Michael S. HeiserBecause the Bible says quite clearly that it is “God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16), Christians tend to think of inspiration as some sort of otherworldly event. In the course of many years of teaching biblical studies (and chit-chat that happens at church)...
Steve RungeWe’re going to take a look at another passage found in all three Synoptic gospels recounting Jesus’s response to the Pharisees complaint about His disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath in violation of law. All three gospels have the...
As a biblical scholar, I’m often asked for advice on how to interpret the Bible. I could refer people to tools (like Logos Bible Software) and techniques for analyzing the original languages, even if you’re dependent on English (like Learn to Use...
Faithlife StaffSteve’s away at BibleTech this week, so we got one of our Logos pros to show us how we can use the principles of discourse grammar and Steve’s Hi-Definition resources in conjunction with Logos 6 to gain new insight for preaching and study. In this...
The last time we chatted, I made the comment that the right context for interpreting the Bible accurately isn’t the history of Christianity in any of its creedal distillations or denominational forms. But I went even further—I said that the biblical...
One of my favorite applications of discourse grammar is reading the Synoptic gospels, well, synoptically. Mathew, Mark and Luke have enough overlapping content that scholars often study the stories in parallel using what’s called a synopsis...
Anyone interested in Bible study, from the new believer to the biblical scholar, has heard (and probably said) that if you want to correctly interpret the Bible, you have to interpret it in context. I’m certainly not going to disagree. But I have a...
The final installment of this series on participles focuses on the practical payoff of letting Greek be Greek. What do I mean by this? Writers make rhetorical arguments that rattle our theological cages. Take a look at a literal translation of Gal...
Participles That Elaborate The first post of this series described how Greek participles can serve as substitutes for nouns, and then for adjectives. Adverbial participles—those functioning as an alternative to main or finite verbs in a...
Backgrounding Action-the Sequel In the last post we talked about how not all actions are created equal, so writers need some means of clearly prioritizing them so that readers can make correct judgments about them. We looked at the use of what...
Chuck McKnightThis post has been adapted with permission from Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics, published by Lexham Press. There is a causal connection between the justification of Christ and that of those who belong to him, between the making alive of his soul...
Participles as Verbs: Part 1 Backgrounding action within a clause In the first post of this series we noted that Greek participles are a hybrid form, part verb and part noun, based on the morphological information they contain. We looked at how they...
Participles as Adjectives In last week’s post, we looked at the role of participles substituted for nouns, creating a dynamic portrait, an alias for some other expression. Participles can also serve as adjectival modifiers, accomplishing the same...
Today’s post is the inaugural edition of HiDef Mondays, in which Faithlife’s Scholar-in-Residence Steve Runge and his team explore peculiarities and practicalities in Greek and Hebrew grammar. Check back every Monday to find a new insight for...
In the years since its publication, William Lane Craig’s The Kalām Cosmological Argument has become a favorite of Christian apologists—and has been subject to fierce debate with prominent atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. In the...
Jonathan WatsonFor the past few weeks, I’ve shared how to organize your library, ways to use the guides, and how to utilize word lists and visual filters. Now, it’s time to work on a sentence diagram. Logos makes this easy with its Sentence Diagramming Tool:...
Finding repeated terms Many of you have utilized Documents.Logos.com to download my Greek Discourse markup. But what if your school/professor requires a different system? Or what if you want to create your own system entirely? Today, we are going to...
Daniel MotleyOver the past several years, scholars have overwhelmingly embraced the findings of discourse grammar. Whether in its Hebrew or Greek format, many works on discourse grammar in the past decade have advanced our understanding of the original text of...
Where do you stand in the investigation of the Roman audience? Understanding the composition of the audience at Rome helps us to understand the intented theological meaning behind Paul’s word choices. There is a lot of debate around the question of...
When studying the Trinity, it makes sense to start with the New Testament and the words of Jesus in passages like Matthew 28:19 and John 15:26. But what about the Old Testament? Was the idea of a Trinity or Godhead ever mentioned? Was it heretical...
It’s clear that fall has come and that means school is definitely upon us! Fortunately, Logos saves incredible amounts of time when studying Scripture. If you missed my first post on setting up your library, be sure to check that out as well. As I...
It seems like only yesterday the semester was beginning. But September is over and the semester is bustling along. Many of us invested in commentaries, ancient language works, and reference sources from the Back-to-School sale. How do we use those...
If you’re a pastor or professor, chances are you were trained in a specific field. Perhaps you studied Old Testament interpretation or Pauline literature, but when the demands of your ministry (personal or professional) call for knowledge from...
Cliff KvidahlBorn August 16 in 1852, Adolf Schlatter would become one of the foremost conservative German-Swiss protestant scholars of the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Educated at Tübingen and Basel, Schlatter held posts at a number of...
Some books are devotional and some are academic commentary, but it is rare to find a helpful combination of both. Theological Commentary: Evangelical Perspectives deftly walks that line. It never sacrifices its academic rigor, yet the theological...
Today’s guest post is from Dr. Donald Hagner, George Eldon Ladd Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary. See part one of Donald Hagner’s recollections of George Ladd. Ladd also had a lighter side to him, when he was...
Sense: church n. — an orderly congregation specifically of those who trust in Jesus as the Messiah (or those who compose it). Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches (ἐκκλησία). Rev 3:13 New Testament authors...
Sense: to hope (in someone) v. — to have trust or confidence in someone; especially as regards the future. For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set (ἐλπίζω) on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of...
Sense:to govern <=> judge v. — to govern, understood in terms of the ruler’s role of judging his people. No such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged (שׁפט) Israel, even during all the days of the kings of Israel and...
Sense: to rule <=> shepherd v. — to rule over a group of people, conceived of as tending sheep or goats. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule (ποιμαίνω) all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away...