Today we had another ‘games’ day in Greek class and I chose another game that I thought would be interesting, fun, and review the right material.  It is called kindunos – JEOPARDY!  I designed the game in ways similar to JEOPARDY (J), with categories such as ‘nouns’, ‘verbs’, ‘translations’, ‘vocab’, ‘word jumble’, and ‘wildcard’.  For each of these categories you could choose questions that varied in difficulty from 1pt questions to 2pt to 4pt.  Thus, when a team member who... Read more

I have made it a practice to write book reviews (for journals) on as many NT PhD-thesis published monographs as I am able to because it teaches me how to think and write on that level.  Some that I have read are very good and well-worth being published.  Others, sadly, are not up to par.  I am trying to keep notes on the do’s and dont’s of thesis writing, to learn from others’ successes and mistakes.  Here are some notes.... Read more

A commenter on an earlier post drew my attention to the Maclaurin Institute which is a ‘learning context’ for all sorts of theological interests.  They hold lectureships and have speakers from various disciplines come to present a piece of research.  These lectures are downloadable (in audio) and one particular speaker caught my attention: Peter Kreeft. April 4th, 2003 – Peter Kreeft 10 Uncommon Insights About Evil in the Lord of the Rings I am a fan of some of Kreeft’s... Read more

I had previously announced that Richard B Hays (Duke) will be giving the first annual CK BARRETT Lecture at the University of Durham on November 5.  Indeed, Barrett, who is now 91, is expected to be in attendance.  The title has now been announced: “Turning the World Upside-Down: Israel’s Scripture in Luke-Acts.”  Also, Hays will be giving the guest lecture in our weekly New Testament seminar two days earlier (Nov 3, my birthday) with the title: “Hidden in order to... Read more

Let’s face it- language learning is both exhausting and, dare I say it, boring sometimes. I am currently teaching masters level basic Greek and in the curriculum here students take Greek as an elective (meaning I have to make it interesting and useful or they will drop the class!). I have built into the course plan that one hour every two weeks or so we do ‘Review and Tutorial’. In these sessions, I try to do reinforcement activities that are... Read more

No, the new Coldplay album does not actually mention Paul’s epistle to the Philippians (though some imaginative discussions have linked the new Viva la Vida songs to biblical themes of war, revolt, and power).  But, I was struck when I heard the lyrics to the song called ‘LOST’.  The first line is: ‘Just because I’m losing, doesn’t mean I’m lost’.  In my reckoning, this could very well be an excellent way of summing up the message of Philippians.  In Philippians,... Read more

As the hermeneutical approach labelled ‘theological intepretation’ (TI) grows at a rapid rate, there is a burgeoning need to really get a sense for not only what it is theoretically, but also understand how it aids a reading of the Bible in real practice. In theory, TI is an approach that is meant to criticize traditional modernistic historical (and often secular) approaches that keep ‘theology’ at a distance. Also, theological interpretation tends to focus on the canonical shape of the... Read more

In the field of NT academia, books, essays, and articles are our currency. The desire to build academic credit, though, is just one of a whole constellation of reasons why we publish articles. Others reasons would include that you are responding to issues in another article or book, you are working on it for a particular funded project, you have material unused from a book, you made a new discovery of some sort, or you just like to research and... Read more

What do James Sanders, Ben Witherington III, J.K. Elliott, Kathy Ehrensperger, Craig Evans, Bruce Malina, A.K.M. Adam, Christopher Rowland, James Dunn, Bruce Chilton, Mark Goodacre, and David Horrell all have in common? They contributed chapters to a new exegesis textbook entitled Searching for Meaning (ed. Paula Gooder, SPCK or WJK, 2008). This is not your average intro to interpretation. Gooder has really thought through what could be a unique way of helping students to recognize and begin to use the... Read more

In a previous post I asked readers to vote for their favority NT survey textbook.  Preliminary results are in. 1. David deSilva (An Introduction to the NT) – by a landslide – 9 votes 2. Raymond Brown (An Introduction to the NT) – 4 votes 3. Luke Timothy Johnson (The Writings of the NT) – 2 votes 4. Carson and Moo (An Introduction to the NT) – 2 votes Why deSilva – several people liked the thorougness and also the... Read more