Book Reviews Archives - Page 9 of 12

Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for Reading the New Testament, by Constantine R. Campbell

September 20, 2015

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)….

Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright, eds. Nicholas Perrin and Richard B. Hays

September 9, 2015

Jennifer Guo

Jesus, Paul, and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright brings together the proceedings from the 2010 Wheaton Theology Conference, in which a group of scholars who also happen to be Wright’s friends were invited to deliver papers responding to some of the most important features of his work on Jesus and Paul. In distinction from other works responding to a biblical scholar, this book holds the unique features of 1) offering a theological response and 2) bringing the conversation to bear on the church, that is, the “people of God.” The book is divided into two parts, the first on historical Jesus research and the second on Pauline studies….

Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research, eds. Stanley Porter and D. A. Carson

September 7, 2015

Todd Scacewater

This volume is important for the development of aspect theory in New Testament Greek and the application of modern linguistics to the New Testament corpus. These lectures were presented at the 1990 and 1991 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in the Consultation on Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics. It was originally published in 1993 in the JSNT Supplement Series, but it has now been republished by Bloomsbury in the Biblical Studies segment of their Academic Collections series….

Portrait of an Apostle: A Case for Paul’s Authorship of Colossians and Ephesians, by Gregory S. MaGee

August 31, 2015

Todd Scacewater

If Colossians, Ephesians, or both are pseupigraphal writings, how would we know? There is one objective, historical test to which we might subject the documents. There are documents that are unanimously agreed to be Pauline pseudepigraphs, namely, Epistle to the Loadiceans (Ep. Lao.) and Third Corinthians (3 Cor.). An objective, historical test would be to compare the language and ideas of these two known pseudepigraphs….

Linguistics and the New Testament: Critical Junctures, eds. Stanley Porter and D. A. Carson

August 19, 2015

Todd Scacewater

T&T Clark is reissuing several studies from the JSNTSS series in their Library of New Testament Studies series. Many of these are valuable sets of essay, including the present volume, which contains papers that apply modern linguistic methods to the analysis of the New Testament. As in most sets of essays, some are more useful than others, but the volume gives a good sampling of what modern linguistics has to offer biblical scholars….

Philosophy Before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentaries, 2nd ed., by Richard D. McKirahan

August 17, 2015

Todd Scacewater

This work contains the primary texts containing information about the presocratic philosophers, with introductory notes and commentary on the texts. He organizes the material by topic to attempt to present each thinker in an organized fashion. The beauty of this book, as opposed to other “readers,” is that McKirahan presents “most, and in many cases all, of the fragments of the philosophers discussed, as well as other important evidence on their thought” (ix). There are cases where he cannot do this, for example, Hesiod’s Theogony, which is too long for full inclusion….

State Correspondence in the Ancient World, ed. Karen Radner

August 10, 2015

Todd Scacewater

The central starting point (it’s not quite a thesis; if it is, it’s an implicit one) for this volume is that “long-distance communication plays a key role in the cohesion and stability of early states, and in turn, these states invest in long-term communication strategies and networks” (1). The book is wide-ranging in both geography and chronology, ranging from the Eastern Assyrian Empire to the Western Roman empire, and from the 15th century BC to the 6th century AD. Each chapter covers one state (or a certain period of it): New Kingdom Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Seleukids, and Romans. The pleasure of this book is that the authors met twice….

Galatians (Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament), by Peter Oakes

July 13, 2015

Todd Scacewater

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….

How We Got The New Testament, by Stanley Porter

June 29, 2015

Warren Campbell

Stanley Porter, the President and Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College in Ontario Canada, has recently published the substance of his 2008 Hayward Lectures, delivered at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia. 717SQG3Wp8LThe volume is broken down into three (somewhat lengthy) chapters, as insinuated by the subtitle; Text, Transmission, Translation.

Chapter one opens with an overview of the major historical players involved within the history of textual criticism (Erasmus, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Westcott, Hort, Nestle, etc)….

1 Peter (EGGNT), by Greg Forbes

June 17, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Forbes follows up Murray Harris’ Colossians and Philemon volume in this same series with the same approach, format, and clarity of expression as the inaugurating volume. The purpose of this series is to offer analysis of the grammatical, syntactical, and lexical features of every word, clause, and sentence in the NT book it analyzes. Those who would benefit most from these volumes would be intermediate Greek students or those who have been away from their Greek for a while and want to regain their language skills….