The Holy Grail (so to speak...)

This weekend I was part of a story of drama and intrigue, disappointment and triumph, exasperation and joy. It was the story of one man and his quest for the renown Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon.

Not many libraries have a take-home copy of the LSJ. But UofS does. It's a beastly book, thicker than most lexicons. I have BDAG (a pretty intensive New Testament lexicon) in my personal library, but the LSJ has a much broader focus, incorporating non-biblical Greek into its range of coverage. It's a handy tool for doing word studies in the Greek New Testament. I'm currently doing that as part of some papers I am working on, so my need for LSJ was noted.

Anyways, we headed up to Saskatoon to see Paul and Darla MacDiarmid and their kids, Liam, Saryn, and new little Lewis. It is tons of fun playing with those kids. Liam is getting bigger, so it's not as easy these days to give him "Spaceship" rides in the laundry basket...

When we arrived in Saskatoon, Jenn dropped me off at the Library, and she headed over to the MacDiarmids' house. I went on an exciting book hunt. My first stop was the Circulation Desk. If you don't have a functional library card, even the most fruitful hunt will end up meaningless if you can't even take out the books that you captured. My card had expired, so I asked the kind ladies at the desk to reactivate it for me. It was tougher than I expected... The computer decided to hate me, and the information wouldn't update, and my card could not be renewed. Gasp! The supervisor lady, very apologetically, offered to save the books I wanted until Monday. By then the IT guys would be back to work, and they could figure out this problem. Unfortunately, I informed her, I would be gone by Monday. But, with a glimmer of hope, I asked if I could take books out on my wife's account. She said, surely I could. So I skipped away in search of the much-coveted LSJ.

I remembered the path well. Across the foyer, passed the photocopiers, down the hall, up the winding stairs, to the third floor, find the PA section, walk to the little open area, find the third section of the bookshelf, and look for the really big, fat, juicy one. And there it was. Fully available for my use. It's the black book in the picture above. And BDAG, as aforementioned, is beside it. It feels like a sacred place up there on the third floor of the Library's North Wing. There sit rows and rows of Greek grammatical, morphological, lexical, and syntactical aids. I love the smell of the old paper.

After a brief, and nearly emotional, moment, I grabbed up the Liddell-Scott-Jones (hailing all the way from 1854), and a good Greek grammar book by two German guys, translated by a Mennonite named Funk. With these two ancient treasures under my arm (or rather on top of both my arms because of their weight), I spun around to leave. Down the stairs, through the hall, around the copiers, across the foyer, and, what's this? The ladies at the Circulation Desk waved me over.

"We got it to work!" they both exclaimed. "Really?!" I enthusiastically replied, "That's super!" I happily turned the books over to be scanned and desensitized. It seemed almost appropriate that the due date receipt didn't want to print out... Computers these days... So one lady scribbled my due date on a piece of paper. As she did, she smiled and said, "Well, you better get 100% on that assignment of yours!" I promised them I would do my best. With a hearty "THANK-YOU!" I sat down once again at a computer and waited for Jenn to pick me up.

Ten minutes later, we were on our way to the MacDiarmids' for a Mexican supper, and some fun with the kids. We were on the road again by 8:30, and home just before midnight.

A good trip all around. My little book-shelf-on-wheels weighs about 15 pounds more thanks to my new (but very old) treasures. I hope it all comes together. All this book acquisition sure is a lot of work -- but oh so fun.

Take care everybody.