If you are a student of the New Testament, then you should be familiar with the history of interpretation (the helpfulness of which could comprise a post in and of itself). Although we have featured Baird’s volume on the history of research,…
Textual criticism is a specialized practice with lots of symbols, methodologies, and esoteric knowledge. Moreover, in order to be extremely skilled at textual criticism, one must have access to manuscripts to study or at least see them physically, which some scholars have the opportunity to do. But the best most of us can do is use the critical apparatus of our Greek New Testaments to see the variants and try to discern the original reading….
You’re sitting at home enjoying a nice show when your doorbell rings: it’s a Jehovah’s witness who wants to share with you about how Jesus is a god. How do you respond? Do you tell him you’re busy and shut the door? Do you engage in a debate with him? Do you pull out your Greek New Testament to discuss the grammatical complexities of John 1:2? There are many reasons we as Christians and academics should know Greek grammar solid, and this is only one of them. Of course each Christological passages in the Bible require careful exegesis and close attention to the language used, otherwise how would we know whether our theology of Christ is actually grounded in what the biblical authors wrote?….
What is the best way to keep up with your vocabulary? Flashcards are definitely a big help, but there’s no substitute for simply immersing yourself in a language day after day. Goodrich and Lukaszewski understand this. As they note in the introduction, if you were to learn all the vocab words Mounce requires in his Basics of Biblical Greek, you would still be far from being able to sit down in your armchair….
Earlier, we reviewed Joseph Hellerman’s Philippians volume in the Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament series from B&H Academic. Dr. Hellerman is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Talbot School of Theology. We tracked him down to interview him about his book because, as a site devoted to exegesis, we wanted to know from someone….
I bought this book because I was interested in learning more about tense and aspect theory. It ended up being much more than just that. Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for Reading the New Testament by Constantine R. Campbell is a monumental book written to help pastors and other Greek New Testament exegetes apply advances in Koine (biblical) Greek scholarship to proper exegesis for the benefit of the church (albeit not exclusively so)….
In Constantine Campbell’s latest book, Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for Reading the New Testament, he summarizes in two chapters the use of discourse analysis by New Testament scholars over the past few decades. A summary of these chapters and some evaluative comments might be helpful for those interested in discourse analysis….
There are several different types of Greek Bibles and all have strengths and weaknesses–for both the disciplined and the undisciplined among us.
This Galatians commentary is concise, well-informed, accessible, and obviously filled with an immense amount of research and thought – not only thought about Galatians’ theology, but also about methodology. Peter Oakes uses knowledge from various disciplines, such as archaeology, sociology, linguistics, and historical background to enlighten our reading of Galatians….
In 2012 I was in the Dominican Republic helping to rebuild a church when I got into a discussion about whether we really needed the Old Testament. I tried to defend the OT by arguing that the NT by itself would be like a childrens’ coloring book, with all the shapes drawn but with no color to fill in the pictures to get all the fullness of the biblical picture of God and his purposes. I also pointed out that many heresies likely would arise without the OT to guide us in our understanding of God. Well, John Goldingay has done away with a defensive strategy and he’s gone on the offense. He flips the common question of whether we need the OT on its head and asks: Do we really need the New Testament?…