Not Smoking Could Even Give Us an Edge on Schlatter!

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Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org

Don Carson and I turn 65 this year. Pondering this, I wrote about it with a list of some amazing accomplishments by people older than 65.

Robert Yarbrough, one of the editors of the just-published Don Carson Festschrift, took note of my celebration of senior accomplishments, and wrote to Don and me to remind us of a very productive octogenarian, Adolf Schlatter, a German biblical scholar who died on this day in 1938.

If you’re in your sixties or seventies get ready to be inspired. Here’s what Yarbrough wrote to us:

[May I remind you of] Schlatter's 11th hour productivity—nine critical commentaries, for example, published around or after his 80th birthday.

In fact, he published 13 major works beginning in 1926—four years past his 70th birthday.

This does not count a large number of shorter or more popular works. Nor his university lectures and seminars, which continued until [he was eighty], I believe. 

Since neither of you smokes cigars at the rate he did (unless your Spurgeon sympathies are even more comprehensive than I am aware), you may well have even higher energy levels for even more years. May God grant it!

If you're interested, here's a list (PDF) of all his major works and when he wrote them.