Buried Talents, Revised Edition, in Beta

I wrote an eBook, Buried Talents, regarding the role of women of the church back in 1994. It’s been available at this blog for free download very nearly since the blog began, and it’s been downloaded many thousands of times.

But it’s been 20 years, and so I figured it was time to update the book to take into account what I’ve learned in the last two decades on the topic and to respond to arguments made by, for example, Everett Ferguson in his Women in the Church.

Normally, I’d ask very close friends to confidentially help me proofread the book before it goes public, but that’s just so, you know, Twentieth Century. The modern way is to release the product in beta and ask for help debugging the book — and being a very modern person, this is what I’m doing.

I would be very grateful if a few intrepid readers would download the book, proofread it, and send me their comments — without regard to my feelings. I’m a lawyer. My feelings were surgically extracted as a condition to law school graduation.

Trust me: I’m used to taking criticism, and getting the book right and well written is far more important than my ego — which will survive your criticisms just fine.

You may download the book in MS Word format: Buried Talents 2014

Or as a pdf: Buried Talents 2014 PDF

It’s about 226 pages long, which is 21 pages longer than the 1994 version.

Here’s are some of the changes:

* Discussion of “head” in Ephesians 5 entirely rewritten.

* Discussion of 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 entirely rewritten.

* Discussion of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 expanded.

* Discussion of offices in the church and the authority of elders entirely rewritten with a new conclusion.

* Responses made to arguments by Everett Ferguson in Women in the Church.

* N. T. Wright’s writings regarding women bishops have been incorporated into the text where appropriate, along with several other commentaries.

* Better Greek studies due to my having much better Greek resources today, such as the BDAG lexicon.

* Discussion of deacons revised to reflect new research into the meaning of diakonos.

If you are willing to help with the proofreading, you may send your comments and corrections to me several ways.

* In MS Word, you might correct or annotate the text using MS Word’s “Review” feature (or redlining feature). This is how lawyers trade draft documents.

* You can print, mark in hand, scan in the marked pages to email and email to me.

* You might just type your notes, referencing page numbers as you go.

My email address is jfguin(at)Comcast(dot)net. Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Jay