Greek Archives - Page 6 of 8 - exegetical.tools

Keep Your Greek: Reading Greek Devotionally

October 8, 2015

Many students wonder how to stay in their Greek New Testament consistently after finishing their Greek courses. Of course some upper level courses will utilize Greek or require translation, especially if you take a Greek elective. You will also need ways to keep up with your vocab and you will need to create a plan to read through books of the Bible. But, there is no better way to consistently enter the Greek New Testament than to integrate it into your daily devotional reading….

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

September 20, 2015

Dean Chia

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)….

Keep Your Greek: Taking Greek Electives

August 26, 2015

Todd Scacewater

When I was doing my MDiv, I had a good amount of elective hours: 18 if I remember correctly. Those are a precious 18 hours. For better or for worse, I had different goals in my first two years of my MDiv. I came to seminary probably wanting to pastor, and pretty quickly gained a passion for church planting. I was excited to study hard, prepare for church planting, and pastor a church that was faithful to the biblical picture for the church (whatever that is!). Now here I am, completing my dissertation in a PhD program in hermeneutics and teaching Greek and New Testament courses. That’s quite a distance from planting a church….

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….

Greek Matters: Colossians 2:20 and Liberation from Fleshly Living

August 12, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Εἰ ἀπεθάνετε σὺν Χριστῷ ἀπὸ τῶν στοιχείων τοῦ κόσμου, τί ὡς ζῶντες ἐν κόσμῳ δογματίζεσθε; (Colossians 2:20)

There are two difficult elements of Greek grammar here, but, once sorted out, we see a powerful question posed to the Colossians. The first four words are simple enough, “If you died with Christ…” But the following preposition ἀπό seems strange following the verb ἀποθνῄσκω, “to die”; what does it mean to “die from” something? As you can imagine, it means more to “die to” or with reference to something, but even more than that. According to BDAG….

Keep Your Greek: Don’t Lose Your Vocabulary

August 5, 2015

Todd Scacewater

For some students, learning vocabulary is a breeze. For others, it’s like pulling teeth. Brains are simply wired differently and memorizing vocabulary will be easier for some than for others. The same is true for keeping your vocabulary. Just because you memorized words once for that final exam does not at all mean you will remember them. In fact, vocabulary probably slips away faster than other parts of the language, such as grammar and syntax. You will probably always remember that a subject is generally in the nominative case, and that an adverbial participle modifies a verb, but you may quickly forget what θηρίον means….

Recent Trends in Discourse Analysis in Biblical Studies

August 3, 2015

Todd Scacewater

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….

Review of BibleWorks 10, Part 2: New Features

July 23, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Part 1 of this review series looked at BibleWorks 10’s design and interface, highlighting its simplicity but also warning those with high-res devices. This post will focus on BW 10’s new features, some of which are simple but extraordinarily helpful.

One feature I’m excited about is the “Forms” tab. When you hover over a Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic word, the forms tab will show you every form of that word that appears in that textual version….

Enter to Win Our Colossians Greek Reading Videos!

July 20, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Enter here to win one of five sets of Colossians Greek Reading Videos! (A description of the videos is below in the giveaway widget.)

These videos are at the heart of what we at Exegetical Tools want to do for biblical language learners, namely, assist and empower you to continue improving your biblical language skills as you use them personally and in your teaching or preaching. Unfortunately, I’m not independently wealthy and it took me around 160 hours to complete these Colossians videos, so the only way….

Keep Your Greek: Choose the Right Bible

July 20, 2015

Todd Scacewater

There are several different types of Greek Bibles and all have strengths and weaknesses–for both the disciplined and the undisciplined among us.