On Books

Review: The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, Second Edition

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Cover image of "The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, Second Edition" by Brooke Borel

The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, Second Edition

The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, Second Edition, Brooke Borel. The University of Chicago Press (ISBN: 9780226817897) 2023.

Summary: The why, what, and how of fact-checking, with guidance on sourcing and record-keeping.

Any non-fiction work builds a story out of facts, whether a news piece, an opinion piece, a magazine article or blog post, a podcast, or a biography, or work of history. While a story reflects the narrative art of the writer, the integrity or truthfulness of the story depends on how solid is the foundation of facts. Fact-checking is essential, whether done by a writer, editor, or professional fact-checker, if indeed the integrity of the piece matters. Our “post truth” era makes this work all the more vital.

The Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing are key reference works for the publishing industry. In this work, Brooke Borel breaks down the why, what, and how of fact-checking. Borel’s experience is in the area of fact-checking for scientific publishing but she also is an award winning journalist and has been articles editor at Undark. The first edition of this work was released in 2016. Since then, the media landscape has drastically changed with new audio and video media, social media and the rise of AI. All these pose new challenges for identifying false information.

She begins with the question of why it matters. In addition to the importance of accurate information to our society, the reputations of writers and publishers depend on good fact-checking. In addition, when stories negatively affect the reputation of a person or organization, there are significant legal liabilities. Accurate facts backed by good sources and documentation mean the difference between huge damage settlements and vindication.

So, what facts ought one check? The short answer is everything. This includes the spelling of names and places, numbers and statistics, quotes, and even what one thinks one knows is true. The author includes a lengthy list. In other words, everything. Later, the author provides a sample story to fact check. The exercise is to identify everything to be fact-checked in a roughly 400 word article. Her answer key included 129 items!

Then, how does one go about this? She goes into the greatest depth with magazine articles, where dedicated fact-checkers are most often employed. The process includes reading, identifying sources, marking facts, triaging facts, tracking and documenting, reporting, and checking each version. She discusses how this varies with different media and how one works with books, where fact-checking is usually the author’s responsibility. She offers helpful ideas for navigating relationships with writers and publishers. While she doesn’t endorse being one’s own fact-checker, she recognizes that on many budgets, this is necessary and gives tips for doing it well.

Chapter four is a deep dive into the kinds of facts one may check and how one goes about it. She includes information on polling data, product claims, images, and sensitive subjects like trauma and abuse. She also offers counsel on litigious material and handling plagiarism. Chapter five builds on this, discussing primary and secondary sourcing, and evaluating the quality of sources. Finally, Borel discusses record-keeping, vitally important if someone subsequently challenges a fact.

Two other features add to the usefulness of this book. One is the “pro tips” interspersed through the text. The other is the “Think like a fact-checker” exercises throughout the text. This culminates with two exercises: identifying all the facts in a story (mentioned earlier) and going through a list of sources to classify them as primary or secondary and high or low quality.

I am one who both recognizes that discerning the truth in a set of facts is not always easy and that truth-seeking takes us on a asymptotic curve toward the truth. But this is only as good as the facts, the data we are working with. More than that, if being a truthful person, who lives with integrity matters, then facts matter.

What is humbling about this book is its honesty. What counts as a fact? Just about everything. Anything I assert or re-post on social media, anything I write on this blog, anything I teach in my church or advocate in the public square. And what about the things I read and watch? Will I always get it right? Probably not. But if I care about that, this book shows me the disciplined, rigorous work of learning to think like a fact-checker. It all comes down to neither believing nor being a party to promoting lies. It all comes down to wanting to live truthfully.

Review: Book and Dagger

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Cover image of "Book and Dagger" by Elyse Graham

Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham. Ecco Books (ISBN: 9780063280847) 2025.

Summary: The contribution of scholars and librarians to undercover and intelligence operations during World War II.

James Bond they were not. They were Ivy League academics. Among them were literature professors, historians, librarians, and archivists. But they played a critical role for a nation desperately in need of an intelligence service.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States found itself in a global conflict, government leaders recognized our profound lack of good intelligence. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was formed, the predecessor to today’s CIA. One of the decisions they made was that academics were people good at ferreting out information. They knew how to spend time in archives and make sense out of disparate and sometimes apparently insignificant sources like a phone book or a newspaper ad or even trash. As researchers, their vocation also allowed them to go undercover to find that information.

Elyse Graham focuses her story around three of these academics. Joseph Curtiss was a literature professor who was able to recruit a network of German double agents in Turkey. Adele Kibre was a single archivist who went to Stockholm to acquire critical information about German plans, using charm when needed to dupe those who didn’t think a woman librarian could be a spy. Meanwhile, Sherman Kent, a historian, pioneered and led research and analysis efforts, sifting through mountains of information to create actionable intelligence.

Graham describes the training agents underwent. The goal was to survive capture for 48 hours. However, this wasn’t the time until rescue, but rather the time for other agents to evacuate to safety. Of course, there was the cyanide capsule. Along the way, Graham describes a number of operations, including a raid on a Norwegian heavy water plant. She also describes all the intelligence disinformation efforts surrounding D-Day. Consequently, a number of German resources were elsewhere.

Here is an example of what academics could accomplish. A group from Yale went to the library and from publicly available information reconstructed over 90 percent of the U.S. military’s order of battle and strategic plans. All of this was supposed to be classified. Other analysts studied returning bombers to recommend where to put extra shielding from anti-aircraft fire. They noticed that engines didn’t suffer a lot of hits. Counter-intuitively, that’s where they recommended shielding. Bombers with engine hits didn’t return.

My one criticism of the book is that the author included so many stories that didn’t involve Curtiss, Kibre, and Kent, that one lost the thread of the narrative of their experiences. Not that the stories weren’t interesting. It’s just that after a while, it felt like one story after another that proved the author’s thesis rather than developing the narrative.

However, the thesis itself is worth noting. The scholars turned spies were so successful because of the disciplines they developed as scholars. Graham lists these:

“How to sift through paper evidence like newspapers, leaflets, and novels. How to gather clues from unlikely sources like advertisements and society columns. How to read a lot in just a little time. How to look at a pile of cracked and curling pages and see a treasure hunt. How to evaluate claims. How to tell stories. How to come up with audacious methods of solving problems using unlikely data: figuring out military secrets, say, by tracking ball bearings, or railroad rates, or the serial numbers of tank components. How to make arguments that aren’t merely summaries of what has been said, but that say something new. How to understand another country–because the past, too, is another country–on its own terms” (p. 297).

Graham doesn’t pass up the current relevance of this lesson from history. Scholars, especially from the humanities, are routinely disparaged. Yet doesn’t this story demonstrate that there is a kind of intelligence that we ignore at our peril? Thankfully, there were leaders during World War II who recognized the importance of such intelligence and people who had cultivated the intellectual discipline it required.

Review: Reading the Bible with Ten Church Fathers

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Cover image of "Reading the Bible with Ten Church Father" by Gerald Bray

Reading the Bible with Ten Church Father

Reading the Bible with Ten Church Father, Gerald Bray. Baker Books (ISBN: 9781540905147) 2026.

Summary: How the generations after the apostles interpreted and preached the Bible.

One of the things any growing Christian aspires to is to better read and understand the Bible. Gerald Bray believes that is one of the reasons why we should learn how the early church fathers read, understood and preached the Bible. We follow in the footsteps of two millenia of Christians and the ten church fathers profiled here were among the first. Not only that, what they understood and taught played a crucial role in the formation of the church’s understanding of key doctrines. They contributed, even in their disagreements, to clarifying what we believe about the Trinity and the person of Christ. And, yes, they differed. But even their differences helped shape the church’s interpretive practices.

In this readable account, theologian Gerald Bray offers a concise biography of each of the ten fathers, highlighting their works and how they read scripture, and what this means for us. For example:

Justin Martyr was an apologist to the Jews. He argued for the idea that all scripture pointed to Christ but that the Jews had failed to see this. His Dialogue with Trypho and how the two men concluded is a model of respectful dialogue.

Origen was the first to write commentaries and practice careful textual criticism. He set forth principles of interpretation and guarded against excessive spiritualization of the biblical text, yet used the literal sense as a basis for allegorizing scripture.

Gregory of Nyssa came from a family of theologians with older brother Basil and sister Macrina. He stressed God’s initiative through the Incarnate Word, Jesus, and the written word of scripture. He not only contributed to the formulation of God as one in nature and three hypostases. Gregory sets forth Abraham as the archetype of faith.

Ambrosiaster is a kind of “mystery man” among the church fathers. However, he left us with commentaries on Paul’s letters and a discussion of questions of interpretation of the whole Bible.

John Chrysostom was known for his preaching, eventually being elevated to patriarch of Constantinople before become embroiled in controversy and exiled. He sees scripture as God’s accommodation to the limits of human understanding. John described Old Testament prophets as sowers and the New Testament apostles as reapers. He believed salvation to be for all people and modeled diligent exposition of the whole of scripture.

Theodore of Mopsuestia was a friend of John Chrysostom. He was a monastic and scholar, writing commentaries on most of the Bible and rejecting fanciful allegorization for literal reading of the text. He got in trouble after his death for his views of the two hypostases of Christ.

Jerome is best known for his Latin translation of the Bible, known as the Vulgate, based on the Hebrew Masoretic text rather than the Septuagint. He was a model of careful translation that returned to the sources as well as an author of several commentaries.

Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in north Africa models the work of a theologian grounded in the biblical text, confronting both the Donatist schism and Pelagianism.

Cyril of Alexandria met the challenge of Nestorianism over Christology. He read the Old Testament as history that pointed to Christ, a pioneer of typological reading. Cyril also modeled the theological interpretation of the New Testament, particularly the gospel of John. He was clear in proclaiming Jesus as God incarnate who, divine and human in one person, died for our salvation.

Theoderet of Cyrrhus was a disciple of Theodore of Mopsuestia, but models for us the willingness to be convinced by scripture that the ideas of Christology he received from Theodore were inadequate and that the Chalcedonian account was truer to the text of scripture.

This is a wonderfully concise introduction to the fathers, suitable for a class or personal study. Reflection questions help the reader discern the relevance of each father for today. They also recognize the timeless questions with which both they and we must wrestle. Each chapter also includes texts for further reading on each father.

Bray helps us realize the crucial role these fathers played in clarifying orthodox belief. Not only that, he helps us see how they grounded the defense of the faith in scripture carefully interpreted. Bray encourages us to give thanks for their lives, anticipating the day we will be in eternal communion with them at the table of the Lamb.

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice

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Cover image of "Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice" by Karen J. Johnson

Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice

Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice, Karen J. Johnson. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514009987) 2025.

Summary: Histories of five individuals and the communities they formed to pursue racial justice and reconciliation.

Heroes who do that to which we aspire are important as models. It’s even better when they are “ordinary,” because they offer hope that we can also be the change we want to see. Part of “ordinary” is understanding our heroes, both in their virtues and with all their warts. There is a difference between hagiography and good history.

Karen J. Johnson has written a history of four communities in the United States that pursued racial justice and reconciliation. She profiles the individual (in the first three) or pair of individuals (In the last instance) who formed these communities. Those profiled are Catherine de Hueck and the Friendship Houses of New York and Chicago, John Perkins and Mendenhall Ministries/Voice of Calvary in Mississippi, Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, and Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein at Rock of our Salvation/Circle Urban Ministries in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago.

Johnson is a historian of race and urban history and chair of the history department at Wheaton College. In addition, she and her husband lived for six years in the last of the four communities she profiles, albeit after the departure of its founders. She writes the book with three aims in mind. First, she writes about the recent racial past of the United States, identifying in these local histories larger, systemic patterns of racial dynamics, and how the church has been a part of these. Through the eyes of Catherine de Heuck, a Catholic refugee from Russia and naturalized citizen, we glimpse her vision of how Blacks were treated as second class citizens. John Perkins flees the racist South after his brother’s murder, then returns, having come to faith, to join the civil rights movement. He suffers and also models relocation, something he will preach.

Clarence Jordan challenges racial norms in establishing an interracial farm community at Koinonia Farm. As a Bible scholar, his Cotton Patch New Testament shows in the vernacular how the gospel goes against the grain of racism. Finally, when Raleigh and Paulette Washington joined Glen and Lonni Kehrein to build a multiracial congregation, they modeled how Black and White might live together in a recently integrated part of Chicago.

Second, Johnson models the work of doing history as a Christian with love, humility, and awe. She sees the hard work of piecing together a narrative from primary source material, on site visits, and interviews as a work of love, including love for the people whose lives you are narrating. This also means being honest. For example, former President Jimmy Carter claimed a long-standing relationship with Clarence Jordan. However, her search of various sources failed to confirm this relationship.

Third, Johnson believes the study of history with love, humility and awe leads to wisdom. In particular, it makes us aware that we live in a context. That context has been shaped by the past. And it shapes our default approaches to the present. She believes reading history in this way is worship and mind renewing (Romans 12:1-2).

As a good professor, she includes a “Questions and Implications” section at the conclusion of each chapter. These are not the vague, reflection questions you will find in some book. Rather, they reminded me of the essay questions I had to answer on college and seminary history exams. They forced me to formulate my own responses to the historical narrative. Your interaction with this text will be enhanced by taking some time to journal with these.

I appreciated this work for the quality of research Johnson invested. Her personal model of love, humility, and awe in writing about each of these ordinary heroes is evident throughout. She helped me appreciate the different forms of courage each exercised as well as the “long obedience” involved, punctuated with dry seasons and reverses. And I loved the carefully chosen images she included. For example, she includes an image of Clarence Jordan’s “shack” where he wrote his Cotton Patch translations and where he died. This work is a valuable resource for anyone committed to the long work of seeking racial justice.

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Overstory

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Cover image of "The Overstory" by Richard Powers

The Overstory

The Overstory, Richard Powers. W. W. Norton & Co. (ISBN: 9780393356687) 2018.

Summary: Eight stories of nine people who lives intersect with trees and forests, whose lives, deaths, and survival are the real story.

I missed this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel when it was first published. But it kept surfacing in friends’ recommendations until I finally picked up a copy. While the story revolves around nine people, it is really the story of trees in North America, the wonder of their existence, and their plight. The novel’s organization into four parts reflects this focus: Roots, Trunk, Crown, Seeds.

In “Roots” we meet nine people in eight stories (one is a couple). In each story, their lives intersect in some ways. They range from a hearing-impaired botanist ahead of her time in discovering how trees communicate, dismissed for many years by the scientific community to a Vietnam vet whose life is saved in a plane crash by a tree. We meet a couple planted a tree in their backyard each anniversary until they began to drift apart. They are on the point of a divorce when he has a stroke. She stays and they bond over studying the forest in their backyard, including the scientist’s book. Another is an Indian boy, paralyzed when he fell from a tree, who invents a hugely successful online game while another engineer is radicalized when the tree outside her office is cut down.

In “Trunk” their stories begin to connect, like the roots of trees in a forest. Five become environmental activists, part of a movement engaged in increasingly risky actions to stop logging companies, including a couple living an amazing existence on a high platform in an old redwood marked for harvesting. Meanwhile, other researchers vindicate the botanist’s research. As an expert, she testifies in attempts to block logging. In the end, money wins over truth.

“Crown” follows a climactic event that resulted in the death of one of the activists and the dispersal of the others, and the subsequent lives of others, and in some cases, their deaths. “Seeds” describes the ways the survivors find meaning as the destruction of forests and our eco-system continues.

Woven through the account are trees. There is the chestnut on an Iowa farm that survived the blight killing all the trees in the east. A farm family chronicles in images its growth over several generations. The scientist travels the world, harvesting seeds, to create a kind of “ark”. A psych researcher is transformed into a radical after a night high up in a redwood. Especially through the scientist, we learn of the wondrous life of trees and the community they form in a forest.

It is this aspect that makes the book so compelling. The novel makes me look at the trees in my own yard differently, including the roots I encounter when I dig in most parts of the yard. It also raises an existential question. How does one live, when we seem hell-bent on destroying the very things on which our lives depend?

Review: Ezra-Nehemiah

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Cover image of "Ezra-Nehemiah" by Deborah Ann Appler and Terry Ann Smith

Ezra-Nehemiah

Ezra-Nehemiah (Wisdom Commentary, 14) Deborah Ann Appler and Terry Ann Smith. Liturgical Press (ISBN: 9780814681138) 2025.

Summary: A feminist commentary with background and intersectional analysis of power, ethnicity, race, class, and gender in the text.

The Wisdom Commentary series from Liturgical Press is dedicated to feminist interpretation of biblical texts. This includes foregrounding texts involving women but also brings feminist analysis in a broader sense to the whole of a text. And this means noting the hidden presence of women in places where the text is silent and the cultural situation of women. In addition, feminist interpretation includes an intersectional analysis of not only gender dynamics but also the intersection of power and authority, race and ethnicity, and class in a given text. This is important in the study of Ezra-Nehemiah. While women are mostly absent in the text, power, class, and ethnicity play an important part. Often, other commentaries overlook this.

I will note a few other general features. One is the inclusion of the NRSVue text in the commentary. The second is the treatment of the text in blocks rather than verse by verse. Finally, there is a commitment to interpretive and religious pluralism in the text. Additional contributors offer their own perspectives at various points. For example, in the Nehemiah commentary on sabbath, Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz offers her interpretation and reading of Kabbalat Shabbat (Welcoming Sabbath)

In my review, I will highlight several of the illuminating discussions in the commentary. The first concerned the gender identity of Nehemiah. The commentators raise the question of whether Nehemiah, as a court official, was a eunuch. This may provide one explanation for his expressed unworthiness to enter the temple. We can’t know for sure, but it is plausible.

A larger issue is the power dynamics between Persia and the repatriates. Likewise, consider the relationship of repatriates, empowered by Persia, to the indigenous people, both Jewish and non-Jewish. The commentators read the conflicts in Ezra and Nehemiah not merely as an effort to maintain identity and purity. They also explore the assertion of power by the arriving repatriates that upsets working relationships among the indigenous inhabitants of the land. They raise questions about the exclusory use of power of the repatriates.

These factors also come into play in the texts in both Ezra and Nehemiah involving separating and sending away the foreign wives and their children of Jewish men. The commentators read this “against the grain” of typical assertions of religious and ethnic identity. It is an early form of family separation in which the women had no voice. The commentators raise the question of other exceptions made for foreign women, including Ruth the Moabitess.

Ruth strike me as an interesting case. Ruth clearly renounces her Moabite identity and religion to embrace that of Naomi. We do not know whether this was the case with any of the foreign wives or whether this was an option. Could there have been a “path to citizenship” that allowed for these thing? Instead, there was a categorical and draconian exclusion on several occasions.

While I could not accept every interpretation of the authors, I found this commentary opening new dimensions of what I thought was a well-known text. I appreciated the readability of the text, and setting the biblical text alongside the commentary. At the same time, scholarship was not sacrificed for readability, particularly as it concerned cultural backgrounds. I’m grateful for the growing number of commentaries by women, people of color, and from those representing different parts of the church. Too late, I have realized the cultural blinders I’ve lived with. It’s time to prepare to join that great community of every people of every identity who will be praising and proclaiming the Lamb.

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Suicide and the Communion of Saints

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Cover image of "Suicide and the Communion of Saints" by Rhonda Mawhood Lee

Suicide and the Communion of Saints

Suicide and the Communion of Saints, Rhonda Mawhood Lee. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802884718) 2025.

Summary: A healing approach for those affected by suicide, addressing traditional Christian teaching.

Content warning: This post deals with the topic of death by suicide. If someone close to you has died in this way recently, in the author’s words “today is probably not the day to read this book” or review, but rather to care for yourself and receive the care of others. Likewise, if you are currently facing emotional distress or having thoughts of ending your life, help is available at the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (US) 24/7/365.

The text came this past Saturday. I learned from a friend that a person known to both of us had died by suicide. Suddenly, the topic of this book became very real. The individual was a person of faith in the prime of life. Beyond the shock and sadness of this untimely death, there was the deep grief of an elderly father who was very close to his adult child.

For many Christians, there is an added theological layer to this tragedy. How is one to think about the act of taking one’s life? And how is one to think of the state of their soul? And pastorally, we wonder, how might we most sensitively and helpfully care for the bereaved?

Rhonda Mawhood Lee is a pastor and spiritual director who has wrestled with these questions not only in caring for parishioners but also in her own family. Her mother, after a long struggle with depression, took her life at age 52. As the author delved more deeply into her family history, she discovered a pattern of such deaths.

Thus, Lee writes out of deep personal and pastoral care with both honesty and compassion. First of all, she clearly sets out her own position. While death is never God’s will for us, but rather life in Christ, suicide manifests the fallen reality in which we live, one we stand against by God’s grace. That said, she will not judge whether the person who dies by suicide has sinned. Rather, she commends the power of the resurrected Christ and the mercy of the Father as our common hope for ourselves and the one who has died.

Then, the first part of the book discusses how the church has dealt with self-inflicted death. Before discussing this, she briefly addresses how we speak of suicide. She argues against the phrase “commit suicide” as one that carries judgement in the word “commit.” Rather she suggests people “attempt suicide,”, “made an attempt,” “died by suicide,” or “took his/her life.” From here, she considers the few incidents of suicide in the Bible. She notes that it says little overtly and does not condemn suicide in the stories where it occurs. She observes that the most famous incident, that of Judas, is ambiguous, considering the two differing accounts of his death.

Rather, the problems have arisen out of theological formulations, particular those of Augustine and Aquinas. While Augustine deals with some sensitivity to the case of women choosing suicide over rape, he argues for choosing life. Aquinas is stronger, characterizing suicide as a mortal sin. Lee goes on to explore some of the unintended consequences of this theology such as suicide by proxy and murder/suicide. Then, consistent with her ideas of our fallen context, she explores the incidence of suicide in oppressive situations like slave ships and other exacerbating contexts.

The second part of the book explores the significance of the communion of saints. She speaks of how those in suicidal distress have a kind of constricted vision and that the community may be the ones who accompany them in hope and faith, whether in life or death. She notes how Dorothy Day prayed for those who died by suicide. But there is also the caring community calling out, as Paul did with the Philippian jailer, “Do not harm yourself, for we are with you.” She offers practical help in addressing how we invite people to talk who give hints of suicidal ideation. She also bluntly urges helping suicidal persons to get rid of their guns.

Finally, she explores how we grieve and remember those who have died. She discusses how we talk to children. And she concludes with leaning into our resurrection hope and that those we’ve lost are yet a part of the communion of saints. She recounts asking her parents, both who ultimately died by suicide, to pray for someone she was deeply concerned for as those who understood.

Not all of us may be comfortable with the idea of praying for the dead, or asking their prayers. However, the compassionate, non-judgmental approach she commends reflects both pastoral wisdom and a deep faith in the wideness of God’s mercy and the power of the resurrection to triumph over death. She shows how theology not supported by scripture has proven harmful. And she gives practical counsel for how we may walk in communion with those struggling with suicide. This brief book is filled with pastoral wisdom vital in a time of rising rates of suicide.

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings

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Cover image of "Israel's Scriptures in Early Christian Writings" edited by Matthias Henze and David Lincicum

Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings

Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings, edited by Matthias Henze and David Lincicum. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802874443) 2023.

Summary: How Jewish scriptures were used in the New Testament and in other early Christian writings.

The Jewish scriptures were the only “Bible” of the New Testament writers and important for other early Christian writers along with the coalescing collection of texts that make up our New Testament. But what constituted “Jewish scripture” particularly for first and second century CE writers? What materials were particularly important and how did writers appropriate these materials? It is with all these questions that this major reference work of essays concerns itself.

In the Introduction, the editors set up a fourfold system for classifying use of the Old Testament: marked citation, unmarked citation, verbal allusion, and conceptual allusion. Contributors use this system with a high degree of consistency throughout the volume. Then, the remainder of the book consists of five sections of essays, on each of which I will comment briefly.

Contexts

The section begins by asking “what were the “scriptures” in Jesus time?” This is important because no “canon” existed of these scriptures. The following six chapters consider the reuse of scripture in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, in early Jewish literature, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Philo and the Alexandrian tradition, and in Josephus.

Israel’s Scriptures in the New Testament

Seventeen chapters make up this section, a major portion of the book. The writers consider every New Testament book. However, this is not in commentary form. Rather essayists note the uses of scripture under the four categories noted above. It is interesting, for example, to note the number of texts Matthew cites whereas the bulk of John’s use is allusions. Likewise, it is interesting to see how Paul’s use of scripture varies from letter to letter.

Themes and Topics From Scriptures in the New Testament

Here, eight chapters consider the use of Jewish scripture under the topics of God, Messiah, Holy Spirit, Covenant, Law, Wisdom, Liturgy and Prayer, and Eschatology. Of the essays in this section, I especially valued the one on Messiah. It demonstrated both a coherent messianism, and yet no monolithic “messianic idea.”

Tracing Israel’s Scriptures

This part of the work studies four books that make up a major part of the New Testament use of Jewish scripture: Deuteronomy, Isaiah, the Psalms, and Daniel. Each chapter explores the uses of the book throughout the New Testament. Then the final chapter considers key persons from the Jewish scriptures throughout the New Testament: Abraham, Moses, David, Jacob, Joseph, and Elijah. The essay also considers lesser known female figures including Eve, Hagar, Sarah, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.

Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christianity Outside the New Testament

Finally, the editors offer a helpful extension of this study beyond the horizon of the New Testament. Essays include studies of the use of Jewish scriptures in the apocryphal gospels and apocalypses, in Adversus Judaeos literature, in Marcion and the critical tradition. It was fascinating, in Adversus Judaeos, to see how Christian writers used scripture as a key source of authority as they engaged Jewish opponents to their message. The concluding essay is wonderful icing on the cake in the form of looking at the use of Israel’s scripture in early pictorial art.

Concluding Comments

I appreciated the breadth of this work not only in the consistent use of the four-fold classification but also in keeping each essay at a manageable length, important in such a long work. Yet for all that, the depth of scholarship, evident in citations and bibliography, is impressive. I suspect, unlike this reviewer, most readers won’t read this straight through. Rather, it serves as a helpful reference work, whether for addressing the Jewish scriptural background to the New Testament, for exegesis of particular books, or for biblical themes. And if you are concerned with the relationship of the two testaments, this is an absolute must read.

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: In the Stillness, Waiting

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Cover image of "In The Stillness, Waiting" by Nicholas Worssam, SSF

In the Stillness, Waiting

In the Stillness, Waiting, Nicholas Worssam, SFF. Liturgical Press (ISBN: 9798400802317) 2025.

Summary: The wisdom of Eastern Orthodox saints on contemplative discipleship reflected in the Jesus Prayer.

One of the gifts of the Eastern Orthodox churches to the whole of the Christian community is the Jesus Prayer. This is also known as the prayer of the heart. In its most familiar form, it is the single petition, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” One can also shorten it in various ways. It is typical to pray this softly or silently repeatedly, coming to a place of stillness before God. As such, it is an expression of the yearning of our hearts for God above all. Thus, it serves as a kind of doorway into contemplative prayer.

Nicholas Worssam, SSF, a Franciscan friar and theologian, begins from this place and introduces us to the saints within Eastern Orthodoxy. These are monastics for the most part, who explored the frontiers of this prayer and the depths of contemplative practice. Among those the reader will meet Evagrius of Pontus, Syncletica and the Desert Mothers, John Climacus, Isaac of Syria, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas.

On one hand, each has distinctive insights into the spiritual journey, reflecting his or her own journey. But at the same time, several themes recur: stillness and silence, the solitude of the wilderness, the recognition of bodily passions and how they may distract, and the processes by which the contemplative may come to a purity of heart. Evagrius is of note in his identification of the eight passions, a precursor to the modern Enneagram. There is also the movement from head or intellectual knowledge of God ascending to the wordless love of God of the heart. And when one is filled with the compassion of God this eventuates in compassionate actions in the world.

Each of the chapters includes questions for reflection and discussion. Worssam provides suggestions for further reading. We hear the Fathers (and Mothers!) in their own words. Not only does this instruct in contemplative practice. It also introduces us to their writings, whetting our appetites for me. For all these reasons, this is a valuable introduction to both the history and practice of contemplative prayer, beginning with the Jesus prayer.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Is a River Alive?

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Cover image of "Is a River Alive?|" by Robert McFarlane

Is a River Alive?

Is a River Alive?, Robert McFarlane. W.W. Norton & Co. (ISBN: 9781324130734) 2025.

Summary: A nature writer weighs the question of rivers as living entities with rights as he explores three river systems.

Is a river an “it” or a “who”? When human activity endangers their flourishing, do we defend rivers as living beings with rights? These are the questions in the back of Robert McFarlane’s mind as he embarks on an exploration of three river systems. A dead giveaway is that for McFarlane, rivers are “whos.” Yet when he discusses the question with his son early in the book, it seems still to be an open question. For the son of a naturalist, the answer is “Duh, of course!” But it’s not so easy. How can something represented by people be alive?

He begins with the Rio de los Cedros in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian constitution recognizes and protects it as a legal person. His journey is one of discovering what, or who, is this protected river? He describes a wondrous landscape of a river rising in the midst of a cloud forest. One in the expedition studies mushrooms and finds several rare ones. He realizes there are several rivers, one underground in the channels of roots and fungi, the river that runs before them, and an atmospheric river above.

The second journey is to a river system of several rivers running through industrial Chennai, one that begins full of life but dies as it reaches the coast. One area is even erased from the maps, its existence no longer acknowledged. Erasure does not only happen to peoples. The account closes at the coast, and has McFarlane joining a group rescuing sea turtle eggs.

Finally, he journeys 600 miles northeast of Montreal, to explore Mutehekau Shipu, as the indigenous peoples call it. The river descends through a series of rapids to eventually empty into the St. Lawrence. As part of Canada’s hydroelectric boom, planners want to dam parts of it, a move indigenous groups are resisting. Before departing, a wise woman, Rita says, “To you, Robert, I would say this: don’t think too much with your head. Forget your notebooks on the river; leave them behind.” She encourages him to think like the river, to be a river. And over the course of the journey, this happens, even as he is nearly smashed to bits negotiating a set of rapids. Alive? This river throbs with a force all its own.

The trips are punctuated by visits in different seasons to a spring near his home, during a drought when it is nearly dried up, and later, when it has been replenished. The delight in reading McFarlane is how observant both of the familiar and the new and his ability to capture it in words.

Coming back to the question of the book I find myself cautious about the incipient animism of the book. Yet rivers do represent life even in Judeo-Christian scripture. The descriptions in this book portray each of the places as living, dynamic systems, not merely “natural resources.” However, we do not need to confer personhood on rivers to protect and seek their flourishing, which ultimately is our own. I grew up near the juncture of Mill Creek and the Mahoning River in Youngstown. A visionary lawyer protected the former. Our steel industries turned the latter into a dying industrial river. At one time it was the most polluted in the country. This book similarly juxtaposes flourishing and dying rivers and how all are endangered by human enterprise. So which will we choose?