Mark WardEven professors who teach biblical languages typically teach just one of those languages. They must put forth some effort to maintain their skills in the language they don’t teach. Pastors, too, must take practical steps to retain their knowledge of...
Most of the time you look up a Hebrew word you probably don’t want the extreme depth and complication afforded by the top lexicons. Neither do you want to wade through a tight paragraph of tiny print full of abbreviations you don’t use often enough...
It’s the question that can derail the Sunday School class, make the pastor look poorly educated (i.e., “dumb”), and possibly even damage someone’s faith: Pastor, how come this footnote says that some manuscripts do not include the story of the woman...
You’re reading along in Philippians and your eyes traverse Paul’s famous phrase, “our citizenship is in heaven.” Your job, Bible student or teacher, is to understand this metaphor well enough to explain it to others. But at first, it may not feel...
Have you ever been listening to a preacher who is using a Bible translation different from the one in your lap? Generally, the wording is similar enough to avoid confusion; in fact those differences often provide little insights. But occasionally...
Your brain has already learned one of the most basic Bible study skills: finding connections. When you’re reading an ending to one of Paul’ letters, maybe you hear a faint echo. You think, “Didn’t Paul say something like this at the end of...
Love of God and neighbor are the two great commandments upon which everything else in the Bible hangs—and, interestingly, the Bible happens to be the only book in the world written by both God and neighbor. So, for Christians, love drives...
Your library is an information filter that is itself the product of information filtering. You filtered out all the other books in the world to buy these books, and now, hopefully, they filter out all the information available in the world to tell...
We may hate to admit it, but if we’re honest with ourselves, even our favorite English Bible translations can at times be clunky. Here’s an example I was just teaching about in adult Sunday School. Check out the three phrases I bolded: “your work of...
Neutrality is a myth. Put in biblical terms, either you love the Lord or you don’t. Every thought you think, every choice you make, every word you say, flows from that heart and is determined by its fundamental direction, whether toward God or away...
Postmodern literary theorists are favorite whipping boys in evangelical hermeneutics textbooks, and Stanley Fish is no exception (although Fish prefers the title “antifoundationalist”). This makes Winning Arguments, the latest book from the former...
Christianity cannot be boiled down to a list of words—say, positive character qualities to be cultivated and opposite, negative qualities to be avoided. Virtue and vice lists by themselves can’t handle the complexities of life. Some loves in...
The Bible speaks in some way to anything you can think of, but it doesn’t speak explicitly to everything you can think of.b In other words, the Bible never uses the term “work ethic,” but it does tell us to do all to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31)...
I’m not opposed to using the scenic route down the coast from work to home; I’ve taken it multiple times. But never on a workday, always on a Saturday. I’m not opposed to using the scenic route in Bible study, either. I’ve taken it multiple times...
Image: DesiringGod.org Christians and non-Christians argue about the truth of the Bible all the time. (Because Internet . . .) Christians even argue with other Christians about how to argue about the truth of the Bible: what’s the wisest evangelism...
I’ve come to realize that in order to know the Bible there is no replacement for reading the entire thing. I’m going to give three reasons why you need to aim to read even the portions of the Bible you somehow rarely get around to—and why I myself...
The screen printer standing in my living room was trying to sell me on a new four-color process for the kids Bible club shirts my church needed. One problem: he came to the door asking for “Mike,” not “Mark” because I kind of forgot to tell him the...
“Let It Go” from Disney’s animated movie Frozen (2014) was and is a mega hit. The melody is both powerful and catchy, and Idina Menzel can sing icicles off reindeers. The piece won the Oscar for best original song, reached the top five in the...
Does widespread human disagreement over Bible interpretation reveal some flaw or weakness in God or his word—or some flaw or weakness in us? Or neither, or both? This is the third of three articles on the clarity of Scripture. I’ve clarified the...
[wpsocialite] Jen Hatmaker recently launched a kerfuffle in the evangelical blogosphere (meteorologists have started to assign these kerfuffles their own names, like hurricanes) by reconsidering her stance on a hotly contested biblical doctrine. I...
Leaders of the Protestant Reformation, particularly Luther but also Calvin, affirmed the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture. Basically, the doctrine (as it has developed) teaches that all Christians can and should read the Bible with spiritual...
I constantly compare Bible translations during Bible study and exegesis. But not everyone sees the value in this practice, and some are outright skeptical: they think I’m inviting confusion, a he-said, she-said method of exegesis. Or they think it’s...
How would you find all the rhetorical questions in the New Testament—like “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” Finding such questions—questions which aren’t seeking answers but are instead making statements—is a tougher task...
My wife regularly works domestic miracles. Case in point: she actually reads her Bible first thing in the morning. She’s a mother with young children and a lot of responsibility. We never know how much sleep Mommy will get on any given night, and...
Crossway recently released the English Standard Version in a 2016 “Permanent Text” edition (the updated text will be free for Logos users who own the ESV). The ESV, it was announced, would remain “unchanged forever, in perpetuity.” As Christianity...
I have written seminary-level exegesis papers, and I have graded them—dozens of them. And I’m going to tell you a few secrets I don’t think your teachers will mind me telling their students. They’ve already told you what you really need to know...
I want to know the Bible. Do you? There are many methods for Bible study out there, and every one I’ve ever seen has something of value to contribute. Let me add one, however, that I’ve never seen anyone else explain: borrow an open secret from...
The viewpoints of Christians of the past are not authoritative over us in the same way the Bible is—or even the same way our pastors are (Heb. 13:17). Past generations of believers made theological errors just like us, because they were fallen and...
I was recently writing something about biblical archaeology, and it happened again, that thing that’s always happening to me in Bible study—does it happen to you? I was trying to find the location of a verse whose exact wording I was pretty sure I...
Recently I got to play my favorite sport—ultimate Frisbee—twice in one week. The first game was just about the best I’ve had in my 14 years as an ultimate player. Pretty much every time I threw the disc toward the end zone, it snuck just past the...