Just a writing update ... [Updated]

Just a writing update:

My New Year’s Resolutions for 2017 were to write one essay a week, finish writing two books, resume work on my Moody book project (lectures in Biblical Theology 42), start work on a new book on ministry, and start looking for publishers.

I wrote 40 essays this year but eventually stopped in September to devote my writing time fully to that new ministry book. This is why I haven’t posted anything new since September 6th.

Early in the year I finished my first book of essays. The second book I wanted to finish this year is an adaptation of my thesis, The Use of Jonah in the Luke-Acts. I started revising it earlier in the year but still have a little more to do on it.

The Moody book project is progressing. I’ve been re-reading many of Dale Moody’s works and much of the secondary works about him. Mostly I’ve been focusing on writing the opening biographical work. I was able to finish the introduction and biography on Thursday and have begun some initial revisions of my previous work.

I began writing the new book on ministry in September and, with 16 chapters completed, I am about halfway done with it. The last three months have been difficult as I focus on the central chapter which combines Aubrey J. Johnson’s analysis of the Hebrew conception of corporate solidarity with Walter Wink’s analysis of the Biblical conception of Powers, and then how these two conceptions can be applied to ministry. Yeah, this is why it took me three weeks just to outline the argument of the chapter. I’ve had to reread all of their works on the subject, read critiques of these works, and study all the relevant Scriptural passages. I finally finished this central chapter just this evening.

At the same time I’ve been listening to a series of lectures by clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson on a psychological interpretation of early Biblical stories. Peterson is not a Christian but he does have a healthy respect for the Biblical stories and takes them very seriously. His approach is phenomenological in basis, interpreting the stories from a Jungian psychological, Nietzschean, biological standpoint. Some of what he has to say about the biological and neurological basis of human consciousness and how it’s communicated through the most ancient of Biblical stories has relevance to my studies of Aubrey and Wink. So far there are 13 of these lectures, each two and a half hours long, and I finished them two weeks ago. A 14th lecture is expected.

With regards to finding publishers for these books, I have only stuck my toe in that water. A more extensive search will come in 2018.