I just came across this wonderful quote in Jonathan Pennington’s work Reading the Gospels Wisely:

In the massive onslaught of books that pour forth from the publishing houses every year like orces from the gates of Mordor, only a few will the future look back on as significant. One such book is Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.”

Pennington, I commend you for your awesome use of imagery. I’m not so sure the simile holds water too well since the orcs that do survive after funneling through the gates of Mordor flee for their lives never to be seen again in Middle Earth (book version, not the movie version where they all just vanish into nothingness after the ring is destroyed). But for the sake of awesomeness, let’s avoid pushing the simile to its breaking point.

In other news, I am well aware that it is high time to give away my next book, but I haven’t been able to decide which one(s) come next: Robertson’s “Word Pictures in the New Testament,” Spurgeon’s “Treasury of David,” Charlesworth’s two volume set of the Pseudepigrapha, a couple volumes on Biblical Theology edited by D.A. Carson, or “The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery.” Other than the Dictionary, I’m not even sure if anyone will want the other books…I guess I will make a decision before the day is over.