This is a case study in end notes, telling the story of two books, and three people called James at birth, but changing it later to Jim or Jimmy.
In 1975 James D G Dunn published a book that challenged the scholarly and popular discussions of charismatic experience and how such experiences of the Holy Spirit relates to Jesus and the wider teaching of the New Testament. The book was called Jesus and the Spirit. The subtitle was more explicit. A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament. This book came five years after The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, an equally rigorous study of the phenomenon of spiritual endowment and expression of spiritual gifts, and largely based on Dunn's doctoral thesis completed under Professor C F D Moule.
My late friend and mentor, the quiet and gentlemanly James Taylor, minister of Stirling Baptist Church, had bought Dunn's new book and had paid £9 for it. The inflation calculator adjusts that to £77 in 2020. Jesus and the Spirit was an expensive book. Jim was both delighted and disappointed.
Jim Taylor was a scholar pastor, a deeply and widely read preacher, and one of the most influential and respected leaders to have graced our Scottish Baptist family. He was also a wise mentor and generous friend to me, until his death in 2011. One day Jim Taylor phoned for our regular post Sunday catch up, when we consoled or encouraged each other as required. In the conversation he told me he had noticed the publication of a big and expensive book I ought to have; it would arrive by post during the week, and it was already paid for. I still have that Analytical Concordance of the RSV New Testament, one of those special gifts intended to bring both pleasure and usefulness, and it has done both down the years. Every time I use that book "I thank my God on every remembrance" of Jim Taylor.
But back to Jimmy Dunn's book. As pastor preacher in a church at a time when charismatic experience divided evangelical opinion, Jim Taylor was delighted to have an authoritative examination of the New Testament on the issue. Jesus and the Spirit offered balance and ballast in a discussion too frequently divisive and competitivein our Scottish context, with echoes of Corinthian spiritual one-upmanship on the one hand ,and the dangers of quenching the Spirit on the other. Dunn's book, with its predecessor Baptism in the Holy Spirit, was an exegetical game changer of the higher level discussions about contemporary charismatic experience, the biblical text, and early Christianity. As the years have passed, Christian theology and experience have moved on to new emphases and focal points of discussion, but Dunn's work persists as an enduring contribution to study of the interface of historical context, religious experience and textual interpretation.
Jim Taylor's disappointment with Jesus and the Spirit was that in a book of 516 pages, 361 pages were main text, and 150 pages were end matter, made up of end notes, (362-456) Bibliography, (457-475) and three indices, (476- (Biblical refs, Modern Authors, Subjects). As we sat at the table after dinner, looking through Jim's shiny new book, we soon came to realise that J D G Dunn had set a new bar level for scholarly monographs and the role of end notes / footnotes.This was a gold mine, and it would reward in proportion to investment of time and study.
The book was published in the prestigious and handsomely produced SCM New Testament Library. As the years passed, Dunn's developing work settled into an established pattern of rigorous historical research, cogent argument, textual exegesis and theological discussion - supported by hundreds even thousands of end notes/footnotes. It would be another 15 years or so before word processing, Microsoft Word, and computer software technology changed forever the approach to writing and referencing. So compiling, checking and writing those end notes was a herculean task. In Jesus and the Spirit there were 1600 plus of them!
There's little doubt that end notes are less convenient to the reader. Intriguingly Dunn's volume is the only one in the NTL series that uses end notes, presumably because of the sheer volume in Dunn's book. But those who read the book, including Jim Taylor, came to appreciate the scholarly substructure provided by those packed pages of supplementary information, wider scholarly reference, adduced and evaluated evidence, and each one of them a footprint showing the path of the argument.
Jimmy Dunn's book is a tour de force at several levels. It was, and remains, essential reading on New Testament pneumatology; one key reason for that is the endnotes, and the degree of industry and thoroughness they demonstrated. And in addition, Dunn made a real contribution to a debate that had divided contemporary evangelical Christianity, and did so with authority and fairness. Dunn's own background was in charismatic evangelical circles, evolving later into a more progressive position which has never entirely moved away from the evidential value of experiential Christianity excavated from biblical texts.
Browsing through my own copy, I am again reminded of Jim Taylor, and the gift of friendship he brought to many of us. My own understanding of the integration of reading, study, pastoral care, preaching and prayer, owes a great deal to early years in ministry, spending time with Jim. He personified something he admired in others, and spoke of such in John Stott and C E B Cranfield, "godliness and good learning."
Holding this book now, flicking through those tightly tied down end notes, I remember with some sadness, and much gladness, that evening when Jim Gordon and Jim Taylor discussed Jimmy Dunn over earl grey tea and Helen's home made shortbread!
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