Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Exegesis

The Best All-Around Book on Bible Translation

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Next month I’m planning to teach a class called “Greek Reading” at Faith Bible Seminary, and they asked me to devote a half-day to the topic of Bible translation.

I’ve spent a good deal of time studying New Testament Greek. For example:

  • I’ve read the Greek New Testament almost daily since 1998.
  • I took ten semesters of Greek in college and seminary (not including many other courses that built on that foundation), finishing with Don Carson’s “Advanced Greek Grammar.”
  • I passed Greek proficiency exams at two seminaries.
  • I graded Greek proficiency exams at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
  • I passed the comprehensive exams that Don Carson wrote for my PhD in NT at Trinity, which requires the student to sight-read the Greek NT.
  • I’ve taught nearly twenty introductory and intermediate semester-long Greek courses on the college and seminary level.
  • I’ve written papers and publications that deal largely with Greek exegesis.

But my knowledge of NT Greek is merely novice-level compared to the best NT professors and Bible translators. Further, I had never thoroughly studied the topic of Bible translation.

This class has given me the opportunity to read over 100 books and articles in my library on Bible translation. As with just about any subject, the more you study it, the more you realize how much you don’t know. (That’s one reason I’m planning to interview Craig Blomberg during class next month.)

I recommend other helpful resources at the end of this post, but one book stands out as the best all-around resource on Bible translation that I’m aware of:

Gordon D. Fee and Mark L. Strauss. How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding and Using Bible Versions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.

It has at least seven strengths: [Read more…] about The Best All-Around Book on Bible Translation

Wisdom Christology

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This book could be a template for a topical sermon series:

Daniel J. Ebert IV. Wisdom Christology: How Jesus Becomes God’s Wisdom for Us. Explorations in Biblical Theology. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2011.

About the Author

Dan Ebert served as a missionary in Asia from 1977 to 1999. Then he taught at Clearwater Christian College for nine years, and he now teaches at Cedarville University. He also does adjunct teaching at several schools, including Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Virginia Beach.

He wrote his dissertation under D. A. Carson: [Read more…] about Wisdom Christology

Mirror Reading

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Several years ago I took a class from an expert in Second Temple Judaism who made this argument on the first day of class:

The biblical text is always reacting against a certain set of assumptions, beliefs, or presuppositions, so when interpreting any biblical text, you must always ask, “What is this reacting against in its context?”

I raised my hand and asked follow-up questions to make sure I understood the argument correctly.

I wasn’t convinced then, and I’m not convinced now.

Here’s what three other New Testament scholars have written about this:

1. Bob Stein

Robert H. Stein, A Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible: Playing by the Rules (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 205–6:

The Danger of a Mirror Reading of the Epistles

It is immediately apparent in reading the Epistles that their occasional nature assists the reader in reconstructing the situation in life for which they were written. [Read more…] about Mirror Reading

Interpreting the Pauline Epistles

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A good book just got better:

Thomas R. Schreiner. Interpreting the Pauline Epistles. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011.

From the preface to the 2nd edition (p. ix, line breaks added):

It is tempting to enlarge the book significantly, but I believe the book has continued to be read because of its brevity. Hence, the purpose of the revision is to update the book where necessary, especially in terms of bibliography.

The book has not changed dramatically, for I am still convinced that the substance of what I wrote some twenty years ago is correct. Nevertheless, the entire book has been revised, and there are some significant additions.

The original edition presented the diagrams in Greek but not in English, and thus English has been added to enable readers to understand diagramming conventions.

The most valuable chapter in this book—or at least the one that most strongly influenced me—is “Tracing the Argument” (pp. 97–124). It revolutionized how I read Paul.

Update: That chapter is available as a PDF (though it’s from the first edition, not the second).

Update on 3/31/2017: In my latest attempt to explain how to interpret and apply the Bible, I include a chapter on argument diagrams with a focus on phrasing (pp. 121–61).

Twenty OT Prayers Appealing to God’s Concern for His Own Glory

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See them here, a table excerpted from Jim Hamilton’s God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology. (That two-page PDF is available only today through Thursday.)

Hamilton explains:

These prayers that appeal to God’s concern for his own glory show how the believing remnant in the old covenant responded to God’s pursuit of his own glory: they joined him in it. These OT saints adopted God’s priorities and based their prayers on what they understood to be of greatest concern to God himself–his reputation among the nations, the glory of his name, the revelation of the truth about who he is. Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Elijah, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Asaph, Asa, and Jehoshaphat all petition God on the basis of his concern for his own glory.

Incidentally, there is a massively important point of application here: this is how we, too, should pray. The perspective of the biblical authors is not merely to be studied but adopted, embraced, and lived.

These prayers appealing to God’s concern for his glory are applied to a variety of situations and employ a variety of expressions, and they had to be located the old fashioned way, which is still the best way to examine a biblical theme: by reading slowly through the OT, marking them as they appeared, and then gathering them all into one place. So this chart saves you a ton of work, but actually doing this kind of work for yourself is the best way to study the Bible because it demands that you read attentively, remember what you’ve read, correlate new information with what you’ve already seen, and assimilate the results into a coherent whole.

So in this table I list every prayer in the Old Testament that appeals to God’s concern for his own glory; at least, I think I got them all! If you find one that I missed I’d love to know about it.

See also Hamilton’s explanation on the 9Marks blog.

The Structural Difference between Matthew and Mark

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T. Desmond Alexander, Discovering Jesus: Why Four Gospels to Portray One Person? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 20–21 (cf. 61–63):

While Matthew has much in common with Mark, there are two important structural differences. First, Matthew adds new material to the beginning and the end of Mark’s account.

Chart 1.3

. . . Second, Matthew adds into Mark’s mainly action-packed story five blocks of teaching by Jesus.

Chart 1.4

Although Matthew takes over almost all of Mark’s material, he is not constrained by Mark’s order. Matthew adopts a more topical arrangement and sometimes significantly changes the order in which Mark describes things.

Related: See my interview with Desi Alexander on biblical theology.

Interview with Chris Morgan on the Theology of James

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Chris Morgan is Associate Dean of the School of Christian Ministries and Professor of Theology at California Baptist University. He is author or editor of several books, and it’s the last of these that we discuss below:

  1. Christopher W. Morgan, Jonathan Edwards and Hell (Fearn, Scotland: Mentor, 2004).
  2. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, eds., Hell under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004). 
  3. Christopher W. Morgan and B. Dale Ellenburg, James: Wisdom for the Community (Focus on the Bible; Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2008).
  4. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, eds., Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism (Downers Grove: IVP, 2008).
  5. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, eds., Suffering and the Goodness of God (Theology in Community; Wheaton: Crossway, 2008).
  6. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, What Is Hell? (Basics of the Faith Series; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010). (Cf. my summary.)
  7. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, eds., The Glory of God (Theology in Community; Wheaton: Crossway, 2010). (Cf. my interview with Chris on this book.)
  8. Christopher W. Morgan, A Theology of James: Wisdom for God’s People (Explorations in Biblical Theology; Phillipsburg  NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010).

I recently mentioned six books “that preachers, teachers, and students will consult first and with most profit when studying the book of James.” Now I would expand that list to include Chris’s two books (#s 3 and 8 above).

1. Your first sentence in the book is this: “Non-Christians do not read the Bible; they read Christians” (p. xiii). What do you mean by that, and what does this have to do with the theology of James?

My point is that our lifestyle as the church communicates God to the world. When the church embodies love, holiness, truth, unity, and consistency, people will receive a viable portrait of God. When the world sees the church as filled with pettiness, division, and self-promotion, unbelievers’ understanding of God is inevitably distorted.

James forthrightly calls for consistency in the church. Such church consistency is crucial for our effective communication of God, and thus effective mission.

2. You mention that James helps us deal with a tension many pastors feel. What is that tension, and what do you mean by it?

Many of us as pastors and church leaders are inspired by knowing what the church can and should be. [Read more…] about Interview with Chris Morgan on the Theology of James

Carson’s Commentary on Matthew

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The second edition of Carson’s commentary on Matthew just became available this week:

D. A. Carson. “Matthew.” Pages 23–670 in Matthew–Mark. 2nd ed. Expositor’s Bible Commentary 9. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.

It’s bound with the commentary on Mark by Walter W. Wessel and Mark L. Strauss (pp. 671–989).

It’s not drastically different from the first edition (1984), but the entire commentary is updated to some degree in both content and wording. (I helped Dr. Carson with many of these updates.) It’s about fifty pages longer than the first edition because it adds new discussions that interact with secondary literature over the past quarter-century.

Related: Zondervan also just released a superb commentary on Matthew by Grant Osborne in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series, which uses a format that serves preachers extremely well.