This is free in February. I don’t know if it will be longer than that. I’m not familiar with the book–just passing it along.
Imaginary Jesus [Kindle Edition] by Matt Mikalatos, Tyndale House Publishers (January 4, 2010)
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Review: Nancy Guthrie. Be Still, My Soul: Embracing God’s Purpose and Provision in Suffering.
I didn’t realize this was a collaborative effort with contributors such as Tim Keller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, D.A. Carson, Joni Eareckson Tada and more. I already had this on my list but it just went higher.
Be Still, My Soul: Embracing God’s Purpose and Provision in Suffering
Learn to Read New Testament Greek, Third Edition by David Alan Black
This book and the companion workbook are review copies sent to me by the publisher, B&H Publishing Group of LifeWay Christian Resources, via NetGalley. I appreciate the opportunity to review these materials.
This review is written by someone learning Greek on their own. I hope this is helpful for someone in the same situation or for someone who is brushing up on Greek learned in the past.
I have looked extensively at a couple of the other popular beginning Greek grammars although I won’t be doing any direct comparisons.
Regarding the aesthetics, the hardcover is very sturdy in addition to being very appealing to look at. The black cover is a nice tie-in to the author’s last name. The paper is high quality, crisp and white which takes to a highlighter very well. The conjugations are in gray shaded boxes which helps them stand out and makes them easy to locate when wanting to go back and review them. The only thing I don’t like is that the font chosen for the Greek is a little less formal than what most of us are used to seeing which takes a little while to get used to.
In a word this book is efficient. There are no chapter overviews, introductions, summaries, what you’ll learn in the next chapter, etc. which is usually annoying anyway. The author gets right down to business in each chapter. Each of the 26 chapters are short enough that you don’t need those things.
This doesn’t mean the book’s information is skimpy. You will learn a lot of the important terms so that when you read a more technical Bible commentary or read what others write about Greek, you will have learned or at least have a reference for the terms at the beginning level which are explained well.
The exercises for the first 17 chapters of the book are made-up sentences in Greek that the student translates. All of the words in the sentences are from vocabulary that has been learned previously in the book.
Starting in chapter 18, Bible verses are used for the exercises. When there is a word in a verse that hasn’t been learned, the English gloss (a short basic definition) is listed in parenthesis next to the Greek word. This is much nicer than at least one other book where the extra vocabulary is listed on another page, sometimes requiring a page turn so that one is constantly flipping back and forth. There is an answer key for the exercises in the Appendix at the end of the book.
For more extensive exercises there is a companion workbook, sold separately. There is no answer key in the workbook, but if you write to the publisher, they will send you one in PDF format. The workbook (which was a pleasant surprise since I didn’t expect it to be sent to me) has all sorts of exercises coming at the Greek from many angles.
Verbs are introduced in chapter 2 and all of the indicative verbs are covered by chapter 17. There are various methods for introducing verbs in the books I’ve seen. I like having them introduced early so that they can be reviewed frequently as time goes on. There are very helpful charts of the indicative verb forms in the middle of the book. I wish I would have known this earlier so that I could have referred to it as I went along but it wasn’t mentioned earlier in the book. There is also a very helpful large fold-out complete Greek Verb Chart glued to the inside of the back cover.
There are a couple of very important items that were put in footnotes which I think should be in the main part of the text. (There are very few, thankfully, and they are at the end of each section where they are easy to see.) In particular is footnote iii. on page 31 which mentions that kai can mean “both”, “also” or “even”. So be sure to pay close attention to the footnotes.
I believe this book is a very efficient way to learn beginning level Greek. I would think it would be especially useful for someone reviewing Greek that they’ve already learned. I like to use more than one book to be able to read things explained in different ways, but this book is my first choice for the primary book to study and I highly recommend it.
Buy it from Amazon.com
- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: B&H Academic; Third edition (March 1, 2009)
- ISBN-10: 0805444939
Bitsy at Jack Of All Trades is giving away Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World: An Exposition of Matthew 5-10 by D.A. Carson.
Drawing rules:
- Shipping to USA addresses only. (My sincere apologies to my overseas friends, but postage is what it is!)
- Post here and on your blog for two entries. (either/or will get you one.)
The Sermon on the Mount is one of my favorite parts of the Bible and this book has been on my list already.
Matt at Broadcast Depth received a random copy of a book from Westminster John Knox that came with a couple other books from Abingdon Press.
He is giving away Exodus from the Interpretation Bible Studies series and written by James D. Newsome. Here are the ways to win this contest:
- Write your own blog post promoting the giveaway and provide me with the link.
- Comment on this post and tell why you want this book.
- Tweet “Win a free copy of Exodus (Interpretation Bible Studies) by James Newsome http://tinyurl.com/l33qcs” and let me know your twitter user name.
I found this today and thought I would pass it along to anyone who may be interested in reading and reviewing the book:
Bloggers and other media – receive a free review copy of I Want to Believe
I was reading a blog post by Brian Thornton at Voice of the Sheep entitled Father, Forgive Them and saw a reference to the book Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter.
I was extremely impressed with the line-up of contributors which include in part, Nancy Guthrie (Author), John Piper, Timothy J. Keller, Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, Stephen F. Olford, Joseph “Skip” Ryan, Martin Luther, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, J. Ligon Duncan, C. J. Mahaney, Charles H. Spurgeon, Augustine, J. I. Packer.
Fellow blogger Trevin Wax has a review on Amazon’s site.
Reformation Trust is offering John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology free for pastors (with $5 shipping).
This book was reviewed on this blog earlier.
HT: Challies
New Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors by Gordon D. Fee
What is exegesis as defined by Fee?
“The term exegesis is used in this book in a consciously limited sense to refer to the historical investigation into the meaning of the biblical text. The presupposition lying behind this task is that the biblical books had ‘authors’ and ‘readers,’ and that the authors intended their readers to understand what they wrote (see, e.g., 1 Cor. 5:9-11; 1 John 2:1; see the Appendix). Exegesis therefore answers the question, What did the biblical author mean? It has to do both with what he said (the content itself) and why he said it at any given point (the literary context)–as much as that might be discovered, given our distance in time, language, and culture. Furthermore, exegesis is primarily concerned with intentionality: What did the author intend his original readers to understand?”
This book is for those very serious about exegesis. It’s very broad, but accessible for any student, pastor or anyone serious about studying the Bible.
Although the book was originally written 20 years ago, it has stood the test of time and has been revised in both the 2nd and current 3rd edition to keep it very up to date.
Is it necessary to know Greek to utilize the book?
This is addressed in the Preface to the first edition but also in the Introduction to the 3rd edition:
“A final word to those who use only the English Bible. First, you need to take heart that you can learn to do exegesis as well as anyone else. Knowing Greek gives one obvious advantages in several matters of detail. But the person without Greek who is willing to do a bit of extra work can enter into the full joys of this discipline. You must take seriously the need to learn the Greek alphabet; that will give you direct access to most of the better tools, especially when it comes to the study of words.”
For those who do know Greek the book goes in-depth into using Greek as part of exegesis.
By taking a look at the Amazon link you can “Search inside this book” and start with the Table of Contents to get a good overview of what’s covered.
Fee mentions a wide array of resources for research related to each step. Bibliographic material is mentioned within each chapter in addition to a whole chapter devoted to the material, based on category.
One could easily spend over $2000 on these books which may be a little overwhelming for some. For those without an extensive library of their own, the help of a public library or even at the minimum—the internet, a couple of good study Bibles and a couple of in-depth commentaries covering the passage you will be exegeting—one could get by and do most of the things outlined in the book.
Also overwhelming is the sheer number of steps required in the first chapter, many of which are explained in the second chapter. This is geared to a student who will be writing a paper on a passage of Scripture. The third chapter abbreviates the steps for pastors who have approximately ten hours a week to prepare a sermon.
I thought it would be helpful if the steps in chapter three were directly correlated to the steps in the first two chapters.
It’s important for everyone to carefully read the whole book. For English only readers, reading the portions related to Greek are still valuable. For students, the chapter for pastors is important for remembering application, prayer and reflection so that it doesn’t become only an academic exercise. Pastors will want to be very familiar with the first two chapters so they can tailor the steps to their needs with Fee’s guidance as outlined in the third chapter.
The Appendix, new to the third edition, explains what Reader-Response Criticism is, how popular this has become and how dangerous it is. I see it everywhere and this is not a good thing.
Personal notes:
As noted in the review, the number of steps involved can be overwhelming for a neophyte exegetor. As I was first reading the book I was wondering when the steps would finally come to an end. But once I got through all the steps and read the abbreviated portion for pastors, I could see how I can make it all work. I’m not using the pastor’s chapter as a way to do less work. (I would rather spend more time exegeting and not have to try to write a sermon. Now that’s hard work.) I went through the whole book and wrote down the steps that I can do—not knowing much Greek—along with page numbers and topics so that I can go through it one step at a time. Baby steps.
Another blogger bought this book for me which was on my Amazon Wish List. As one with a small library and small budget, I can’t say how much this is appreciated.
Paperback: 195 pages
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press; 3rd edition (March 2002)
ISBN-10: 0664223168
ISBN-13: 978-0664223168
Book Cover Design: Really cool
Buy it at:
I don’t usually like to post more than once a day but this one has been getting around so I thought I’d post it now so that it doesn’t look like old news.
Daily Readings from the Life of Christ is offered through August 20.
HT: Travis Carden
There has been a lot of buzz in the biblioblogosphere about the book Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, D. A. Carson & G. K. Beale.
Some blog examples:
- In Light of the Gospel – Best Christian Books of 2007
- Biblical Foundations – Best of 2007
- The Road To Emmaus – Top Ten Books of 2007
- The Riddleblog – Five of the Best Books of 2007 (#2)
- The Henry Institute – Ten Good Books from a Good Old Year (#3)
etc.
Here is an interview in Christianity Today with the editors of the book:
Two Testaments, One Story
Top evangelical scholars team up for landmark commentary on New Testament use of Old Testament.
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