I've been bookstore hopping on the pretext of buying Sept.'s Christianity Today off the newsstand. My subscription issue was lost in the mail apparently.

At the B&N in Princeton this morning, I got a copy. I asked about it at the cust. service counter and as he checked his computer, I spied a display on another computer, "Harper Collins Study Bible." A familiar version for students.

The magazine rack is providentially adjacent to the Christian book stacks, so after selecting a copy, I popped across the aisle for a peek. Two staff, a man and a woman, were searching the shelves for a Bible. I thought the man was a customer, and the woman surprised me when she excused herself and told him to keep looking. Turns out that they were helping someone on the phone. Someone important enough to send them both scrambling?

Still thinking him a bewildered customer, I offered to help him and he showed me his slip of paper with some information. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, edited by Coogan. In one hand, he clutched the RSV with Apocrypha. A fine version but not the precise one he wanted and he knew it.

Right in front of me was the version. Maybe I was in his way, in fact! But I handed it to him, saying, "This is the one. The other is fine; they are both fine. But this one is newer." He recognized immediately that it was the right version and quickly set down the other. He said, "You are a minister, I see." I thanked him but said, "No." What made him think that, my armload of books?

But, why didn't the Princeton student who's taking his first Scripture class this semester get the Bible from the campus bookstore? Sold out? Sold out of Bibles ... in Princeton ... in this day and age?! Shyeah, it could happen. Ah, it's a classic students' version, even at schools without Dr. Metzger on faculty.

And afterwards, I flirted with the notion that working in a bookstore might satisfy my craving to be a librarian. Maybe it would have to be a Christian bookstore because my topical familiarity is rather restricted to that domain.

The man running the Christian bookstore in Freehold irked me with his ignorance yesterday. I asked him for the NASB text with the Scofield notes. They had only the KJV on display.

He said, "Oh, I don't think that you'll find that." I had seen it in another Christian bookstore the day before (leather-bound, too much $$$). Maybe he thought I said "NAB". He would be right about that. I wouldn't find that. Aw, I picked one up at the B&N today, hardcover, much cheaper. I'm so sick of the NISB for the Precepts studies.

I told myself that I could do a better job at the Christian bookstore than that man, that's all. Not that the B&N incident proves anything.