Hone Your Craft as a Biblical Scholar
Crossway has provided a nice video introduction to the new Greek New Testament edition, produced at Tyndale House.
HT: Peter Gurry. Peter has also posted an initial review of the edition that links to those of several others as well. See also Tyndale GNT to Be Available for Free, Tyndale House GNT, Harmonization Triggers, and TNT Updates.
This text will be available digitally and will be free for many uses around the world, in accord with the joint desire of both Tyndale House and Crossway to serve the global church in an open-handed way with the very best Greek text possible.
For other discussion of the Tyndale edition, see Tyndale House GNT and TNT Updates.
The most recent issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature carries Matthew Goldstone’s essay “Rebuke, Lending, and Love: An Early Exegetical Tradition on Leviticus 19:17–18” (307–21). According to the abstract,
In this article I posit the presence of an early Jewish exegesis of Lev 19:17–18 preserved in the Tannaitic midrash known as Sifra, which is inverted and amplified in Did. 1:3–5, Q 6:27–35, Luke 6:27–35, and Matt 5:38–44. Identifying shared terminology and a sequence of themes in these passages, I argue that these commonalities testify to the existence of a shared exegetical tradition. By analyzing the later rabbinic material I delineate the contours of this Second Temple period interpretation and augment our understanding of the construction of these early Christian pericopae. In commenting on Lev 19:17, Sifra articulates three permissible modes of rebuke: cursing, hitting, and slapping. In its gloss on the subsequent verse, Sifra exemplifies the biblical injunction against vengeance and bearing a grudge through the case of lending and borrowing from one’s neighbor. The Didache, Matthew, and Luke invert the first interpretation by presenting Jesus as recommending a passive response to being cursed or slapped, and they amplify the second interpretation by commanding one to give and lend freely to all who ask. The similar juxtaposition of these two ideas and the shared terminology between Sifra and these New Testament period texts suggest a common source. By reading these early Christian sources in light of this later rabbinic work I advance our understanding of the formation of these well-known passages and illustrate the advantages of cautiously employing rabbinic material for reading earlier Christian works.
In addition, I hadn’t been aware of it, but Goldstone’s n37 refers to John Piper’s SNTSMS publication of a revised version of his dissertation. This volume was republished by Crossway with an additional preface in 2012. As tends to be the case with a very few exceptions, this latest edition of the volume is available as a free PDF via the DesiringGod website.
The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society‘s current issue has an essay on the command to love one’s neighbor that I haven’t yet read but looks quite interesting too.
Crossway has recently released The Kingdom of God, co-edited by Christopher Morgan of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, and Robert Peterson, of Covenant Theological Seminary. According to Crossway’s description:
The kingdom of God is a very large biblical category indeed. Accordingly, a comprehensive understanding of the kingdom would illuminate many aspects of theology. With this in mind, Bruce Waltke, Robert Yarbrough, Gerald Bray, Clinton Arnold, Gregg Allison, Stephen Nichols, and Anthony Bradley have collaborated to articulate a full view of the kingdom of God across multiple disciplines. One of the most important books on the kingdom since G. E. Ladd, this volume offers a robust theology and is corroborated by the very series in which it stands. Fourth in the noted Theology in Community series, The Kingdom of God establishes the significance of the kingdom from the perspectives of biblical theology, systematic theology, history, pastoral application, missiology, and cultural analysis.
As a special perk, Crossway has made Gregg Allison’s essay, “The Kingdom and the Church” freely available on the book’s product page.
