As the school year begins — even an ocean away — I’m beginning to feel like a genuine biblical scholar again, and that means a heightened interest in works pertaining to my research. Unfortunately, I can no longer take books out of Duke’s library, and all my own books are packed away; they depart Richmond for Liverpool today, if I recall the schedule correctly. Once I have access to books again, though, I’ll be adding Jonathan Pennington’s Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew, Adam Kendon’s Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance, and Bruce Ellis Benson’s essay “The Improvisation of Hermeneutics: Jazz Lessons for Interpreters,” from Hermeneutics at the Crossroads, and several other recent titles to my reading list. Richard Bauckham’s much-mooted Jesus and the Eyewitnesses pertains to the Historical Jesus course I’ll be teaching. Can’t wait to dig in.