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Permalink Reply by Jay Thatcher on 12th mo. 25, 2008 at 11:50pm

I just finished Slap Your Sides by M.E. Kerr, who has written lots of novels for young people. This story about a family of Quakers in a small town gave me insights on the attitudes toward CO's in the US during World War II. I recommend it to youth and others who are figuring out their stance toward war.

Jay Thatcher

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Permalink Reply by Alison P. Martinez on 12th mo. 26, 2008 at 10:23am

Dear Friends,
I've been reading the Gospel of John RSV. I'm eager to get deeper into it. Can anyone recommend additional translations? Commentaries? I saw one by William Barclay. Can anyone tell me about him? Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Stuart Masters on 12th mo. 27, 2008 at 9:16am

Hi Alison,

From a Quaker perspective Howard Brinton has both a Pendle Hill Pamphlet (79 - Light and Life in the Fourth Gospel) and a book (The Religious Philosophy of Quakerism: The Beliefs of Fox, Barclay and Penn as Based on the Gospel of John).

I would also recommend the Catholic biblical scholar Raymond E Brown on John. For a short commentary see "The Gospel and Epistles of John" and for an understanding of the Joannine community see ""The Community of the Beloved Disciple".

Stuart.

PS - This is what Wikipedia has to say about William Barclay:

William Barclay (5 December 1907, Wick – 24 January 1978, Glasgow) was an author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister and Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow.

While professor, he decided to dedicate his life to "making the best biblical scholarship available to the average reader". The eventual result was the Daily Study Bible, a set of 17 commentaries on the New Testament, published by Saint Andrew Press, the Church of Scotland's publishing house. Despite the series name, these commentaries do not set a program of regular study. Rather, they go verse by verse through Barclay's own translation of the New Testament, listing and examining every possible interpretation known to Barclay and providing all the background information he considered possibly relevant, all in layman's terms. The commentaries were fully updated with the help of William Barclay's son, Ronnie Barclay, in recent years and they are now known as the New Daily Study Bible series.

While this detailed approach is not to everyone's liking, the 17 volumes of the set were all instant best-sellers and continue to be so to this day. A companion set giving a similar treatment to the Old Testament was endorsed but not written by Barclay.

Barclay wrote many other popular books, always drawing on scholarship but written in a highly accessible style. In The Mind of Jesus (1960) he states that his aim was "to make the figure of Jesus more vividly alive, so that we may know him better and love him more".

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Permalink Reply by Alison P. Martinez on 12th mo. 29, 2008 at 9:31am

Dear Friends, I have come upon "The unvarnished gospels," translated by Andy Gaus (Threshold, 1988.) It's a more direct translation, and I find it really exciting. Your recommendations of commentaries on the gospel of John are still very welcome.

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Permalink Reply by Simon St.Laurent on 12th mo. 29, 2008 at 6:57pm

I just finished the main body of Carole Spencer's Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism. It's very strange to read history by someone who seems to agree with my opinions about early Quakers, but then diverge as we get closer to the present. I'll be posting a real review and a lot of blog posts as soon as I get through the appendices, which also look interesting.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Wilcox on 12th mo. 29, 2008 at 8:16pm

Hi Alison,

Barclay's commentary is an excellent introduction. I've read it more than once.

And parts of Brinton's book, The Religious Philosophy of Quakerism, are great/ He brings up a few things from a different angle than Barclay. I just finished reading it again
last month.

What was that old quote? About how we never read a book twice, because we are at a different place in our journey on the second time through..

Hope you had a joyous Christmas. I did, partially because I ran into another of my former students:-)

Daniel Wilcox
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/

Alison P. Martinez said:

Dear Friends,
I've been reading the Gospel of John RSV. I'm eager to get deeper into it. Can anyone recommend additional translations? Commentaries? I saw one by William Barclay. Can anyone tell me about him? Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Alison P. Martinez on 1st mo. 13, 2009 at 8:29pm

I've just started "If God is Love," by Philip Gulley (of the delightful & insightful Harmony, IN novels) and James Mulholland, also a Friends pastor. Approachable but profound challenge actually to believe what Jesus tells us!

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Permalink Reply by village green on 1st mo. 18, 2009 at 11:16pm

Hello. I recently attended my first meeting and was quite moved by the experience. I'd like to read some introductory-type books about Quakerism. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Derek

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Permalink Reply by Claire M Wynn on 3rd mo. 7, 2009 at 2:35pm

Hi, I just started reading Holy Silence by J. Brent Bill about Quaker worship and how people are naturally drawn toward silence even though we sometimes don't know what to do with it.
I'm also reading the Essential Writings of Rufus Jones. Sometimes when I read him, I feel like he's speaking directly to me. His writings had a lot of influence on me and my convincement.

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Permalink Reply by John Fitzgerald on 3rd mo. 25, 2009 at 10:20pm

A Briefer Barclay

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Permalink Reply by Chel Avery on 3rd mo. 27, 2009 at 4:27pm

I have had such mixed feelings about "No Shame, No Fear" -- I am very interested in knowing your reaction when you finish it. As a story it's a good read, and as another Friend pointed out to me, it is a great first day school discussion starter on the question: why were early Friends so willing to suffer persecution for their faith?

But the characters it depicts, the things they say and believe, are much more like modern liberal Friends than like early Friends. -- Paul Buckley wrote a Friends Journal article a few years ago about where we got the apocryphal story of George Fox telling William Penn to "wear thy sword as long as thou canst." Buckley said (I'm paraphrasing) that we do the original Friends a disservice when we try to make them be more like ourselves. I've come to suspect we do ourselves and God a disservice as well. I'm afraid we often act as if putting our viewpoints into the mouths of early Friends (or using the words of early Friends out of context) will give authority to our version of Quakerism, rather than having the "authority" be the Spirit we encounter in our own response to the challenge, "What canst thou say?"

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