Guide – exegetical.tools

Your Guide to Three Greek Exegetical Problems in John

December 13, 2015

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?….

Interview with Joseph Hellerman, author of Philippians (Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament)

October 14, 2015

Todd Scacewater

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….

Philippians (Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament), by Joseph Hellerman

October 12, 2015

Todd Scacewater

This handbook on the Greek text of Philippians is part of B&H Academic’s EGGNT series, several volumes of which we have reviewed. Each volume is aimed at intermediate Greek readers and focuses on syntax, vocabulary, and grammar. But each volume is also slightly distinctive, given an author’s chosen emphases.

Hellerman begins with a brief commentary introduction, concluding that Paul wrote the letter from Rome. He writes one long paragraph on aspect and Aktionsart….

Colossians and Philemon (EGGNT), by Murray Harris

May 18, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Harris’ introduction is brief, noting some brief arguments for Paul as the author of both Colossians and Philemon. Paul probably wrote the letters during his first Roman imprisonment (4, 207-209) in order to exhort them away from their relapse into paganism and to combat false teaching (5). Harris provides a bibliography for further reading on the occasion for the letters and the “Colossian heresy.” The purpose of the series is to deal extensively with grammatical and syntactical issues, while briefly explaining the implications of such issues for theological interpretation. Harris interacts heavily with secondary literature, showing that he has done the difficult job of wading through various grammatical analyses of the texts by others. He does a superb job of explaining the various grammatical and syntactical possibilities for each phrase….