Eerdmans publishers has some great commentary series like TNTC, TOTC, NICOT, NICNT, NIGTC, Pillar, Socio-Rhetorical Commentary series, and others. Indeed, it is often hard to keep up with all the commentaries that are coming out in all the various series Now there is the Eerdmans commentary club which provides a once-monthly email from Eerdmans featuring exclusive discounts, giveaways, and inside information. Sign up by 4th of May to win a free commentary! A good way to stay in touch with Eerdmans commentaries.... Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of participating in an important discussion on the question of Israel and the Land. The conference was sponsored by the Institute for Religion and Democracy in D.C. and the conference was held at Georgetown University. Here is a segment of the day long conference which included presentations in addition to me, by Mark Kinzer and David Rudolph. Our focus was on the New Testament and the place of the land of... Read more

My colleague Scott Harrower and his co-author Greg Forbes have a great new book out about women in Luke-Acts called Raised from Obscurity: A Narrative and Theological Characterization of Women in Luke-Acts (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015). Luke-Acts contains many and diverse female characters, many of whom play significant roles in the unfolding drama of God’s plan of salvation through Jesus and the early church. Women followers of Jesus are fully-fledged disciples who prove to be reliable and insightful, participating in... Read more

J. Patout Burns & Robin M. Jensen Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014. Available at Amazon.com This is a detailed and documented history of the Christian church in North Africa. Its a great amalgam of literary and archaeological evidence about the Donatist controversy, Decian and Diocletian persecutions, and church order and practice. There’s great stuff on baptism, eucharist, burial practices, martyrologies, and clerical offices. It is the fruit of the... Read more

Anthony C. Thiselton The Thiselton Companion to Christian Theology Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015. Available at Amazon.com This is a one man theological dictionary by Christian theologian Anthony C. Thiselton. It covers topics from “Abba” to “Zwingli” and everything in between. There are over 600 articles and they vary in length from a paragraph to 20, 000 words. Its a testimony to the breadth and erudition of Thiselton’s own knowledge of a variety of areas in biblical studies, philosophy, hermeneutics, historical theology,... Read more

A great article from ABC Religion and Ethics by Khaled Abou El Fadl on “The End of the Arab Spring, the Rise of ISIS, and the Future of Political Islam.” Why was the Arab Spring aborted? Because a democratic Middle East would have been a poor habitat for the survival of the parasitical military regimes and putrid oil sheikhdoms, which relentlessly eradicate any healthy space for the development of civic institutions that can cultivate and nurture the growth of civic... Read more

Over at ABC Religion and Ethics is a great piece by Australian academic Peter Harrison, formerly of Oxford (who I used to play tennis with), on Virtues of the Mind: Mapping the Territories of Science and Religion. Part of the problem according to Harrison is that the meaning of the words “religion” and “science” changed in the sixteenth and seventeenth  centuries, creating subsequent confusion for our own age. My suggestion here will be that much of the contemporary conflict between science and... Read more

The latest issue of Themelios 40.1 (2015) is out with some good articles on Abraham, covenant, and baptism; Romans 4 and justification; plus book reviews on books by Jason Sexton, Jason Hood, Craig Koester, and Timothy Michael Law. Read more