One of my favorite hermeneutics books of recent appearance is Clayton Croy’s Prima Scriptura – articulate, witty, balanced…Craig Blomberg recently published a review of Croy (mostly neutral or positive with a few criticisms). It is interesting in Blomberg’s final paragraph that he questions Baker Press’ choice of publishing so many exegesis/hermeneutics primers in such a short period (Blomberg, then Bauer/Traina, then Croy). I am not sure I resonate with Blomberg’s concern because these texts may overlap slightly in discussions of exegesis,... Read more

Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne (both formerly of…the place that shall not be mentioned) have begun a “Jesus Blog.”  [Not to be confused with the “Dating Jesus” blog] Please drop by their blog, check it out, and welcome them. Also, be reminded that their Jesus conference is soon approaching (Oct 4-5) in Dayton, OH. If you want to hear from the likes of Dale Allison, Mark Goodacre, Loren Stuckenbruck, Jens Scroeter, and others, sign up now!   Read more

Very recently, Eerdmans published a new volume on Romans in the Pillar series that replaces the earlier one by Leon Morris (published 1988). The new volume is by Colin Kruse, Senior Lecturer in New Testament (Melbourne School of Theology). The Pillar series is known for representing a conservative strand of evangelicalism, though far from fundamentalistic. The volumes on Ephesians (O’Brien), John (Carson), and 1 Corinthians (Rosner/Ciampa) are remarkable and respected very broadly. My first encounters with the work of Kruse... Read more

See here. Ellen Davis offers a nice piece on Old Testament preaching – good encouragement for pastors! I love Davis’ article for many reasons, but two are close at mind: (1) She compliments the revised lectionary on promoting OT texts for reading and preaching and (2) she turns to Bonhoeffer as someone who loved the OT for all the right reasons! Read more

If you live in the Philly area, this may interest you: You are cordially invited to come hear a public lecture by scholar, author and editor of First Things magazine, R. R. Reno, PhD. Co-sponsored by the the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good, Eastern University Office of Development, and the Templeton Honors College, this lecture will examine Religious Voices in Public Debates.  The lecture will begin at 8 p.m. in Warner Libraryon the Eastern University campus at 1300 Eagle Road in St. Davids, PA. Dr. Reno... Read more

We can teach our students Greek and Hebrew. We can teach them logical fallacies to avoid and proper ways to diagram the text. However, we don’t want them to become cold-hearted “technicians” of the text. How do we teach our students in a way that fans the flame of their love for Scripture and the Godhead at the center of it, rather than forcing a dark veil of methodology to smother the flame? With this concern in mind, I have... Read more

So, I am preparing a lecture on Bible translations and why there are so many. I am lecturing to freshmen for the general curriculum requirement mostly so they aren’t really ready or interested in the nitty gritty details of this and that translation. Rather, they just want to know- why are there dozens of translations and why are they so different? One way I am going to introduce this subject is by showing them just how tough it can sometimes... Read more

Being at Eastern University, you tend to get familiar with the names Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo very quickly (the Eastern motto is “faith.reason.justice.”). Claiborne and Campolo have a new book coming out in October called Red Letter Revolution: What if Jesus Really Meant What He Said? (Amazon is selling this for $13.64). The authors focus on the words of Jesus in the New Testament and how his voice comes to bear on issues like violence, community, Islam, hell, sexuality, civil... Read more

When I was reading the book reviews in latest Expository Times (Sept 2012), I stumbled across this book I had previously known nothing about: Christ Alive and At Large: Unpublished Writings of C.F.D. Moule (Canterbury Press, 2010). The writings in this anthology (edited by R. Morgan and P. Moule) cover a broad range of sermonic and lecture-like literature from the mind of Prof. Moule. The author of the book review in ExpTis David Catchpole and he has a good many things to... Read more

Did you know that John Barton’s Theology of the Book of Amos was released a few months ago? I just discovered this and I checked out the ToC on Googlebooks. It looks well-organized and covers very interesting and important subjects. I am going to try and get my hands on it! Has anyone read it? What do you think? Read more