The Logos Academic Blog
by Timothy H. Lim | University of Edinburgh
An announcement by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) on March 16, 2021 highlighted the discovery of fragments of biblical “Dead Sea Scrolls.” What have been found and what potential contribution do they make to our knowledge of the transmission, translation, and revision of the biblical texts in antiquity?
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by Christopher M. Date
“What does God say about hell?” asks Kris Brossett, kicking off his two-article series on the topic.1 Brossett proceeds to survey the three historic Christian views of hell—eternal torment, conditional immortality, and universalism2—and commendably, he avoids offering readers simplistic, misleading caricatures of the two alternatives to the more historically dominant view (eternal torment). Brossett begins his second article equally commendably, rightly observing, “None of the positions I’ve examined in Part I deny [hell’s] existence. Instead, ‘they differ on what hell is like.’”3 This kind of honest representation of controversial views is refreshing;4 proponents of such views are accustomed to being terribly misrepresented.5
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by Phillip Cary
The key concept in The Meaning of Protestant Theology is there in the subtitle: The Gospel that Gives Us Christ. That’s the core of Protestant theology and the key to its meaning, as well as the center of the distinctively Protestant piety of the Word. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most fundamental form of what Christian traditions call “means of grace,” which is to say: the ways God gives his own Son as our savior, our righteousness, and our eternal life. When Catholics think of “means of grace,” they think first of sacraments. The Eastern Orthodox may think first of icons. But Protestants think first of the saving power of the Word of God, without which there are no sacraments and icons lose all meaning. Every form of Christian piety needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ if it is to have any meaning at all. So the Protestant piety of the Word, centered on the Gospel, is a gift to the whole Christian tradition.
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By Donald C. McIntyre
There are forty-seven verbal forms in this pericope; all but 10 verbal forms are perfective aspect. Of those ten forms that are not perfective, one is stative, two are future, and the remaining six are imperfect or present tense. Porters method combines the aspect found in the tense of the verbs with associated elements that are attached to the mood. Applying his theory will begin with the most basic argument of his theory, that imperfective aspect is “defined foreground” information, and then proceed to his views on the perfect tense, where he finds the aspect to be stative, and “well defined foreground information” for discourse purposes. The analysis will end with a discussion of Porter on mood before explaining the future tense, since Porter does not give the future tense an aspect but leaves it as a mood of expectation. It should be noted that since the aorist is “main line” to the discourse, the aorist tense verbs should be seen as the basic plot structure, which is slowed down by the foregrounding devices.
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by Donald C. McIntyre
See also Part 1
In Porter’s analysis of Philippian 2:5-11 the two verbal forms which are not in the perfective aspect are the imperative φρονεῖτε, “Have this mind,” and ὑπάρχων, a present participle “to be,” in vv. 5 and 6a. In this case, Paul is issuing a command for the Philippians to imitate the mind of Christ, which is described through the hymn in two parallel structures revolving around secondary clauses (vv. 6 and 9a in S-C-P order) which are supplemented by two secondary embedded clauses (vv. 7a and b, and 9b and 10, S-P order), and a final secondary embedded secondary clause (vv. 8 and 11, C-S order).1
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by Donald C. McIntyre
Verbal aspect theory arose to prominence in 1989 and 1990 with the simultaneous work of Stanley Porter and Buist Fanning, who both sought to show how linguistics could further effect exegesis of the Greek New Testament (GNT).1 Upon the publication of the dissertations, a debate sprang forth between the two views, with Dr. Fanning’s views being more conservative to previous methods, and Dr. Porter’s being a hard break from previous grammatical theory. Thirty years later, their works are still cited in all relevant works on the subject.
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“Every theology is contextual.” So opens the preface in each volume of the Asia Bible Commentary. The commentary series stands on the premise that our “understanding of the Bible is influenced by our historical and social locations.” The momentous task undertaken by the Asia Bible Commentary (ABC) is to give voice to Asian evangelical scholars in whose homelands Christianity is spreading like untempered fire but sound exegesis of the biblical text historically is lacking, where the prosperity gospel and native religion threaten pure doctrine. The ABC bolsters the preaching of the Word in a global context.
I put a number of questions to Rico Villanueva (former General Editor) and Andrew Spurgeon (current General Editor) in a brief interview recounted below. We at Logos are very excited to have a number of volumes in the ABC series now available for your digital library. Stay tuned for more interviews with the authors and editors of Langham Publishing in the coming weeks.
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The following is an extended interview with Felix Asiedu regarding his new book, Paul and His Letters: Thinking with Josephus (Lexington Books/Fortress Press Academic). The book can be purchased here.
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Not long ago, a friend of mine was reading the Bible with his family. His kids had picked out some new Bibles – New Living Translations – so he brought home another copy he had at the office so they could all be on the same page. He started reading from John 1, but he didn’t get far before red flags began to fly. In verse 3 he read, “He [the Word] created everything there is.” Wait a minute, he thought. That goes against what I believe about creation and the distinctive roles of the members of the Trinity! The confusion only grew as his kids chimed in, “Daddy, that’s not what mine says!” (Their NLT said, “God created all things through him.”) My friend decided to check his Greek New Testament, and discovered that the word θεὸς did not even occur in this verse. What was going on here? Why were these two NLT versions so different from one another and from the other English versions he knew? And most importantly, do these differences reflect arbitrary translation choices, or are they theologically significant?
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Biblical performance criticism is a methodology based on the assumption that much of the literature collected in the Bible represents oral performances that were at one time either told from memory or presented as prepared readings before audiences.1 The performance critic studies the biblical writings as oral performances with the aim to uncover certain conventions of orally performed texts—features often neglected when employing other biblical critical methodologies.
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