A new venture
It is always a matter of some satisfaction for a Reviews Editor to note the first productions of a new publishing venture; and never more so than when, as with Tamarisk, the undertaking is both a Christadelphian one and one with ambitious objectives: to provide authoritative and high-quality books on Bible-related topics to attract and inform as wide a spectrum of readers as possible, both within and outside the Truth. As this particular Reviews Editor knows only too well from his own personal backlog of books awaiting review, there is currently no shortage of printed material being newly published within the orbit of our community. It is therefore all the more noteworthy that Tamarisk’s earliest publications should include two very different items which are both, nevertheless, real ‘gap-fillers’ in our literature.
Psalm studies
The first of these, Brother Cyril Tennant’s collection of Psalm studies, will not be wholly unfamiliar to readers of The Christadelphian over the last few years, since the forty studies first appeared as a series in that magazine between January 1984 and August 1987. Keen students wishing to pursue their own lines of enquiry into the particular psalms discussed in the book will be pleased to note, however, that the author’s own hitherto unpublished study notes have been added to the material, thereby bringing some helpful expositional depth to a set of essays which, as the publishers’ blurb indicates, do not “take a purely studious look at the Psalms”. As the author himself makes clear in his preface, the essays “are not intended to be full expositions of the Psalms but rather an attempt to encourage a greater awareness of those things written for our learning, especially those things which, as Jesus said, ‘must be fulfilled which were written of me’ “. For this reason, the full text of each psalm is included at the beginning of each essay, to enable the psalm to be conveniently referred to both before and during the reading of the author’s comments. Brother Tennant rightly insists that this should be done in order to put the emphasis in the right place—that is, on the Word of God itself.
The author also points out that “there is something very personal about the Psalms”; and although his book is only the first of what appears to be a possible series of volumes on the Psalms, the ones included here presumably represent those which Brother Tennant has found of particular interest and value in his own reading of Scripture and his life in Christ. Not surprisingly, therefore, he writes with a special enthusiasm about his chosen psalms. More than this though, he suggests that because the Psalms are able to capture human feelings and emotions in a universal way, they can be used by all “as prayers to voice the whole range of (the reader’s) experiences—thanksgiving, praise, contrition, fear or confident belief”. The author has, of course, written authoritatively and helpfully elsewhere on prayer (Melva Purkis and Cyril Tennant, Prayer: studies in principle and practice, published by The Christadelphian in 1980); but his many comments on this important aspect of the life in Christ during these Psalm studies are additional pointers along the road to a right spiritual relationship with God.
As might be expected in a selection such as this, most of the better-known psalms are to be found. Psalms 1 and 2 are here, sensitively presented as a twin introduction to the Lord Jesus Christ in his first and second advents; Psalm 8 is opened up as David’s song of praise after his victory over Goliath ; Psalm 15’s clear link with the Sermon on the Mount is picked out; Psalm 22’s prophetic cameo of Jesus on the cross is shown to be so remarkably that of an eyewitness that Brother Tennant makes the bold suggestion that “it is the Psalmist who under inspiration is quoting from the words of Jesus” rather than the other way round ; Psalm 23, almost inevitably, figures in the list (though to the reviewer’s personal regret, Brother Tennant rather glosses over the original Davidic application of what he sees, quite rightly, as an important Messianic prophecy); Psalm 32, with its familiar expression of genuine joy at the Divine forgiveness of sin, is closely linked to the historical record of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 and 12; Psalm 40’s use in Hebrews 10 forms the basis of a valuable explanation of the nature and sacrifice of Christ, the willing servant with the ‘open ear’; Psalm 84 is beautifully emphasised as a prophetic picture of the redeeming work of the Saviour, whose intense longing for the courts of the Lord” helped to keep him from “the tents of wickedness”; Psalm 110 is accurately analysed as an outline of the supremacy of Christ’s priesthood over that of Levi; the well-loved lines of Psalms 113-8 are delightfully presented with passing reference to their traditional role as the ‘Hanel group’, “said to have been sung at the feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles”; and two of the fifteen Songs of Degrees (Psalms 121 and 133—perhaps the most familiar) are selected for separate treatment as reassuring pictures of the Divine care and blessing on God’s people.
In addition to all this new and spiritually stimulating comment on familiar Scriptures—in which doctrinal, exhortational and expositional approaches are intertwined in a most readable way—there are also many studies of less well-known psalms, which whet the appetite for the next volume in the series. The flavour of such essays is well represented by the following paragraph on Psalm 81:9 (“There shall no strange god be in thee”): “At this point in the Psalm, we are instructed by the use of the word Selah to pause and to meditate. Greater things have been done for us than were done for Israel ! We have greater reason to rejoice than did they! Of how much sorer punishment, then, shall we be worthy if we neglect so great a salvation. We might, with profit, include in our meditation God’s testimony against Israel (vv. 8-11). They should have had no strange gods in their midst nor should they have worshipped any. There should have been no divided loyalty, no objects of worship to rival God in their minds. He had delivered them from Egypt and He would feed them. Once more we are reminded of the teaching ofJesus, that man does not live by bread alone but by the words of the One who provides it! We are shamed by the importance we place upon our daily labours whilst we forget the Provider of our daily bread.
“The figure which is used by the Psalmist is most compelling: ‘Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it’. It is a picture of a nest filled with open mouths each eagerly and trustingly awaiting the mother bird’s return. Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, said Jesus, will be filled. But the loyalty must be undivided and the trust in God must be real. In this Israel failed : But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me’ “.
Studies in the Psalms, Volume 1 is a most helpful book, and the reviewer readily echoes the Foreword writer’s comment, that we “must be grateful that (Brother Cyril Tennant) has taken upon himself the task of making us more at home in this Book of Prayer”. The reviewer’s one ‘downbeat’ observation concerns the price of the volume. At £6.50 plus postage, a hardback book of almost 300 pages is no doubt cheap by the world’s trading standards, and the book is undoubtedly very well produced (apart from a number of unfortunate proofreading slips); but brethren and sisters are generally accustomed to paying often ridiculously low prices for their reading matter on the Truth, and many will perhaps find the price a little high. It is to be hoped that few will be deterred, however, from meeting the cost and reaping the benefit from the investment.
The story of our English Bible
The second of the Tamarisk items under review is a very different book, with an altogether different purpose—although it too is essentially a republication of printed matter previously available in another form. Some Testimony readers will perhaps remember that a decade ago Brother Richard Purkis, who was then living in South Africa, published a book, in collaboration with Ian Doveton, under the title Bible Beginnings.
The book, published by Shuter & Shooter in Pietermaritzburg, was sold in this country by the Christadelphian Office, and was welcomed as an authoritative introduction to the historical context of the Bible and its message. Equally ideal for the non-Christadelphian reader and for those already in the Truth—especially in connection with Sunday School and Youth Circle work—the book deserved a much wider circulation than it seems to have had (though this may have been due to the relatively high price in the U.K. after conversion from the South African cover price).
Tamarisk’s republication of that part of Bible Beginnings dealing with the history of the English Bible is therefore both timely and welcome. As a result of this initiative, both the Brotherhood and the wider world now have a further opportunity—this time at a relatively low cost—to obtain Brother Purkis’s readable and informative account of the preservation and transmission of the Word of God from earliest times into our own mother tongue in these last days.
This fascinating and, for us, vitally important story is told by Brother Purkis with a lightness of touch which belies the depth and quality of the scholarship and study brought to bear in assembling the raw materials of the book. Ancient practices are brought vividly to light in the early explanation of the gradual abandonment of the cuneiform inscriptions of Abraham’s day in preference for newer alphabetic writing systems permitting the use of a greater variety of writing materials than simply soft clay or wax. Recent archaeological findings—such as the excavations of ancient Ebla, at Tell Mardikh in Syria—are brought into the picture where appropriate, to corroborate the historicity both of the Biblical background and, at certain points, of the Biblical story itself.
The Tell Mardikh discoveries, for example, are shown to present remarkable external support for various aspects of the record of Babel and its consequences in Genesis 11, especially the multiplication of languages. As the author puts it: “Until 1976 most scholars dismissed this story of the sudden development of languages as fanciful and most unlikely. Now serious students of archaeology can no longer be so sure: the discoveries at Tell Mardikh have produced strong support for this Bible word-picture” (p. 10).
An imaginary journey by donkey into the Judaean desert introduces us to the community of Qumran many years before the birth of Jesus, and this becomes the opportunity for the author to explain the importance of the copied scrolls of the Hebrew Old Testament which they left for posterity in the caves where they were found almost two millennia later. The Isaiah scrolls, for example, dating from about 100 B.C., show in a quite amazing way that the text of the Old Testament has remained very largely free from corruption in being handed down to us across the ages.
In brief but incisive pages, Brother Purkis pursues the story of the Biblical text into the era of, first, the complete manuscript Bible, and then its printed form, taking in such topics as the Koine Greek of the New Testament, the Masoretic scribal rules, the Latin Vulgate translation, and the invention of printing from movable type, in the ‘incredible 1450s’. Printing, of course, completely revolutionised the scale of the distribution of the Scriptures, since even in the early days of this particular new technology’ the speed and ease of Bible production was vastly increased.
As one contemporary writer put it: “(A printer) prints as much in a day as was formerly written in a year”. All this leads us inexorably into the age of Wycliffe, Coverdale and, especially, William Tyndale—rightly described as the greatest translator of them all” (p. 35). No century, apparently, until the twentieth, produced so many different translations of the Bible as the sixteenth, and Brother Purkis understandably devotes many useful pages to a review of all the principal English Bible versions, up to and including the Revised Authorised Version of 1982. This in itself is a valuable feature of the book, since would-be Bible readers (and even committed ones) are often faced with an enormous range of English Bible translations, and any help through the minefield is welcome.
Perhaps most useful of all, however, is the pictorial and illustrative material included in the book. The various photographs, printed as part of the text block, are mostly of archaeological sites, artefacts or famous Bibles, and there are several charts or tables which conveniently summarise such things as the many languages found at Tell Mardikh (p. 10) or the variety of the sixteenth-century translations of the Bible into English (p. 40). At the top of the reviewer’s list, however, come the two ‘maps’, depicting (p. 6) “The Development of Writing” and (p. 37) “Early Bible Translations and Printing”. In these two items alone there is a wealth of information which perfectly complements the carefully controlled and economical text.
Tamarisk are to be congratulated, not just on the content, but also on the physical appearance of these two books, which have been produced to a high standard of quality and design. They are both items which should be included on every bookstall and in every Christadelphian library, ecclesial and domestic. It is good to be able to say not only that a couple of gaps in our literature have been filled, but also that a new publisher of substance has arrived on our particular scene.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)