I’m excited to announce the beginning of a new series called the Zondervan Critical Introductions to the New Testament, edited by myself, with the first volume by Nijay Gupta on 1-2 Thesslonians. This series is not a commentary or a theology of each particular book, but is about all the critical and technical issues related to authorship, date, provenance, text, genre, etc. It is the classic Historisch-Kritischen Einteilung for all the dense and detailed stuff that only gets a rudimentary mention in the... Read more

Editor Barry J. Beitzel Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels Bellingham: Lexham, 2017. Available at Lexham. By Dr. Kate Tyler The Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels takes seriously the fact that the historical events recorded in Scripture are located in very specific places. “To be unaware of or to neglect the geographical DNA of the Bible or the biblical world will therefore often mean that one may run afoul of the biblical argument or that reality may dissolve into... Read more

Over at FoxNews, a leading resource on ecclesiology and missiology, there is an article by Dave Adamson (@AussieDave) on Church as we know it is over. Here’s what’s next. According to Adamson: Every church you’ve ever attended, or that you drive by on your way to a Sunday sporting event, was built on a physical attendance model that is location-centric. …  But that way of doing church is dead. And just like Joshua needed to hear God say, “Moses my servant is... Read more

At last year’s SBL I picked up a Greek/English diglot of Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, ed. and trans. Alistair C. Stewart (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016). One thing I’ve noticed is how the apostles and church fathers had no inhibitions about finding/seeing/imagining Christ in the Old Testament. Melito’s pascha is a case in point in § 57-60. — The Lord made advance preparation for his own suffering in the patriarchs and in the prophets and in the whole people; through... Read more

Fred R. Anderson  Singing God’s Psalms: Metrical Psalms and Reflections for Each Sunday in the Church Year Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016. Available at Eerdmans. By Jill Firth Singing God’s Psalms had its genesis in a time of spiritual dryness for pastor Fred Anderson, who turned to the Psalms for nourishment, recalling advice from seminary professor Bernhard Anderson (no relation). Following the example of John Calvin, who had valued the metrical psalms, Anderson began rendering one psalm into meter each week.... Read more

There are three cool books on Trinity and the subordination debate now out or about to come out. First, Michael F. Bird and Scott Harrower (eds.), Trinity without Hierarchy: Reclaiming Nicene Orthodoxy in Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2019). A collection of essays on the Trinity, subordination, and Nicene Orthodoxy, with some close interaction with advocates of EFS/ERAS, a very diverse cast of contributors. Surveying Scripture, church history, and theology, sixteen contributors present a defense of the full and equal... Read more

Matthew R. Malcolm From Hermeneutics to Exegesis: The Trajectory of Biblical Interpretation Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2018. Available from Lifeway. Review by Michael Phillips In this slim volume, Malcolm sets out to establish a robust practice of Christian biblical exegesis on rigorous hermeneutical foundations. As a final year Bible College student, I greatly enjoyed the breadth of hermeneutical approaches he surveys, and the respect and attention he pays to general hermeneutics. As the title suggests, the first half of the... Read more