I mentioned in a previous post my favorite quote by H. L. Mencken: “Puritanism—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” If you want to see what happened when Puritans gained influence over and control of the government, then I highly recommend England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649-1660 (Oxford, 2012), by Bernard Capp. Part II is the meat of the book, with chapters on:
Sins against God: Swearing and the Sabbath
The Puritan Parish
Puritans and Sex
Drink and Disorder
Worldly Pleasures: Dress, Music, Dancing, Art
Worldly Pleasures: Plays, Shows, Sports
Capp documents how Puritan magistrates and ministers “drew up a harsh penal code against blasphemers, sexual offenders, and other deviants.” They “enforced church attendance, suppressed unlawful sports and disorderly alehouses, whipped fornicators, ducked scolds, and fined blasphemers.” If you are in favor of laws like this, then you have no concept of the nature of New Testament Christianity. My forthcoming article “Puritanism Then and Now” goes into more detail on Capp’s book and shows that Puritanism is alive and well in the twenty-first century.
I received an e-mail from Fordham University Press informing me that I could save 30 percent during Pride Month. This press publishes a number of horrible LGBT books, which is surprising since Fordham is a Catholic university. The reason I am on the mailing list is because the press publishes some religious books and I either purchased Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Political and Theological Dialogue (2015), by Adriana Cavarero and Angelo Scola, or requested a review copy. I don’t remember writing a review of the book, and since it is not in my possession anymore, the book probably turned out to be a big disappointment and I tossed it. I used to own Greek: An Intensive Course (2nd rev. ed., 1992), by Hardy Hansen and Gerald M. Quinn. Fordham still publishes A Reformation Debate: John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto (2000), but the copy I once owned was from another publisher. Ninety-nine percent of all of the other books published by Fordham that can broadly be considered religious are pure garbage. And, in case you were wondering, the same goes for Fordham’s books that are not religious in nature.
A recent marketing e-mail I received from HarperCollins Publishers prompts me to discuss this publisher at this time. HarperCollins is the second largest publisher in the world. It has “publishing operations in 17 countries” and “more than 120 branded imprints around the world.” The company “publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year in 16 languages, and has a print and digital catalog of more than 200,000 titles.” It was founded by the Harper Brothers in 1817. I have several old books about the Bible in my library published by Harper & Brothers or its later incarnation, Harper & Row:
Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (4th ed., 1939), by Frederic Kenyon
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature (1912), by Cleland Boyd McAfee
The Ancestry of Our English Bible (3rd ed., 1956), by Ira M. Price
Harper was also the publisher of the last two editions of A. T. Robertson’s A New Short Grammar of the Greek New Testament. News Corp acquired Harper in 1987 and William Collins, Sons in 1990, combining their names to create HarperCollins. In keeping with the nature of The Preacher’s Library, what we are interested in is religious books published by HarperCollins. Are there any, and if so, are any of them worth reading? It should first be noted that HarperCollins is the parent company of the Christian publishers Zondervan and Thomas Nelson. They are under the umbrella of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, and I will discuss them in future posts.
Clicking on the category “Religion and Inspiration” on the HarperCollins website returns 1,491 results. As you can imagine, most of it is garbage, like My Spiritual Journey, by the Dalai Lama. The main imprint of HarperCollins for religious books is HarperOne. Here one will find books by a diverse group of authors, including such well known ones as C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, Bart D. Ehrman, and Jim Wallis. There are just a handful of books published by HarperOne that are worth reading. Out of the 1,036 books currently listed on the HarperOne site, I have four of them.
For reference, there is the massive 2,048-page The Study Quran, described as “an accessible and accurate translation of the Quran that offers a rigorous analysis of its theological, metaphysical, historical, and geographical teachings and backgrounds, and includes extensive study notes, special introductions by experts in the field, and is edited by a top modern Islamic scholar, respected in both the West and the Islamic world.” Naturally, it does not provide a negative view of the Koran, but there are other books that do that. If you live in an area with a large Muslim community and want to have a wide variety of resources on Islam at your disposal, then this is the only reason that you would want to have this volume.
Although Bart D. Ehrman is an agnostic who departed from the faith after attending Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College and then going to Princeton Theological Seminary, his book Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (2012) is an important one. There are some atheists, agnostics, humanists, and assorted nut jobs out there who not only deny the virgin birth, deity, miracles, and resurrection of Christ, but also deny that Jesus ever even existed. Ehrman destroys them.
The other Ehrman book in my library published by HarperOne is not one I can recommend. I have reviewed How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (2014) along with the response to it by Michael F. Bird, Craig A. Evans, Simon Gathercole, Charles E. Hill, and Chris Tilling called How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature (Zondervan, 2014) in a single review that appeared in the Winter 2015 issue of the Journal of Dispensational Theology (pp. 294-298).
There are a lot of good things that I could say about The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (2014) by Philip Jenkins. As I said at the end of my review of this book: “The religious aspects of World War I are unmistakable and essential for understanding the war. Philip Jenkins has written one of the most informative and important books about the Great War.”
I thought for sure I owned a copy of Sacred Liberty: America’s Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom (2019) by Steven Waldman, but can’t seem to find it on my bookshelves. It is definitely worth reading. I used to have On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (4th ed., 1979, revised by Vernon L. Stanfield) by John Broadus (1827-1895) and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly (first published in 1958 by A & C Black in London; Harper 5th ed., 1978), but have long since gotten rid of them. I think I may also at one time have owned The Religious History of America: The Heart of the American Story from Colonial Times to Today (rev. ed., 2002) by Edwin S. Gaustad and Leigh Schmidt and Idioms in the Bible Explained and a Key to the Original Gospels (1985, but originally separate books published much earlier) by George M. Lamsa.
I have not read and do not own The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (1997; originally published by Princeton in 1996) or The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (2011), both by Rodney Stark, but I am familiar with them. I recommend instead Bart D. Ehrman’s The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (Simon & Schuster, 2018), which I have reviewed for the New American. I do not recommend Stark’s other HarperOne title, God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (2010), but I do recommend his The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005). There are no other religious books published by HarperOne worth reading. I have heard good things about 1492: The Year the World Began (2010) by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, but it is a purely secular book. Not sure why it was published under the HarperOne imprint. I will keep you posted as to any future HarperOne books worth mentioning.
Under the Harper Perennial imprint, I note only four valuable religious books:
The Protestant Reformation (rev. ed., 2009), by Hans Hillerbrand
Civilization of the Middle Ages (rev. ed., 1994), by Norman Cantor
The Jesuits: Missions, Myth and Histories (2005), by Jonathan Wright
God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (2005), by Adam Nicolson
I have read and used to own the Cantor book. I have not read and neither do I own the Hillerbrand and Wright books, but would not hesitate to get them if I were studying those subjects. The Nicolson book is highly recommended, and will be discussed in a future post. I should also mention that HarperCollins has a conservative imprint called Broadside Books.
In the new religion catalog from the publisher Rowman & Littlefield—a secular publisher that publishes some overpriced religious books, the vast majority of which are not worth reading or owning even if you got them for free—there is advertised the publication of a third edition of Historical Dictionary of the Baptists (2021) by William H. Brackney. Although it is a 722-page hardcover book, the price ($180) will keep it out of my library. However, it would be a good resource for a Baptist college library that I would not hesitate to recommend. The same thing could be said of some of Rowman & Littlefield’s other historical dictionaries; e.g., Historical Dictionary of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I only have a handful of books in my library published by Rowman & Littlefield or one of its imprints. Three come to mind right now: Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), by Justus D. Doenecke (reviewed here by the late, great Ralph Raico); Catholic Perspectives on Peace and War (Sheed & Ward, 2003), by Thomas J. Massaro and Thomas A. Shannon; and Two Puzzling Baptisms (Hamilton Books, 2017), a study of 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 and 15:29 in their Judaic background.
I learn something new about books almost every day. The latest addition to my library is Christ All in All (Reiner Publications, 1976) by Philip Henry, the father of Matthew Henry the famed commentator. I had no idea that Philip Henry or this book even existed until I came across the book, which was originally written in 1691. The manuscript was not published until 1830. The book contains 380 pages after a memoir of the author. The book is based on the last part of Colossians 3:11, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” It contains 41 short chapters on things like Christ is our hope, our refuge, our righteousness, our light, our life, our peace, our wisdom, our way, our example, our shield, our strength, our song, our sanctification, etc.
If you are a fan of the journalist, editor, and literary and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), then D. G. Hart’s Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken (Eerdmans, 2016) is the book for you. The book is part of the Library of Religious Biography series. Mencken was the most influential journalist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of its most quotable personalities. Wit and satire were two of his formidable weapons. Some of his most memorable quotes are:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.
My personal favorite is: “Puritanism—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” I initially read this book just for the joy of reading a book without having to write a book review or study anything. I don’t get to do this often. I did reference the book, however, when I wrote an article in 2018 titled “Mencken’s Plan, Read’s Rule” for the journal Future of Freedom, and for my forthcoming article in the same journal titled “Puritanism Then and Now.”
I said on the About TPL page that “because much of what is published today, even by Christian publishers, is absolute garbage, warnings about bad or useless books will be provided alongside of information about good books.” I have read A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible (Oxford, 2021) so you don’t have to. The author, Kristin Swenson, is “Associate Professor of Religious Studies (Affiliate) at Virginia Commonwealth University and a fellow at Virginia Humanities in Charlottesville.” She “grew up with the Bible in an open-minded, garden-variety Protestant congregation.” “Lutheran,” she says at the end of the book. She loves the Bible, but believes that it “contains bewildering archaisms, inconsistencies, questionable ethics, and a herky-jerky narrative style.” It is full of “head-scratching oddities, absurdities, and exasperating lacunae.” The Gospels are “not disinterested reporting of historically verifiable fact but were designed first and foremost for the purpose of telling what the authors believed.” They are “stories of faith told in order to achieve a certain effect.” The author believes that “there’s virtually nothing in the Bible concerning homosexuality that’s relevant to our times.” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn’t actually write the Gospels attributed to them. Paul did not write all of the letters with his name on them. And on and on. Swenson questions everything in the Bible in some way. I have several books in my library about the Bible from a secular perspective. They may be bad when it comes to the inspiration, authority, and interpretation of the Bible, but they are not useless. Swenson’s book is both bad and useless.
By free books I mean PDF copies of old, rare, and out of print books that are out of copyright, and even recent books. Now, there is no substitute for an actual book that you can hold in your hands. I have thousands of them. However, sometimes it is not possible to find a copy of a book that you can afford or the book is simply not available anywhere. There are also occasions when you just may want to check something in a book but don’t want to have to buy it just to do that.
For books out of copyright, my first choice to obtain a PDF is Google Books and my second choice is Internet Archive. They have many of the same books, but sometimes you will only be able to download a PDF from one site. If no PDF is available for download and you just want to check something in a book, you can sometimes search for the information you are looking for and view the page it is on. For some books that are still in copyright, Internet Archive will allow you to digitally check out the book to read it online or look up what you need in it. You can sometimes find downloadable PDFs of recent books at Z-Library. This is great when you need to look up something in an expensive book that you would never buy.
Brill is an academic publisher headquartered in The Netherlands. Founded in 1683, “Brill’s publications focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences, International Law and selected areas in the Sciences.” This includes books on religion, all religions. Two of its main subject areas are “Religious Studies” and “Theology and World Christianity.” Brill is one of the largest (and most expensive) academic publishers in the world, and “publishes close to 1,400 books and reference works per year in both print and electronic format” and over 330 journals titles.” The reason that Brill is the first publisher mentioned here at The Preacher’s Library is simply because I recently received a marketing e-mail from Brill. Unfortunately, the e-mail was to announce that Brill was recognizing Pride Month in June, and contained a link to books and journal articles in that genre. This should come as no surprise, as Brill is not a Christian publisher nor even a religious one. Am I going to boycott Brill because they are pandering to the “LGBT community” and people interested in such nonsense? Of course not. Why should I deprive myself of important books just because I don’t like the politics or the publications of a publisher? Most major corporations, including those in the USA, recognize and even celebrate Pride Month. I would have to boycott them as well to be consistent. I am not aware of any Christian publishers that recognize Pride Month, but the ugly truth is that there are some Christian publishers that publish books in defense of abortion and same-sex marriage. I will address this in a future post on the state of Christian publishing.
I have just a few books in my library published by Brill:
Novum Testamentum ab Erasmo Recognitum (the scholarly critical edition of the New Testament Greek text and Latin translation of Erasmus, edited by Andrew J. Brown).
The English Bible in the Early Modern World, edited by Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó Hannracháin (2018).
Beyond What Is Written: Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament, Jan Krans (2006).
Richard ‘Dutch’ Thomson, c. 1569-1613: The Life and Letters of a Renaissance Scholar, Paul Botley (2016).
Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord: Erudition and the Making of the King James Version of the Bible, edited by Mordechai Feingold (2018).
These last two books are very important as concerning the history of the King James Bible. Richard Thomson was one of the translators. Richard ‘Dutch’ Thomson, c. 1569-1613: The Life and Letters of a Renaissance Scholar is the only scholarly biography of one of the King James translators that I am aware of. Part I (29 short chapters, pgs. 3-140) traces Thomson’s life and Part II (pgs. 143-354) contains a critical edition of all of his surviving correspondence. The 78 letters are in Latin, but have an English synopsis and explanatory footnotes. An appendix details 24 manuscripts and 35 books from his library.
Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord: Erudition and the Making of the King James Version of the Bible is one of the most important and scholarly books on the history of the King James Bible and its translators ever published (for $172, it better be). The book was not published in time for me to mine its resources for the second edition (2016) of my book King James, His Bible, and Its Translators, but I have done so for the forthcoming third edition. The table of contents and previews of each chapter can be seen at the above link. These two books are not light reading, and may be two of the most scholarly books you will ever read.
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.
