Latest Issue of Review of Biblical Literature

The latest issue of Review of Biblical Literature is out. Reviews can be accessed by clicking the links below. 

Ian Boxall
Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9257
Reviewed by Craig R. Koester

Joseph D. Fantin
The Lord of the Entire World: Lord Jesus, a Challenge to Lord Caesar?
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8964
Reviewed by Michael F. Bird

Gordon D. Fee and Robert L. Hubbard, eds., with commentary by Connie Gundry Tappy
The Eerdmans Companion to the Bible
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8369
Reviewed by Paul S. Evans
Reviewed by David M. Maas

Scott Hahn
Consuming the Word: The New Testament and the Eucharist in the Early Church
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9228
Reviewed by Sonya S. Cronin

Jan Willem van Henten and Joseph Verheyden, eds.
Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9208
Reviewed by Cornelis Bennema

Jonathan Huddleston
Eschatology in Genesis
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9099
Reviewed by James S. Lee

Daniel D. Lowery
Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17–22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Background
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9318
Reviewed by Thomas L. Brodie

Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz, eds.
Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8800
Reviewed by William L. Lyons

Voker Rabens
The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transformation and Empowering for Religious-Ethical Life
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9384
Reviewed by Nélida Naveros Cordova

All that You Wanted to Know about Bible Paper but Were Afraid to Ask

The Crossway blog has an interesting post on Bible paper here. Although I have complained about the size and weight of some of the Bibles I have owned, it really is amazing how much can written information, pictures, and maps can be put into a study Bible.

Interview with Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler

The OUPBlog has a brief interview with Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler here. The interview is related to a revision of the Jewish Study Bible that Berlin and Brettler worked on but also includes questions related to biblical studies in general.

The Supposed Theological Divide between Hebrews and Hellenists

Larry Hurtado has an engaging post here challenging the commonly-held assumption of a theological divide between Hebrews and Hellenists. This piece also serves as a good caution related to making the historical and/or theological leaps that most if not all involved in biblical studies make.

Rob Plummer on the New An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek

In this video, Rob Plummer discusses the new An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek: Analysis of Prepositions, Adverbs, Particles, Relative Pronouns, and Conjunctions.

Mark Seifrid Interview

See this interview of Mark Seifrid related to his new 2 Corinthians commentary in the Pillar series. Here is an excerpt from the interview.

"Listening to the text is the most difficult part of writing a commentary, or any interpretation of Scripture. Listening, listening, and listening again. There is a fourfold responsibility here. First, to let the text speak in all its particularity and detail, even (or especially) where it challenges our thinking. Second, not to lose the forest for the trees. We have to be able to synthesize, to gain a perspective on the whole of what the text is saying. Third — and here many New Testament scholars fail — we have to be aware of what we are saying with respect to the Christian tradition, with respect to what Christians have believed, taught, and confessed before us. Fourth, we have to remember that we are writing for others. Their needs and concerns must be in our minds. Someone has described preaching as being placed between the upper and lower millstones of the Word of God and the congregation, and attempting to come through the grinding. Writing a commentary is something like that."

Granville Sharp

Those who have taken Greek are familiar with the Granville Sharp rule or construction. Dan Wallace in his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics spends 21 pages discussing this construction. In any case, Granville Sharp was born today in 1735. You can read a bit more about his fascinating life here.

Sermon Application

My friend Craig Schill has a good post on the need for application in sermons here. Make sure to read the entire post, but here are Craig's three main points.

1) Doctrine and Duties Go Hand in Hand.
2) You are a Shepherd not just a Spokesperson.
3) Knowledge without Application is Dangerous.