Subject: tc-list Baker withdraws COMFORT book

From: "James R. Adair" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 02:07:30 -0400 (EDT)

In light of our recent discussion of Comfort and Barrett's book, as well
as David Parker's review of the volume in TC, I think all on the list will
be interested in this letter from the publisher sent to our book review
editor, Leonard Greenspoon (forwarded with his permission, of course). 

Jimmy

***********************************************************************
James R. Adair, Jr.
Director, ATLA Center for Electronic Resources in Theology and Religion
-----------------------> http://purl.org/CERTR <-----------------------

General Editor, TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism
------------------> http://purl.org/TC <-------------------
***********************************************************************

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 12:53:39 -0700
From: Leonard Greenspoon <[email-masked]>
To: "James R. Adair" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Baker withdraws COMFORT book

Jimmy, I have received the following letter, dated 7 September 1999.

<snip>

Dear Book Review Editor:

Our recently published volume THE COMPLETE TEXT OF THE EARLIEST NEW
TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS [in italics in original letter], by Philip W. Comfort
and David P. Barrett, has been permanently withdrawn from publication due
to serious content flaws.  In light of this, we ask that all reviews of
this book be halted.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause you.  Thank you for your
cooperation.

Sincerely,

Jim Kinney
Director
Baker Academic

---

From: "Woodhouse, Gregory J." <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 13:11:33 -0500

Speaking as an interested non-specialist, I was looking forward to
Comfort/Barrett as a means of obtaining access to a wider range of mss at a
reasonable cost. Of course, I realize that the problems with the book we
have discussed here render the book not very useful for serious research,
but I really have no allusions that any investigations I might pursue
qualify as serious research. In many ways, I had hoped this would something
like a 16" reflector (a wonderful instrument) for an amateur astronomer.
Perhaps not in the same category as the telescopes used by professional
astronomers, but something that would be a real leap forward for most
amateurs. Unfortunately, many of the errors seem to be, well, errors, not
inadequacies. All I can say is that I do hope that there will be a corrected
version or a similar work forthcoming at some point.

==
Gregory Woodhouse <[email-masked]>
San Francisco CIO Field Office - Universal Billing
+1 415 744 6362
Standards are wonderful; everyone should have one of their own.