Worship That Makes Sense to Paul – author copies received!

I don’t normally indulge in personal celebrations publicly like this, but perhaps just this once: I am excited to have received my 15 gratis copies of my monograph with Walter de Gruyter entitled Worship That Makes Sense to Paul: A New Approach to the Theology and Ethics of Paul’s Cultic Metaphors (2010).

A couple of notes: the folks I worked with were very nice and skilled. While I labored for too many hours reformatting and typsetting the manuscript, from their end, they worked quickly and efficiently. From start (submission of book proposal) to finish (receipt of author copies), the whole process took one year.

The volume looks nice. It is slimmer than I expected, but that will only make it less intimidating to potential readers. WdG changed the book cover formatting. I have to admit that I liked the way it was before, as now they do not emboss the cover and the design suffers a bit because of it. My guess is that it is a cost-saving move. The book costs $98 on Amazon. Compare that to (my friend) Joseph Dodson’s recent 2009 Walter de Gruyter volume (with the old design) which costs $140 on Amazon for about the same number of pages. What is to account for this? The change in cover design? Beats me.

Anyway, one monograph down…

What’s next? Right now that matter is not quite settled and/or not quite public, but I have some projects in the works and I will share them as soon as I feel comfortable. Right now my time is spent preparing fall lectures, writing my SBL paper, completing several reviews for print and blog, and soaking up the Pacific Northwest as much as I can until classes begin.

I will say that I have received two exciting review books today: Dunn’s book on the worship of Jesus and a 1 Peter commentary by Lewis Donelson. I don’t know which one to read first!

At present I am reading Kaesemann’s book On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene (Eerdmans). Take some time to let this quote sink in and shock you to the core:

The watchword of the gospel reads “grace for sinner.” Long habit may allow us to agree with the watchword, but with a small improvement: “Grace also for sinners.” The improvement ruins everything.