Two short books I’ve read

A few comments, not exactly book reviews. Both of the books are relatively short easy reads that can be consumed and enjoyed in one sitting.

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Pilgrims of the Prairie: Pioneer Ukrainian Baptists in North Dakota by Andrew Dubovy, translated by Marie Halun Bloch (Dickinson, ND: Ukrainian Cultural Institute, 1983, 86 pages).[i] Pilgrims of the Prairie can be purchased from the Ukrainian Cultural Institute Gift Shop, 1221 W. Villard St. Dickinson, ND 58601. Phone 701-483-1486. uci@ndsupernet.com [ii]

Pilgrims of the Prairie tells the story of Ukrainian Baptists who refuged in America to escape persecution from the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church. The author came to the US with his parents when he was about 14 years. He originally wrote the manuscript in Russian.[iii] It was translated into the Ukrainian language and published in 1957 as Na batʹkivshchyni i na chuz︠h︡yni: z istoriï ukraïnsʹkykh pioneriv u Nort Dakoti (In Fatherland and Stranger’s Land: a History of Ukrainian Pioneers in North Dakota).[iv] The translator added an “Introduction” and footnotes.

The book primarily relates the story of those Ukrainian Baptists who settled a colony roughly 40 miles long and 15 miles wide in the area of McHenry, McLean, and Sheridan counties in North Dakota. Dubovoy relates their struggles in the new land, with nature, shysters, and more (including their confusion with the German and American Baptists). He tells of their religion, though he does not go in depth into their theology. One striking account to me is the following:

“Liudwig Novak, an old man of seventy-five or eighty years, tall, with a beard white as snow…always walked with a big staff and carried a Russian edition of the Bible in a sack on his back. It was big, weighing nearly twenty pounds, and bound in thick leather covers. He never parted from it. People used to ask him, ‘What do you have in that sack, Grandad?’

“And he would answer, ‘Life and death.’” (p. 52)

Translator Bloch writes, “…the book…testifies to the excellence of a people who, though through force of circumstances largely uneducated, yet had the courage to stand up under persecution and to make efforts to better their lot, even to leaving their native place for the fearful unknown” (p. xii).

Recommended. If you like Baptist history, and especially the stories of it that we seldom encounter, you will enjoy this book.

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A Christian’s Pocket Guide to How God Preserved the Bible by Richard Brash, (Ross–shire, Scotland, UK: Christian Focus, 2019, 96 pages). The book is part of the Christian Focus Pocket Guides Series, which they describe as “A series of short, easy to read guides offering an introduction to key concepts and people, that are important to the Christian faith.”[v] It can be ordered via Christian Focus, Amazon, and the usual suspects.

Jeff Riddle’s review of Brash’s “Ad Fontes!—The Concept of the ‘Originals’ of Scripture in Seventeenth Century Reformed Orthodoxy” (Westminster Journal of Theology 81 2019: 123-139) first drew my attention to Richard Brash. Later I ran across Brash’s YouTube video, How God Preserved the Bible. A Christian’s Pocket Guide… is well written, and well prepared for the beginner’s level. It intends to address the gap of teaching between the inspiration and illumination of Scripture (pp. 1-2). The tone of the book is not brash, but careful and mediating. Brash represents a mix of one who accepts the ideas of modern textual criticism, yet approvingly addresses the providential preservation of the Scriptures as a doctrine taught in the Bible (pp. 14-19).[vi] Brash asserts that the nature and purpose of inspiration demands preservation (p. 76). However, he eradicates the essence of his argument by reducing that preservation to the ordinary level of all things that are preserved.[vii] He accepts that preservation simply means that all of the biblical manuscripts that exist have been preserved, and that the word of God is contained somewhere within the muddle (his word) of the totality of them (p. 50).

As the book is obviously an introduction for beginners, I found it troubling that Metzger’s and Ehrman’s The Text of the New Testament is one of the few books to which Brash sends his readers for further reading.

Not recommended for beginners—will steer them wrong. Those who are already knowledgeable of the subject can benefit from the book, however.

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[i] Andrew Karpovich Dubovoy (spelled Dubovoy on his tombstone; possibly Dubovyĭ in Ukrainian). This book is published by and is available from the Ukrainian Cultural Institute. North Dakota Ukrainians organized UCI in 1980, to preserve and highlight the Ukrainian culture of North Dakota.  They partner with Dickinson State University in Dickinson, North Dakota.
[ii] It does not appear that the book can be ordered directly online.
[iii] Dubovoy was taught the Russian language in school in Russia, and he wrote more comfortably in Russian than Ukrainian (p. xi).
[iv] In 1983, Marie Halun Bloch translated it for the benefit of English readers.
[v] Christian Focus Publications describes themselves as conservative, evangelical, non–denominational, and reformed with the caveat that not all their authors call themselves reformed… “We are committed to the historic foundations of the faith, the inerrancy of Scripture in its original manuscripts…”
[vi] It is becoming a steady drumbeat for modern evangelical textual critics to deny that the Bible teaches a doctrine of preservation of the written words of God. For example, see Interview with Dan Wallace. “…I am not convinced that the Bible speaks of its own preservation. That doctrine was first introduced in the Westminster Confession, but it is not something that can be found in scripture.”
[vii] There is a sense in which everything that is exists by God’s preservation (Hebrews 1:3). In that sense, God has preserved The Quran by Muhammad ibn Abdullah, La Bible enfin expliquée (The Bible finally explained) by Monsieur de Voltaire, Mein Kampf  by Der Führer Adolf Hitler, as well as every other writing in existence. It is a historical reality that all the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that exist—whether good or bad—have been preserved. If that is all we mean by the preservation of Scripture, it becomes meaningless in any useful or beneficial theological sense. I refuse to believe God is no more concerned with pure words he directly inspired than he is with Mein Kampf. To be fair, Brash believes “God…guides his church so that she can always hear the divine words she needs…” (p. 50).