Codex Sinaiticus: A Full Color Facsimile

Nearly all the sacred words are in these full color photos of the pounced parchment scribed with the ancient ink. Living words copied by three maybe four careful hands. God breathed words, every one true, every thought from man and from God. Every utterance worthy of trust. These leaves in these photos passed under no …

What I Learned in My First Pastorate

A few years ago Towers invited me to reflect on what I learned in my first pastorate at Baptist Church of the Redeemer. I now post what I wrote then in this space. —- A small group of nobodies in a big room seemed really unimpressive, but I confess vanity and pride. To be honest, …

Review of Jongkind, Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus

Dirk Jongkind, Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, Texts and Studies III.5. Piscataway: Gorgias, 2005. 323. ISBN: 9718-1-59333-422-2. $102.00. Printed Casebound. Published in Bulletin for Biblical Research 22 (2012): 260–62. Constantin von Tischendorf first visited St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai in 1844. This eventually led to the 1862 publication of a typeset semi-facsimile of Codex …

How to Blow Up a Church in Three Easy Steps

Here are three very easy things you can do if you want to dishonor God, cause a lot of heartache, and probably shorten your tenure as the pastor of a church: 1. Be proud. Who would go into a church and be proud? All of us in some way or another. But it might not …

In Parker, Colorado This Weekend: The Fulfillment of the OT in Revelation

If you’re in the Denver area, I’d love to see you tomorrow and Sunday. Lord willing, I’ll be teaching from 9am to 5pm at Faith Baptist Church in Parker, Colorado on Saturday, June 9, 2012 on the Fulfillment of the OT in Revelation. Then on Sunday I’ll be preaching from Revelation 5. Would love to …

Biblical Theology, Köstenberger’s JETS Editorial, and J. P. Gabler

Andreas Köstenberger’s editorial in the most recent issue of JETS surveys the recent revival of biblical theology among evangelicals (“Editorial,” JETS 55 [2012]: 1–5). I am grateful that he took notice of my work in this area along with that of Greg Beale, Frank Thielman, and a host of others. A lot of good work …

Are We Training Parrots or Making Disciples?

In a guest post on the Crossway blog I discuss the relationships between exegesis, biblical theology, and historical theology in the process of disciple-making. Are your assumptions about the people who hear you preach and teach an affront to the reality that they are made in the image of God? Here’s the intro: Solid exegesis, …

How Revelation 19:20 Supports Historic Premillennialism

Is there a chronological progression that unfolds in the book of Revelation? Amillennialists basically say No, there’s an ongoing recapitulation, a retelling of the same story over and over. So they would say that the millennium is happening now, at the same time as Satan is pursuing his war on the church (described, for instance, …

Robert Gundry on N. T. Wright’s Translation of the New Testament

Calling it “Tom’s Targum,” Bob Gundry makes some important points about translation theory and much else in an entertaining and spirited review of N. T. Wright’s translation of the New Testament. Some highlights: Time was when everybody understood a translation to be a more or less word-for-word transfer of meaning from one language to another—”or …

Canon Revisited by Michael J. Kruger

When I teach biblical hermeneutics, before we actually get to biblical interpretation I try to put down three boundary stones within which we will seek to determine the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors. The first of these has to do with clear thinking. This is a very basic introduction to logical and rhetorical fallacies. …

What Helps Me Most As I Prepare to Preach

This post is a quick response to a question in a comment on my post on Jane Austen and Jeremiah 20:7. The question was what commentaries have helped me most as I’ve worked through Jeremiah. My answer is along the lines of what I recently said about what seminaries are for, because what has helped …

Jane Austen and Jeremiah 20:7

The Lord provided for me on Saturday morning. I was preparing to preach Jeremiah 19–20, and I was really stuck on Jeremiah 20:7, which reads in the ESV, “O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed . . .” Some scholars say that Jeremiah …

Camus’s Translator on Translation

I have posted before on Dostoevsky’s translator, and I was pleased to read the “Translator’s Note” to Albert Camus’s The Stranger. Matthew Ward is the translator, and it seems to me that his comments weigh against “dynamic equivalence” in favor of a more literal rendering. Ward is actually critiquing the earlier more dynamic translation of …

What Makes a Translation Accurate?

What makes a translation accurate? Its ability to preserve the way that later biblical authors evoke earlier Scripture. The Bible was written by at least 40 authors from Moses in the 1400s BC to John around AD 90. Everyone who followed Moses learned from his work, and the later authors made heavy use of what …

What difference does it make if we capitalize son in Psalm 2?

The promises to David from 2 Samuel 7:4–17 are clearly in view in Psalm 2, especially in verses 5–12. In 1 Kings 2:1–4 and several other passages these promises are specifically applied to Solomon. These promises are also significant in the accounts of kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah. There is a sense, then, in …