From Book Burning to Canon
On the Destruction & Preservation of Sacred & Profane Texts
by Patrick Henry Reardon
I have been known to take advantage of the special sales that local libraries run now and then with a view to making their limited shelf space available to newer titles, and once in a while I thereby discover some work or other that I am happy to add to my own little collection. Glancing up over my desk right now I espy, for example, more than a score of the Loeb Classics acquired in this way, and just behind me is an original French work of Henri Bergson similarly obtained.
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Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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