James tagged me with the “123″ book meme. He says that I am “supposed to pick up the nearest book, turn to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and post the three sentences after that.”
Ironically, the closest book is in a stack that I haven’t given any attention to since I put them down by my monitor. So the top book is the closest, that being “The Canon Debate” by Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders. McDonald is the uncle of a friend of ours from church and he (our friend) lent it to me to take a look…
Anyway, on to page 123:
When he summarizes the laws in A.J.3.223-286; 4.196-302, he even apologizes for digressing from the historical narrative, making it clear that the laws constitute only a small part of what Moses wrote (3.223; 4.196). This agrees with his language in C.Ap.1.39.
Nor can his famous recognition of Daniel as “one of the greatest prophets” (A.J.10.266), in contrast to the rabbinic scheme that left Daniel among the “Writings,” serve as evidence of order within Josephus’s Bible.
Um. Yeah. I doubt that I’ll be hitting that stack real soon…
Here are two comments:
1. Thanks for doing this! My technorati rating went up.
2. You said you were a friend of McDonald’s. I once sat across the table from James Sanders at the JTS Bible lunch. We weren’t friends, though.
No problem – thanks for the tag! And actually, I’m only friends with McDonald’s nephew, so I don’t know him personally.