The Early Christian Use of the Codex

Larry Hurtado here identifies seven key points regarding the early Christian use of the codex form.

The God Who Names Himself

Timothy George has a nice post here on the use of, and implications for, the designations of God that one finds in the Bible.

Ben Witherington on Isaiah and Brevard Childs

Check out Ben Witherington's series interacting with Brevard Child's book, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture. Witherington is already up to five posts. Go here and access all five.

An Article on Intertextuality in New Testament Scholarship

Samuel Emadi has a good overview-type of article on intertextuality in the latest volume of Currents in Biblical Research (Oct. 2015). The article is entitled, "Intertextuality in New Testament Scholarship: Significance, Criteria, and the Art of Intertextual Reading." Here is the article's abstract.

‘Intertextuality’ is currently a hot topic among biblical interpreters. However, a great deal of debate regarding the locus, purpose, and meaning-effect of an intertextual event, the criteria used to discern the presence of intertexts (if in fact there are any), and the theological value of intertextuality in Scripture still exists. This article surveys these interpretive questions and discusses how the foremost contributors to the conversation have aimed at resolving these hermeneutical tensions. In this article, I examine and compare the hermeneutical methodologies of Richard Hays, Michael Thompson, Dale Allison, Greg Beale, Christopher Beetham, Leroy Huizenga, and Peter Leithart with respect to intertextuality. My aim is to identify the strengths of each contributor’s hermeneutical method, while clarifying where these scholars share similar hermeneutical convictions, as well as where they part ways with one another’s convictions about the practice of intertextual reading.

And here is part of the conclusion to the article.

Each of the above authors has made significant contributions to the discussion of intertextuality. Hays's work is foundational, and has charted the trajectory of the conversation ever since its publication in 1989. Allison and Leithart's resurfacing of the value of patristic exegesis is a helpful corrective, and indicates that we need a fresh, open look at what the fathers have to teach us about reading the Bible. Beale's works have shown an unrelenting zeal to be robustly biblical in the hermeneutical endeavor. Likewise, Leithart's timely and essential proposal is that being a good interpreter is more about being a certain type of person, and less about doing certain things.

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

Here are the articles to the forthcoming issue of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. The links will take you to an abstract.

What to Expect when you’re Expecting: Maternity, Salvation History, and the ‘Apocalyptic Paul’

J.P. Davies

The Use of Greek in Early Roman Galilee: The Inscriptional Evidence Re-examined

Scott D. Charlesworth

The τίς ἐξ ὑμῶν Similitudes and the Extent of Q

David B. Sloan

Christology, Eschatology and the Politics of Time in 1 Peter

David G. Horrell and Wei Hsien Wan

‘Christ-Faith’ as an Eschatological Event (Galatians 3.23-26): A ‘Third View’ on Πίστις Χριστοῦ

Benjamin Schliesser

Suffering, Misunderstanding, and Suffering Misunderstanding: The Markan Misunderstanding Motif as a Form of Jesus’ Suffering

Michal Beth Dinkler

Praying the Psalms

Don Whitney identifies five benefits of praying the Psalms here.

Psalms Resources: Audio and Articles

Lindsay Kennedy has another nice post on preaching resources on the Psalms. In this post he addresses articles and audio resources. For the first post you can see here.

Preaching and Inerrancy

Dennis Swanson has a good discussion here on innerancy (mostly) and how it can affect preaching.

Unearthing the World of Jesus

The Smithsonian has a nice article in its latest issue entitled, "Unearthing the World of Jesus." You can see the article here.

Should Pastors Understand Textual Criticism?

George Wood thinks that they should in this review of The Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism.

HT: Eerdword Blog

Favorite Bible Atlases

J. Carl Laney identifies and discusses his five favorite Bible atlases here.The list is fairly good but I am not sure why Laney lists the older edition of Rasmussen's atlas. I think that the 2010 edition has much nicer graphics (see my review here). Also, I wonder whether you need two versions of Rasmussen. it might be better to include something like Beitzel's The New Moody Bible Atlas of the Bible or the ESV Bible Atlas.

Free Audio: Alistair Begg on 1 Thessalonians

You can download three volumes of messages from Alistair Begg on 1 Thessalonians here.

Giving Sermon Feedback

Erik Raymond has some good advice here for giving your pastor feedback on their sermon.

Psalms Resources

See this post on Psalms resources by Lindsay Kennedy.

John Barclay Interview

The Eerdman's blog has a brief but interesting 14 minute interview with John Barclay here related to his book Paul and the Gift.

Free Bible Images

Bible students might want to check out the Free Bible Images website here.

HT: Rob Bradshaw

Christian Board Games

Here is an interesting article on 15 different Christian board games. Here are a couple of more that the article does not mention.

Biblequest Champions of FaithKingdom of Solomon 
Kings of Israel
The Armor of God
Settlers of Canaan 
Egypt to Canaan

New Zechariah Commentary on Sale

The Eerdmans'  Commentary Club Store is offering 40%-off or $34.80 and free shipping for their brand new Zechariah commentary by Mark Boda in the NICOT series. It is so new that Amazon is still listing it as a pre-order (the official Eerdmans website also lists it as a Jan. 25 release). Christian Book Distributors has it but at a 33% discount or $39.99. This deal is only good until January 11 and you have to be a commentary club member but joining is free. You can sign up here. You can read an interview with Boda discussing this commentary here.

Psalm 24:4

Lee Fields has a good post on Psalm 24:4 here.

Hurtado Responds to Gundry's Apostate Peter

Larry Hurtado provides some good push back here to Robert Gundry's recent thesis that Peter is presented as an apostate disciple in the Gospel of Matthew.

Hope for Dysfunctional Churches?

Most students of the New Testament recognize that the church at Corinth was troubled and dysfunctional at a variety of levels. Much is often made of where and how they were wrong. But Matthew Malcolm does a nice job here of reminding us that the Corinthians got some things right.

Review of What the New Testament Authors Really Cared About

Berding, Kenneth, and Matt Williams, eds. What the New Testament Authors Really Cared About: A Survey of Their Writings. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2015.

What the New Testament Authors Really Cared About is a concise evangelical survey of the New Testament written for college and university students. It is written by fifteen New Testament scholars and attempts to be pedagogically friendly. There are numerous sidebars, tables, photographs, and wide margins. Most of the discussion is devoted to the content of the books rather than introductory issues. Such issues (who, when, where, why) are limited to one page. There are no footnotes and very few endnotes (13 for the entire book).

Since this is a second edition, one might ask how this version differs from its predecessor. Unfortunately, no indication is given in the volume itself as to what has been changed, added, or removed. But there are some obvious differences. The first edition was softcover and the second is hardcover. The first edition contained 240 numbered pages whereas the second has 333. The additional pages seems to be devoted primarily to an additional chapter on the formation of the New Testament canon and the addition of two appendices (there are actually three appendices but one is an index that was included in the first volume but not as an appendix). The content itself looks to be about the same, although there are a few cosmetic changes such as placing lists in colored boxes and resizing pictures, etc. The authors have also added a brief outline for each book.

There is much to like about this volume. It is succinct, theologically conservative, and well-packaged. It generally does well with what it sets out to do. My criticisms are fairly minor. For one, I did not care for the heading (used in the 2nd ed.) “Carefully Crafted Verses from . . . “ . Apparently what is meant here is a listing of key verses. If so, why not say so? Are the other verses not “carefully crafted”? I also wish that the listing of key words and concepts at the end of the chapter were alphabetized. One of the appendices, “Key New Testament Themes,” is merely a reproduction of the same list contained in the book discussions. This appears to be unnecessary. The space would be better utilized in providing a brief glossary of some of the key terms or a Scripture index.

However, these criticisms should not deter one from considering this volume as a basic and introductory work on the New Testament.

I am thankful to Kregel for providing the review copy utilized in this unbiased review.

How Long to Preach?

Hershel York has some advice on how long one should preach here. 

Free Logos Book for January: Exodus by Nahum Sarna

The free Logos Book for January is Nahum Sarna’s commentary on Exodus in the JPS series. You can also purchase Jonah by Uriel Simon in the same series for $1.99. You can also enter to win the 11 volume JPS series. You can access these deals here.

Free Audio: Common English Bible

Christianaudio.com's free audio selection for January is the audio edition of the Common English Bible. You can access the offer here.