The Weight of Scholarship

I'm reading, with great interest, the late Fr. Raymond Brown's two volume translation and commentary on the Gospel According to John, part of the Anchor Bible.

I'm up to page 146.

OK, I'm not. I just finished the Introduction, which means I'm up to page cxlvi.

Note to future editors: when your introduction is closing in on 150 pages, Roman numerals lose their antiquarian charm. Not to mention finding a page reference to an idea you suddenly want to revisit--"oh, that was an interesting point questioning Bultmann's theory about the Ecclesiastical Redactor; was it on page lviii or was that cxxiii?"

At least (unlike the original readers) I didn't have to wait four years for the index to be published, along with volume two.