May 17, 2014

Free Book: Theological Interpretation of the New Testament

This week only you can get Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s Theological Interpretation of the New Testament for free. You will need to provide your email and sign up to receive emails from Baker Publishing. To sign up you can use this link.

HT: Greg Williams

May 16, 2014

Ezekiel's Temple


John W. Schmitt and J. Carl Laney, Messiah’s Coming Temple: Ezekiel’s Prophetic Vision of the Future Temple, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2014).

I was excited to receive a copy of the second edition of Messiah’s Coming Temple: Ezekiel’s Prophetic Vision of the Future Temple by John W. Schmitt and J. Carl Laney in the mail. I remember working my way through this original edition in seminary. It was the most comprehensive examination of Ezekiel’s temple that I had read and I have yet to encounter anything to surpass it.

The original edition was published in 1997. This second edition does not include a new forward so I am not sure how much has changed. The publisher notes that, “this newly expanded work [is] based on extensive research and discussions with leading Jewish leaders and rabbis in the United States and Israel.” But this is rather vague. I can say that the original edition’s 192 pages has been expanded to 248 (not 224 as noted by Kregel) and that there are three new chapters: Ezekiel’s Temple and Archaeology, Predictions of a Different Temple, and Can Sacrifices Be Part of a Future Temple? There are also more figures/maps (from 15 to 22), photographs (from 10 to 11), and the addition of six charts. Although I have only had the opportunity to scan through this updated edition, everything that I have seen so far indicates that it remains the go-to resource for studying Ezekiel’s temple.


You can read an excerpt here.

May 15, 2014

Why Study the Book of Job

Christopher Ash provides seven reasons for studying the book of Job here.

May 14, 2014

Calvin and the Pastor/Scholar

See Philip Ryken's post on Calvin and the need for pastor/scholars here.  Here is one paragraph from the post.
  
"Calvin’s example as a pastor-scholar is instructive today. For pastors, his life serves as a call to work hard in ministry, giving our best efforts to understanding the Scriptures. For parishioners, Calvin’s ministry can help us understand the God-given calling of our pastors. In devoting their time to prepare for preaching, they are not serving themselves but Christ and His church."

May 12, 2014

Biblical Word Versus. Theological Concept

See Christopher Cowan's helpful discussion on biblical words and their relation to  theological concept here. I am grading some biblical theology papers right now where many fail to either discuss the relevant terminology or to only discuss the passages where the terminology occurs and thus ignoring other passages where the concept but not the terminology occurs.