Bishop Books

As every schoolboy know, history is about dates and events. In antiquity, this was not a simple matter, for there was no universal system like AD and BC, nor agreement as to when the year started, nor on the months in use. Ancient chronographers listed the names of kings, and the number of years for which they reigned, and might mention some event that occurred 'in the 4th year of king XYZ.' Since there were many series of such monarchs in cities and kingdoms, this was not much help.

In 313AD Eusebius Pamphili, Bishop of Caesarea, made a critical breakthrough. He invented a format for a chronicle in which he laid out multiple vertical columns of rulers, tied together by syncronisms at various points. It ran from the first date he thought he could have any real chance of dating, the birth of Abraham, down to 313, later 326AD. This meant that for any year it was possible to see who was doing what. Into it he processed all the mass of material that existed in the Greek chronographic tradition. His format meant both that he could use material from any list of rulers, and that he could detect errors.

His chronicle fell on relatively stony ground in the Greek world; only an Armenian translation of a form revised (and corrupted) exists. But a copy came into the hands of St. Jerome, who translated it into Latin, added material from the West, and thereby laid the foundations for all subsequent chronicles. In the Latin form, over 100 manuscripts exist, some from the 5th century.

All this is explained by Mosshammer in a marvellous manner. It is clear, it is detailed, it is well-referenced. Mosshammer disentangles the remains of the chronicle in its various versions, and lays the results out clearly. He includes monochrome photographs from the 5th century Bodleian Library manuscript, which allows us to see the innovative format.

The history of the various printed editions is exceedingly complex. Here again Mosshammer is simply an incredibly useful resource. It is almost impossible for the layman to make sense of the manner in which the various editions, past and present, Armenian, German, Latin, and Syriac, interrelate. Worse still, older editions have been republished while better editions have not. Mosshammer guides the reader through them all. Indeed it is the only guide known to me in English, and quite indispensable.

The second portion of the book takes various events, recorded in the various versions of the chronicle, and discusses how they come to be, which is correct, and how the reading derives (which it usually does) from one strand or another of the pre-existing mass of material. Some 12 cases are examined in detail. The results are really for specialists, but are certainly very well done.

It is hard to see how a book of this kind could have been improved within its lengthy compass. Armed with it, the newcomer to Eusebius-Jerome can chart his own course.

This is the single best book that I have read in my life. I think that everyone should read it; like Vera says in her introduction, the more people who read it and are aware of the horrible waste of life, especially young life, that war is, the less people will allow it to happen. This is a great book for anyone, but especially the young- I am a teenager myself (13), as Vera was (she was 19, but oh well), and it is so much more real- what she thinks and feels and believes are so like ours, even written 85 years ago, and it makes her tradgedy seem so much more real when we see how much she was like us. It is a story of what true love is, also; when we read fiction we think "Oh, that couldn't happen in real life": here it is, it did happen, but they were only allowed a taste of what it could have been like before it was snatched away from them again. It's a reasonably hard book, guys, but it is worth it: you'll never read a better book and it will show you, if you havn't realised already, how horrible such a war is in the deaths of people so young, bright, brave, kind, and brilliant people as Roland, Edward, Victor, and Geoffery.

This volume gives a series of fine studies on major turning points in early church history. Bonner traces the first real schism, the Donatist rebellion in North Africa, with its concerns about the requirements of church membership and the right of Christians to choose their own leaders. He follows the reasoning and concerns which led Rome's newly official state church to a series of painful choices. In response to a rebel, anti-colonial sect, the authorities basically denied the right of Roman subjects to choose or reject their appointed religious leaders. Bonner explores the ensuing series of fierce debates over sin and freedom, which altered the course of religious history for at least 1,500 years. With elegant dispassion he clarifies the clashes of thought and feeling behind the momentous events unfolding from North Africa to Northumbria.

--author of "Different Visions of Love"

I had the writer of this book as a professor,and though a book could never capture the energy of his lectures, it came pretty close. This is a book written by a guy who really knows what he is talking about. I highly recommend it.

Video Listings:

1. He's In The Midst
2. That Sounds Like Someone I'd Like To Know
3. He's My Hiding Place
4. He's Living Again
5. For Every Cross There Is A Crown
6. Blind Bartimaeus
7. I Need You More Today
8. I'll Live Again
9. Lazarus, Come Forth
10. I'm Gonna Move

Tom Jared is tired out from long months in space as the telepath in a first contact party. He picks a world that was only visited once long ago to take a vacation. He sets down on the half of the planet that is not inhabited. He soon discovers that it is inhabited by a very gentle humanoid amphibian species when one jumps in his little rubber raft. They are able to communicate telepathically. Tom soon learns that this creature's name is Kamir and that she is a female. She is very beautiful by human standards. Tom learns that she is considered ugly by her people because she is too skinny. They fall in love almost instantly. Tom and Kamir spent many days being together and traveling from island to island. Kamir thought that she would never find a husband because she was so ugly. She is very happy and so is Tom. All too soon Kamir's brother tracks them down and asks them to return to the village.

I gave this book a 99 out of 100 on my personal ranking scale. The only point I took off was for the ending. This was such a wonderful story, I guess I wanted it to have a happier ending. But if it did, it might not be as great as it is. I really liked the love story themes. They are at many levels really. Tom falls in love first with Kamir, then her people and finally the entire planet. He breaks all the Federation's Rules of Contact in order to save them.

The story is very short being only 76 pages long, but it feels so much longer. I find myself wishing that there was a part two.

James Tiptree Jr. is a pen name for Alice B. Sheldon. She used a male name to get her Science Fiction Published. The appears to be an older story that was finally printed in 1990.

In Colors of a Different Horse, creative writers who are teachers consider the political, historical, theoretical, and pedagogical states of their art by responding to Bishop and Ostrom's defining questions about their field: What takes place in creative writing classrooms? Why do certain practices and context prevail? Most important, what steps might teachers take to reexamine their profession? In a foreword, afterword, and twenty-two essays, thirty contributors reconsider the workshop; address the theoretical and technological contexts of creative writing and pedagogy; and re-envision evaluation, collaboration, and connections between types of writing instruction. In doing so, these writers envision creative writing theory and pedagogy in the 21st century.
--- from book's back cover

COMBAT GUNS BY CHRIS BISHOP AND IAN DRURY IS AN ABSOLUTELY MARVELLOUS BOOK MAINLY AIMED AT THE YOUNGER PERSON WITH AN INTEREST IN MODERN MILITARY FIREARMS,DATING FROM THE EARLY PART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY UP TO THE LATE NINETEEN EIGHTIES. THE BOOK COVERS MOST OF THE MORE COMMON FIREARMS IN USE,WITH PHOTOGRAPHS TO ACCOMPANY EACH AND EVERY REVIEW.THE BOOK IS SPLIT INTO SECTIONS COVERING DIFFERENT TYPES OF SMALLARMS ie HANGUNS WW1 AND 2,RIFLES,SUB MACHINE GUNS,ASSAULT RILES,COMBAT SHOTGUNS AND RIOT CONTROL WEAPONS WITH EACH SECTION SPLIT AGAIN INTO DIFFERENT COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN. IN EACH SECTION THERE IS ALSO AN EXTRA REVIEW ON FIREARMS THAT THE AUTHORS FEEL NEED EXTRA ATTENTION WITH LARGE TWO PAGE CUT AWAY DRAWINGS ON GUNS LIKE THE M16 AND M60.THIS ALL ADDS TOWARDS MAKING A VERY INFORMATIVE,COLOURFUL,EASY TO READ AND EASY TO RESEARCH REFERENCE BOOK. I HAVE HAD "COMBAT GUNS" FOR NEARLY ELEVEN YEARS AND STILL QUITE FREQUENTLY FIND MYSELF RESOURSING IT FOR INFORMATION PARTICULARY ON COMBAT SHOTGUNS AS MATERIAL IN THIS AREA IS HARDER TO FIND.JUST GOING TO SHOW THAT IT ALSO HAS SOMETHING TO OFFER THE MORE LEARNED ENTHUSIAST.

The table of contents is as follows:

Introduction

Commentary on the Lord's Sermon on the Mount

Retractions: Book I: Chapter 19

Sermons:

53. On the Beatitudes

54. How to 'Let Your Light Shine Before Men'

55. On Taming the Tongue

56. On the Lord's Prayer

60. On Almsgiving

61. On Almsgiving

72. On Almsgiving

94. The Slothful Servant

109. The Adversary

346. On Life's Pilgrimage

4 (Denis). Christ: Lamb and Lion*

5 (Denis). Life From Death*

6 (Denis). The Holy Eucharist*

7 (Denis). Sonship or Servitude*

8 (Denis). On Baptism*

13 (Denis). Christ: The Glory of Martyrs*

11 (Morin). On the Beatitudes**

Index.

* The sermons so marked and the numbers assigned them are taken from a collection published by Michael Denis in 1792.

** Taken from Dom Germain Morin's "Miscellanea Agostiniana".

Although the title work of this book is Augustine's close commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, the book also includes the chapter concerning the commentary taken from Augustine's "Retractions", as well as seventeen of Augustine's sermons: ten of which took their themes from the Sermon on the Mount, and seven others that were included because they had not (at the time of writing) ever been translated into English.

Scriptural commentary is not generally regarded as Augustine's greatest strength as a theologian; held closely to the text and the order of presentation in the text, he could not address the deep questions which the text as a whole raised, but at which individual passages in their immediate context only hinted, and it was in addressing the deep questions that Augustine excelled.

Apart from their questions concerning their excellence, Augustine's method of commentary may seem quite surprising to those familiar with the more modern historical approach. Augustine's focus is on symbol-systems. Here, for example, is Augustine's commentary on the first part of Matthew 6:6:

"'But,' says He, 'when you pray, go into your bedrooms.' Now, what are these bedrooms but the very hearts that are signified also in the Psalm wherein it is said: 'The things you say in your hearts, be sorry for in your bedrooms.' He then continues: 'And closing the doors, pray in secret to you Father.' Our entering the rooms is not enough if the door be left open to the importunate, for external things rush brazenly in through this door, and lay hold on our innermost affections ... Therefore, the door must be closed;"

By way of contrast, Daniel J. Harrington, in the modern form, writing on the same passage from "Sacra Pagina: The Gospel of Matthew", says:

"The Greek word tameion can refer to a 'storage room' or 'pantry', the innermost room in the house. In either case the idea is the room least likely to attract public notice. Perhaps such a room had no windows ... Matthew 6:1-18 functions as part of the attack against Jewish opponents of the Matthean community."

Of course, the two forms of commentary are not mutually exclusive - a reader may hold both, either, or neither to be good readings. Some of course, may hold to the Harrington's form exclusively, and reject Augustine's symbol systems as imaginary. Others may hold to the Augustine's form exclusively and reject Harrington's Matthean community as imaginary.

With regard to the sermons in the collection, Augustine himself always regarded his sermons as unsatisfactory, but he seems to be alone in that assessment. His sermons were admired and his style imitated for many centuries afterwards, a fact that has greatly complicated trying to determine which sermons Augustine wrote, and which were imitations of his style.

The editiorial material in the book includes the introduction, which provides a historical view of the works, both prior as regarding their composition, and later as to their reception and impact. Additionally, footnotes give exact references for Augustine's scriptural citations, translation issues, and references to other works of Augustine's or of others. Finally, the work has an index, which is, however, only fair.

This volume combines four Covert Bailey's best selling titles: "The new fit or fat", "The fit or fat woman", "The fit or fat target diet", and "Fit or fat target recipes". These books give practical advice on exercise, training and diet, and it does so using a clear way and with a great sense of humor. A complete package that even includes a recipe collection to lose weight and stay fit.

When I bought this and a couple of other books, about six years ago, I was looking for an introductory reference on aerobic training, fat burning, and on the use of heart rate monitors for general fitness improvements, and wasn't disappointed at all, since what I learned really worked out for me: Armed with a Polar Heart Rate Monitor (the old M61) I was able to drop more than 200 lbs in about eight months, and the heart rate monitor training has helped me keep those lbs off for over six years. Not only I went fro size 44 to size 32 pants, but also obtained substantial benefits that included weight control, cardiovascular improvements, lowered blood pressure, and improved muscular-skeletal strength and flexibility, but also the myriad of mental and psychological benefits derived from being in the best shape of my life.

I especially like the chapter about measuring your own Fat and Fitness. The formula to estimate Body Fat Percentage is very useful if you don't have a Body Fat Scale or Monitor at Home. I used the formula, and other data that I found on several books to set-up an excel spreadsheet to monitor my progress, which gave me motivation to keep training smarter.

In short terms, based on my experience I can recommend this book, and it's a great reading as well.

Another tools you may want to consider, to complement this book and your strategies for boosting your metabolism, loosing weight, and even more important keeping that weight off are:

- A Body Fat Monitor or Scale. This will help you monitor your progress, to assure that the weight you are loosing is fat (fat lost = increased metabolism) and not muscle, water or bone mass (decreased metabolism).
- "Ultrametabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss", which is another very practical, readable and insightful book, focused on how to boost your metabolism.
- "The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life".
- A Heart Rate Monitor Wrist Watch. This is an excellent tool that will help you monitor and control your Heart Rate in order to keep yourself in a burning fat state (increased metabolism).
- "The Hard Body Guide". Excellent strategies, programs and workouts, aimed to increase your muscle mass.

If you are focused only on your diet, the first three may be worth considering. If you exercise, or want to start doing it right, the last two are for you. If you do both, all the four recommended options can improve your results.