Part XXXVI Matthew: The Execution of John the Baptist: History, Myth or Midrash?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 8 January 2015 2 Comments
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Question

I am thoroughly enjoying your weekly study on the Gospel of Matthew. I feel it would make a wonderful Bible study in the church. Are you planning to collect these weekly reflections (series) into a printed book and, if so, when might it be published? I encourage you to consider this possibility...it would make a terrific resource for a church or college library. Thank you.

Also, I am currently reading the book The Mind Behind the Gospels: A Commentary to Matthew 1-14 by Herbert Basser. Are you familiar with this title? I am finding it a superb line-by-line commentary on Matthew.

Answer

Dear Mark,

Thank you for your letter, your comments and your recommendation of the Herbert Basser book. It is on my list.

Yes, I have a contract with my publisher Harper-Collins to produce a manuscript on Matthew’s gospel by September 1, 2015. If that deadline is met and I am confident it will be, the book will be out by May of 2016. I will launch it with a series of lectures at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, which is tentatively set for the last week of June 2016. The title will be: Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy- Studies on the Gospel of Matthew.

Let me tell you, however, that this does not mean, as you suggest, “to collect these weekly reflections into a printed book.” These two things, a series of columns and a published book, are quite different. In a series of columns, the author seeks each week to bring his reading audience back on board so there is a good bit of repetition that marks a series of columns when they appear over a period of several years. A book, however, a book is read over a much shorter period of time and one assumes the reader is on board once the book is started. One could never be repetitious in a book without boring the reader. So, a point made more than once in a series of columns has to be eliminated from the text of a book. Readers of books will not tolerate too many sentences that begin with the words, “As I have said earlier.”

In the last several years I have been doing three things simultaneously. One is my extensive study of the resources on Matthew’s gospel available to me. The theological library at Drew University (a good Methodist University and Theological School) has most graciously made its resources available to me. Second, I am writing the weekly columns. We are now reaching the column we call the XL’s or forties; there may be as many as the Matthew LX’s or even LXX’s before the series is complete. Third, I am also writing the manuscript of the book in long hand on every other line of a legal pad. Chapters are not bound by the 1500 word limit of the weekly column. I have now well over 800 of my handwritten pages in readiness. The completed manuscript will contain up to 1000 of those handwritten pages, which will print up somewhere between 275-325 pages in the new book. After the manuscript is completed, I will edit the written material for the first time. Those parts of that finished process are now with the typist. When I have completed this process and the typist has transcribed these pages into “Windows,” then we (that “we” is Christine and I) will edit it more thoroughly, cutting out repetitions, gathering footnotes, checking biblical texts and generally tightening the content. The primary genius on this task is my wife Christine. When all of these editorial changes are placed into the typed manuscript, we will send it to my publisher, Harper-Collins. That will be by May 1st, 2015, I hope. At Harper-Collins, a team of my editor, my manuscript manager and my copy editor will work over the text once again, though the staff at Harper-Collins has learned by now that Christine is a very competent editor and normally little more work is needed on a manuscript that she has gone over in detail. Mickey Mauldlin, my editor, Lisa Zuniga, my manuscript manager, and Kathy Reigstad, my copy editor, are all incredibly gifted and talented people. It will take them between six weeks and two months to do their work. We should get the edited manuscript back by July, 1st, 2015, and then Christine and I will go over every proposed change, accepting some, rejecting some and rewriting still others. That will take about a month. Next, Harper will send the now edited manuscript out to a select group of readers for comments and fact checking. In the meantime, the cover will be designed and approved and the marketing campaign planned. We have one more shot at the manuscript when we receive the “galleys.” By this time, however, the print is set, the pages are designed, the chapter titles have been inserted, the bibliography is complete and the footnotes are on the proper page, so changes are both expensive and frowned on, so they tend to be minimal. When this editorial run through is finished and the recommended changes are incorporated, the book is almost complete. The book will normally arrive at my home about a month before the official publication date. Christine always gets the first copy off the press.

This is probably more than you wanted to know, but people who do not write professionally seldom have any idea of the process through which a book goes from its first conception to its final publication. It is exciting and laborious, fulfilling and exhausting. I love the process and I hate it, but in the end, it all seems worthwhile.

The ultimate judge of a book’s worth, however, comes finally from the readers, not from the author or the publisher. Nothing is more appreciated than a letter from a reader that says, Thank you!

My best,

John Shelby Spong

 

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