You may have heard that Asbury Theological Seminary just hired Craig Keener. Craig is a friend of mine – a fantastic guy and truly one of the great NT scholars of our time. The students will adore him and the faculty will cherish his warmth and collegiality. A hearty congrats to you, Craig. I talked to Craig recently about this change over and while it was very difficult for him to leave his beloved friends and students at Palmer, he... Read more

Like a kid on Christmas day, I love to break open my Eerdmans catalog whenever a new one comes out. While the Spring catalog tends to be less impressive than the fall one (in the run up to SBL), I was excited about a number of titles. Jimmy Dunn has a collection of essays/lectures coming out called Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (due May). Arland Hultgren has penned an 800-page commentary on Romans (Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary)... Read more

I am teaching over the next couple of weeks on the Apostle’s Creed. In an essay I read these helpful statements by Chris Seitz on canon and creed. Creed is more than putting out brushfires. It is letting Scripture come to its natural, two-testament expression. Just as the Old Testament leaves its father and mother and cleaves to the New, so the Scriptures cleave to the creed, and the creed to them, and they become one flesh. (“Our Help Is... Read more

Whenever I hear there is going to be a new commentary series, I wince a bit. By and large I have felt newer commentaries series have not contributed much- the exception being the Two Horizons series. So, when I was sent Grant Osborne’s Matthew volume in the new Zondervan Exegetical Commentary Series I was seriously skeptical. I am happy to report that Zondervan has really figured out what (evangelical) pastors and ministry leaders need, and they have planned a series... Read more

See here. Read more

One thing that WordPress does for bloggers is that it tells us what phrases people entered in and clicked through that led them to my blog. Sometimes this is quite predictable (“Nijay Gupta”) and other times not so much. In any case, I thought it would be fun and funny to respond once in a while to a series of search engine searches (partly because you sometimes never find the answers to your googlesearch questions). Here goes: 1. “Nijay Gupta”... Read more

Some interesting things in the latest Novum Testamentum. Check it out. Read more

[DISCLAIMER: I am only reviewing the first volume of a three-volume series] [UPDATE: Prof. von Wahlde has written a response to my “review” in the comments. In respect to some of his concerns, I have lightly edited some of my harsher comments and I encourage you to read his response to get a sense for how he reacts to my thoughts.] Apparently a massive undertaking, Urban von Wahlde (UvW) recently wrote a commentary on the Johannine Literature (Eerdmans). The first... Read more

A few months ago I began a review of R.W. Jenson’s Canon and Creed (WJK, 2010) in the Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church series. I have now had a chance to finish the book so I will give some general comments about the whole book as well as some specific comments about the latter chapters. Overall, Jenson’s big point is that too many Christians think they only need Scripture and that “creed” is for theologians.... Read more

Firstly, check out NTS, which has some new articles by Kavin Rowe (on the Areopagus speech), M.Y. MacDonald (household codes), Udo Schnelle (order of the Johannine writings), and Simon Gathercole (Luke’s influence on the Gospel of Thomas). Secondly, the new issue of Interpretation is about Liturgy and Easter with articles on Mark 16:1-8 through the centuries (C.E. Joynes) and Ulrich Luz on the resurrection of Jesus in art. And, of course, Expository Times is always worth a glance! Read more