Lyle Lovett, from his song "This Old Porch". I'm listening to his "Anthology Vol. 1: Cowboy Man (amazon.com)", though it was originally on his 1986 self-titled release (amazon.com). Here's the verse:

This old porch is like a steamin', greasy plate of enchiladas
With lots of cheese and onions, and guacamole salad
And you can get 'em down at the La Salle Hotel in old downtown
With iced tea and a waitress, and she will smile every time

I can't tell you why I like this, but I'll try. Each verse of the song uses scenes like this to describe the comfort of sitting on an old porch. In this verse, can't you just taste the stuff he's describing, and picture the setting?

Each verse is great, but for some reason — perhaps because I think I can actually smell the "steamin', greasy plate of enchiladas" every time he sings the line — I like this verse the best.

I just came across this most interesting resource: Treasury of the New Testament.

Though in reality, it is only on John 1-15 (and doesn't look like it will grow fast at all, at least based on the "what's new" page).

If you're familiar with the concept behind IVP's Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture Series (ACCS) then this will be interesting to you. It looks like someone has interspersed (and footnoted) patristic commentary — in Greek — inside of the Gospel of John. The gospel text is that of the Orthodox Church, I'm guessing.

This is very cool, at least to me. It means I can feel good about reading the John portions but can stretch myself on the patristic portions.

So check it out. Here's John 3 for starters.

Enjoy!

J.B. Lightfoot, in his first volume on Clement, writes:

If we had to describe briefly the respective provinces of the three great Apostolic Fathers, we might say that it was the work of Clement to co-ordinate the different elements of Christian teaching as left by the Apostles; and of Ignatius to consolidate the structure of ecclesiastical polity as sketched out by them; while for Polycarp, whose active career was just beginning as theirs ended, and who lived on for some half century after their deaths, was reserved the task of handing down unimpaired to a later generation the Apostolic doctrine and order thus co-ordinated and consolidated by his elder contemporaries--a task for which he was eminently fitted by his passive and receptive character. (Lightfoot, p. 8)

I'm not so sure it is that neat and tidy--for example, though Ignatius makes many comments about the roles of bishop/elder/overseer/deacons/etc., I'm not convinced that his letters can be interpreted as a manual on ecclesial polity--but the quote does highlight some major emphases of the respective authors.

I was thinking earlier today — if I was stranded on a desert island, what 10 books would I want to have with me?

This isn't necessarily a list of my favorite books, it is a list of stuff I'd like to have with me if I could have no other books, no access to libraries, internet, or Logos Bible Software (or other software packages, of course), computers, etc.

That's why the list is heavy on primary texts, lexica and grammar. But there are a few curves in there that you may not have anticipated:

1. Bible, probably an NRSV (amazon.com) so I'd also be able to read the apocrypha in a modern translation. I would not want a study bible, but I would want cross-references and translator's notes.
2. NA27 Greek New Testament with Dictionary (amazon.com)
3. LXX (amazon.com) (Rahlf's one-volume)
4. BDAG (amazon.com)
5. Holmes' Apostolic Fathers diglot (amazon.com)
6. BDF (amazon.com)
7. Alexadre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo (amazon.com)
8. C.S. Lewis' Perelandra (amazon.com) (vol. 2 in the space trilogy)
9. BHS (amazon.com)
10. An introductory Hebrew Grammar (not Lambdin). Might as well take the time to learn me some Hebrew while I'm stranded on that thar' desert island ...

Anybody else have a list?

These are titles on Logos Bible Software's Community Pricing page. If you're interested in this sort of stuff, you should bid sooner rather than later to lock in your low, low price for the book(s) in question.

• H.B. Swete's Patristic Study.
  

  The aim of Patristic Study is to draw the attention of the reader to the vast store of wisdom to be found in the writings of the Fathers of the ancient church. Monuments of Christian thought in the first generations of the Church's life, the writings of the Fathers are still of perennial interest and importance. As Henry Barclay Swete states, "The Fathers, in the stricter sense of the term, are the great champions of orthodox belief, whose writings became the standard of Catholic truth."

  by Henry Barclay Swete | Published 1902; Longmans, Green and Co. | 194 pages

• The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers
  

  The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers is a classic work in Biblical scholarship, treasured by generations of scholars since its initial publication in 1905. Prepared by a committee of Biblical scholars upon appointment of the Society of Historical Theology in Oxford, this volume presents passages from the Apostolic Fathers which display – or are thought to display – the Fathers' acquaintance with New Testament literature. These include passages from Barnabas, Didache, I Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Hermas, and II Clement.

  From the The American Journal of Theology:

  "The Oxford Society of Historical Theology has, through a committee of six scholars, done a real service to all students of early Christian literature in the volume on The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers… This enterprise… is designed to make the more important patristic writings accessible and intelligible to a wider circle of students and clergy."

  by the Oxford Society of Historical Theology | Published 1905 | 144 pages

Now on my books-to-buy-at-SBL list:

The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers 2 volume set (amazon.com) (Paperback). Edited by Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett. Oxford, 2005.

Amazon Book Description: The two-volume set The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers offers a comparative study of two collections of early Christian texts: the New Testament; and the texts, from immediately after the New Testament period, which are conventionally referred to as the Apostolic Fathers. The first volume, The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, presents a comprehensive and rigorous discussion of the extent to which the writings later included in the New Testament were known to and used by each of the Apostolic Fathers. Contemporary research on the textual traditions of both collections is used to address the questions of textual transmission and reception. The second volume, Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, discusses broad theological, literary, and historical issues that arise in the comparative study of these texts, and which are of importance to the study of early Christianity. It deals with the most important current debates concerning both the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament, such as baptism, Pauline theology, the function of apocalyptic elements, Church order, and Jewish and Christian identity.

The paperback 2-volume is 80 bucks and has a release date of Nov. 14, 2007. The currently-available hardback (amazon.com) is 164 bucks from Amazon, 180 retail. From all I can gather, this one is the "bee's knees" when it comes to use of the NT in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, something which I'm very interested in. I knew of the hardcover but had written it off due to expense. But if I can get the $80 paperback set at a discount at SBL ... well, that would be mighty groovy now, wouldn't it?

Update (2007-07-10): Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) tantalizes me with the following comment: "They were giving them away for free at the Oxford reception at SBL."

Yikes! If anyone made it to that reception, has the book(s), and knows they'll never use 'em ... well ... I'm interested. So zap me an email to let me know how I can take 'em off your hands. Gracias!

Mark Goodacre pops up a thought-provoking post over at the NT Gateway Weblog about how internet access can interfere with scholarly writing. Jim West disagrees and states his reasons.

I have sympathies with Mark on this one, but I'd rather proffer a mediating position. It's not a dichotomy; it's a both-and situation. The extremes (tracking down every weblog discussion vs. throwing out the internet) aren't good at all. There must be balance. In my mind, there are times to research, and times to write like the dickens (or, better, to write like Dickens -- he was one wordy man!). But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is paying at least some attention to the various discussions going on in biblioblogdom that makes us all more well-rounded, and that ends up making our writing -- whatever the venue, be it web or print -- all the more better.

I understand Jim West's point completely. I know that the words I write on this blog will reach more folks than anything I ever might publish (and me publishing something is a big stretch, I think).

Some days, I think bloggers are more like the pamphleteers of days gone by -- writing short missives that get printed and distributed and printed and distributed with or without the author's knowledge. And there is value in that. But there is also value in the writing of longer, more comprehensively worked tomes; those are the ones that will provide the foundation for the future discussion.

So I say it's about balance. And that means shifting sometimes. And I think that's more what I hear from Mark -- Take some time to focus on larger projects, not forsaking blogging but simply not focusing on it to the detriment of other writing projects destined for distribution outside of the web.

My friend and colleague Sean Boisen, who blogs at the aptly-named Blogos, has called me out.

Sean is thinking about (and doing -- trust me!) all sorts of cool stuff, but one that he's working on that you can read about has to do with the way that Bible references are indexed on the web. The idea is to use a "microformat" to, in a semi-consistent manner, note where Bible references are cited so that web crawlers can parse the references in a somewhat standard way.

If this sounds groovy to you, then check out Sean's initial post. If you're really interested, you can see an overview and a more formal spec he's been working on as well.

My own initial response: Sure, mostly. My primary sticking point (which is now null and void, see 'update' below) is/will be with a canonical list of supported names. I'd recommend preferred names but include a list of aliases (alternates) for all abbreviations. I think this is necessary for ease of adoption. Instead of forcing the tagger/blogger/whatever to use the proper abbreviation, the app/crawler that is processing Bible refs in the citation standard should deal with that conversion.

To illustrate my point, let me show you how I make Bible refs hot (like this one, 1Ti 2.3-6) here at ricoblog.

The blog software I use (dasBlog) supports a concept of text macros that are essentially regular expressions. This allows me to change something like this: $esv[1Ti 2.3-6] (only I use parens instead of brackets) into something that jumps to the ref: 1Ti 2.3-6. The software itself expands the macro as it processes the page display (or the RSS feed, or whatever). Now, if I was on top of my game, I could write a component for dasBlog in C# that would isolate references in context, or that would 'canonicalize' tagged references in post text. But that's something I don't want to do. Why? Because it is hard, not easy, and I have other hard things I'd rather do.

Now, I jump to the ESV and I rely on the ESV web service to know that "1Ti" means First Timothy. The ESV web service (as well as the Bible Gateway) support a number of abbreviations for each book of the Bible. I think it is important to make the tagging of references on the web pages easy; there is a relatively small universe of known abbreviations for each language, let the processors that process the Bible refs build those tables and deal with the issue.

This has a few benefits. First, it makes tagging easy. I don't have to remember that "1Tim" means First Timothy; I can use my own preferred abbreviation (assuming it is logical, descriptive, and human-readable) and the processing app can take care of it -- or throw an error when it can't figure something out.

Second, it means that multiple languages can be supported. It means that if I'm Swedish, I can type "1Mo 1.1" for Genesis 1:1. I don't have to think, "yeah, 'Gen' is the abbreviation for what I call '1Mo'".

Third ... I hate to break it to y'all, but even the most conscientious taggers make mistakes. The data will not be pure. So I say embrace the messiness of alternate booknames and even alternate languages from the get-go, it'll make life easier down the road. And it'll make life easier for those who do use the bibleref proposal. Heck, I'll begin by altering my macro to insert the proper <cite> tags around the reference ... though I'll be using my own booknames.

Update (2007-07-06): Two things. First, I really need to read the whole paragraph of the proper section of Sean's spec; an appendix recommends that alternate booknames are to be supported by the processor:

Bibleref processors MUST recognize the book designators specified in Appendix C of the OSIS specification (the current version is 2.1.1: note this is a large PDF file).
Bibleref processors for English or other languages MAY recognize additional book identifiers, provided there is an unambiguous mapping to canonical book names.

So, as usual, Sean was ahead of me and most of my blathering up there is needless. Once again, Sean proves his awesome-ness.

Second, I've updated my ref macro to incorporate bibleref tagging. So now there are <cite class="bibleref" title="ref"> elements around all hot Bible references.