and Galatians chapter 2 on pages 58-134. The bibliography appears on pages 135-154. The book contains no fluff, and no regurgitation from other commentaries, or else it would have been much longer—and perhaps sold better. This book has never been a good seller. You ought to write a commentary, I was told in the 1990s. So I did, and then few were interested in it. The main drawback, of course, is that the commentary only covers Galatians chapters 1 and 2. The book does contain a lot of meat on Galatians chapters 1 and 2, and I explain in the introduction how that it is not all that unusual to just write something on the first two chapters of Galatians, but evidently that is not enough to overcome the fact that the commentary only covers the first two chapters. Galatians 1 & 2: Exposition, Commentary, Application has been marked down to $5.95 for a good many years. I have always sent my books out for free to retail customers. But because postage has gone up so much, it will cost me half of the book’s price just to mail you one copy. I would prefer that you just order something else and I will include the Galatians book in your order for free. Just mention this post.
David Daniell (1929-2016) was the founder of the Tyndale Society and its chairman from 1995 until 2005. He wrote the definitive biography of William Tyndale (c.1494-1536), the father of the English Bible. It was published by Yale University Press in 1994. The reason that I mention Daniell today at The Preacher’s Library is because, although he died in 2016, I didn’t find out about his death until today. He was a British scholar of not only Tyndale, but the English language. You can read his obituary here. Exact but modern-spelling editions of Tyndale’s 1534 NT and the portions of the OT that Tyndale translated were edited by Daniell and published by Yale University Press in 1989 (NT) and 1992 (OT). It is interesting to read and note phrases, sentences, and verses in Tyndale that read exactly like the King James Bible.
Another important work by Daniell was his 900-page history of the English Bible titled The Bible in English (Yale, 2003). He references the second edition of my book Archaic Words and the Authorized Version in a lengthy endnote 5 from chapter 25 on page 823. Regarding my book, the first edition was published in 1996, the second in 1999, and the third in 2011. If you are not familiar with the book, it provides an explicit and comprehensive examination of every word in the Authorized Version that has been deemed archaic, obsolete, antiquated, or otherwise outmoded. You can read the full description of the book here.
In 2002, Loyal Publishing released What Love Is This? Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God, by Dave Hunt (1926-2013). The whole book was plagiarized from my book The Other Side of Calvinism. Hunt quotes me throughout, and rightly credits me, but also borrows heavily from me without attribution. I never made an issue of the plagiarism because the publication of Hunt’s book increased the sales of my book. When you read a book that quotes someone over and over again, it makes you want to go to the source. This is not the only thing wrong with Hunt’s book, as I pointed out in my review of the book in 2002.
It wasn’t until after Hunt’s death that I discovered that a second “updated and expanded” edition in hardcover had been published by The Berean Call in 2004, and a similar third edition in 2006. A publisher’s note on page 13 of the third edition reads: “This third edition also includes an extensive, newly expanded author/subject index to better assist readers and researchers.” A fourth edition was published in 2013. It contains a note at the end of the table of contents that reads: “Chapters 30 and 31 from the first three editions have been extracted from the forth edition, to make this volume more portable, and to preserve its scholarly emphasis. Material from these two chapters is featured in a separate book, A Calvinist’s Honest Doubts (a fictional story based on true life accounts), also available from the publisher.” Actually, this note doesn’t fully apply to the first edition since it does not contain the content of what is now chapter 30.
My first book is 30 years old this year, as is the business I started to publish it: Vance Publications. The first edition of The Other Side of Calvinism was published in 1991. It was about 475 pages in a 5.5 x 8.5 paperback format. The writing was somewhat rough and the font used was a poor choice (I typeset the book when desktop publishing was in its infancy). The book met a need, and sold very well. A re-typeset second printing was issued in 1994.
After many years of research and re-writing, an 800-page, 6 x 9, hardcover revised edition was published in 1999. The fifth printing of this book was done in 2014. Year after year, this is always my best-selling book. I am almost out of books, and will need to do a sixth printing soon. About 10 or so years ago, I actually thought about doing a third edition, but had so many other things to write that I figured if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it.