The Thrilla in Greenvilla!

In another vain attempt to stoke controversy and therefore grow my blog readership beyond you two, I’ve provoked my good friend Brian Collins to bring our long-standing fight into public view, into a blog boxing match as it were. The fight could be summarized in a few ways: print vs. pixels, analog vs. digital, Gutenberg vs. Gates (no, Jobs!).

To introduce this series of pugilistic blog jabs, I’m going to merely list some of the facts. I’ll ask Brian to do the same on his blog.

In this corner, I’m the guy who’s invested a lot of money into electronic books:

• Logos Scholar’s Library: Gold ($700)
• Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament ($150)
• The Essential IVP Reference Collection ($80)
• Theological Journal Library 1-10 ($330)
• World Evangelical Association Theological Resource Library ($18)
• Word Biblical Commentary 58-Volume Set ($250)
• The Bible Speaks Today NT commentaries ($50)
• B.B. Warfield’s Works ($100)
• Theological Lexicon of the OT (traded my $40 [?] print copy for it)
• Alexander MacLaren’s Expositions of Sacred Scripture ($30?)
• Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer ($30?)
• Baker Reference Collection ($30)
• I’ve ordered Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics ($100)
• I’ve ordered the New International Commentary Series ($1000—but I sold my print set to get it)
• I also have a few other books I got for free from Logos for representing them:
  • John Piper, The Pleasures of God
  • F.W. Farrar, History of Interpretation
  • Craig Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables
  • Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East

I also have BibleWorks 7 (which, full disclosure, I got for free in order to teach seminars on it—though I purchased version 5 in 2002). I purchased two modules for BibleWorks, however:

• BDAG’s Greek Lexicon ($125)
• Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics ($35?)

I’ve also laid out a bit of cash ($40?) for a pretty good collection of quality books in WordSearch format—which I subsequently copied into Word documents and put on my Kindle 2 so I could ditch WordSearch.

In fact, the Kindle might as well go in this list, because I spent $359 for the privilege of reading my electronic books in a convenient format.

And I should note that I got better prices on a lot of these than you can right now because 1) I bought some on pre-publication status; 2) I had an education discount for the Logos Gold package; and 3) I buy many things from a shady-looking man in the back of a van in an Internet alley (namely Rejoice Christian Software—who knows what kind of extortion he’s guilty of to get those prices!).

However, let me state here categorically that I refuse, as a matter of principle, to pay Logos $60 for their Mac engine. That’s beyond the pale.

Grand Total!

So, including the electronic resources that I traded my print copies for, I have spent approximately $3,602 on electronic books since 2002. That’s $514 a year, though a small amount of it came from gifts. And, of course, I spent a good deal of money on print books during that time, as well. That’s on a BJU GA and then staff salary—which I make no complaints about, because look what I managed to get out of it, largely by not going to McDonald’s! The Lord has been generous to me, and I thank Him.

I have reasons why I elected to make this outlay. I’ll get into those after Brian lists off his electronic purchases.

I threw the first punch. Now, my own face is ready.