I continue my dialogue with Josh Jipp on his new book Christ Is King: Paul’s Royal Ideology. A few weeks back I began a series of posts engaging Josh’s chapters – find last post here and Josh’s response here. He has graciously agreed to respond to my posts. We have been finding much common ground in our perspectives which is encouraging – at least from my perspective. I have been teaching Paul with a thoroughgoing Davidic foundation for a number... Read more

Con Campbell’s fine book, Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for Reading the New Testament, received quite a barrage of criticism from Nicholas Ellis and Michael Aubrey in a recent review in Themelios. My good friend Con asked me to post his rejoinder of their critique and I’ve gladly put it up here for all to view. A Response to Aubrey and Ellis Years ago I was sitting in a jazz club in Sydney with some friends who were uninitiated in jazz.... Read more

I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of I. Howard Marshall. Just yesterday I was reading his volume Origins of Christology and it reminded me of the stature of his work and even his boldness in going against (at the time) the scholarly grain. Howard’s influence is not simply through his many writings, but also through the 30-40 PhD students her supervised, people like Craig Blomberg, Ray Van Neste, Gary Burge, Joel Green, and Darrell Bock! So many fine evangelicals scholars were made... Read more

Richard Bauckham Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2015. Available at Amazon.com This is yet another good book on themes and issues from John’s Gospel by the indefatigable Richard Bauckham. It is based on several lectureships and previously published articles. The book has three highlights for my money. Chapter 4 on “Cross, Resurrection, and Exaltation” explains something that has always confused me, what does John identify Jesus’ glory with the cross, not the resurrection... Read more

Over at Ethos, my friend and colleague, Kara Martin, has a great piece on Being a Christian at Work – at Advent and Christmas. I’ll give you a hint, protesting about Starbucks cups is not how it is done! For those who are conscious of God’s Spirit, Christmas is a time of praying for opportunities to speak, to serve and cooperate with God in transforming your workplace. Ask that your spiritual gift might have a special expression in the workplace,... Read more

Over at ABC Religion and Ethics, Australian/Greek philosopher N.N. Trakakis wrote an essay on Why I Am Not Orthodox which quickly becomes Why I am not Religious. He documents his journey from Greek Orthodoxy to Atheism. In response, Ben Myers has a great rejoinder on Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning: A Response to Nick Trakakis. Ben writes: Clement, who still thought of himself as a Greek philosopher, was not advising his friends to abandon reason. He was inviting them to... Read more

SBL has produced a great little video of the bestselling books at the recent SBL conference in Atlanta. Now, even more, I wish I had been there! Read more

This morning I opened a package which contained the new book by David W. Congdon on Rudolf Bultmannwritten in the excellent Cascade Companion series published by Cascade Books. I read the introduction and briefly scanned the table of contents. My eye caught the title of the final chapter, “Advent.” It is of course the season of Advent and my family are in the middle of the second week of practice. So curious I opened up to the final chapter and started... Read more

The latest issue of Themelios is out and it includes Mark Strauss’ review of my book The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus. Strauss offers a very generous conclusion: This is an excellent book, a perfect complement for seminary level courses in the Gospels or New Testament introduction. While avoiding technical jargon and esoteric debate, Bird takes the student well beyond basic introductory issues. His mastery of the literature is impressive and his conclusions are balanced,... Read more

David E. Garland A Theology of Mark’s Gospel BTNT; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015. Available at Amazon.com David E. Garland (George W. Truett Theological Seminary) has written a superb Theology of Mark’s Gospel (in addition to his very fine and eminently readable Mark commentary in the NIVAC series). Garland provides an introduction to critical matters of authorship of provenance (chapter 1), a short miniature commentary on Mark (chapter 2), an introduction to the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah (chapter 3),... Read more