Mark WardAs a kid, maybe 10 or 12, I was leafing through my red-letter edition of the Bible and I noticed that there was one section of unbroken red text that was longer than any other. It was Matthew 5–7. I thought that was kind of cool, and if my memory...
When news reached me last week that I. Howard Marshall had passed away, my mind ran, of course, to pieces he’d written, books on my shelf and on my computer. The primary two works that came to mind were his New Testament Theology and his commentary...
What do you think is the most “Christmasy” book in the New Testament? The obvious frontrunners are Matthew and Luke, especially their opening portions. One of the reasons these books will show up so often in Christmas-time sermons and Bible studies...
G. K. Chesterton: Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. (85) I...
I was born in a Bible study forest, but I didn’t know it. Trees every few feet, tree upon tree. I got to know them pretty well; I could hardly help it: sycamore, acacia, olive, cedar, fig, palm, terebinth. An occasional glade on a rise in that...
The languages of the world are often represented in a family-tree diagram in which “parent” languages such as Proto-Slavic branch out into “child” languages such as Russian, Polish, and Croatian. Just as in real-life human lineages, the parents may...
I was sitting at a lunch table with some acquaintances. Acquaintances, not friends. I admit we sat there for a while staring at our food and waiting for the awkwardness to subside. Kind of like me and my Bible sometimes, I’m sad to say. But then, at...
I was somewhat surprised, after I posted about Jesus’ use of the diminutive κυνάριον in his delightful conversation with the Syrophoenician woman (Matt 15:26–27), to have several people make comments like this one: Was the historical Jesus really...
The Logos Pros are here to help the church. And one of the things the church is processing right now, along with much of the rest of the world, is the role digital tools will play in their reading. D.G. writes: I seek out many of the volumes...
I caved. Somebody sent me one of those time-wasting links you know you’re not supposed to click on if you want to get any work done. But I couldn’t help it. “Find out what your most used words on Facebook are,” the link said. I was like Digory at...
The newly updated New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis was updated because of the assiduous work of one man, Moisés Silva, whose work I have admired for a long time. Because of that admiration, I was both excited about...
Almost four years to the day before I came to serve the church at Logos Bible Study, I wrote a post on my personal blog, “How to Pronounce ‘Logos’ in ‘Logos Bible Software.’” You see, there’s something of a schism among Logos aficionados, with...
I once had a grandmotherly friend, a secretary in my office, who had great interest in the Bible but no training in the biblical languages. Her strength as a Bible student came from one obvious and one hidden source. The obvious source was her daily...
I’m going to give you two sets of overlapping opinions on this issue, one set you should listen to and then my own set. This post is aiming mostly for the person who has no opinions on the issue, and was only dimly aware that opinions existed. You...
Plenty of Bible interpreters treat New Testament Greek the way my three-year-old girl treats my one-year-old boy: with well-meaning, blundering over-attention that ends up making him cry. Evangelical scholar and linguist Moisés Silva has a hilarious...
What do you do if you get a sudden, unexpected opportunity to teach or preach God’s Word? I often turn to what is for me one of the most precious of Jesus’ parables, the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant—a passage one of my favorite writers on the...
One of the things that really fascinated and even awed me after I asked for comments from readers of this Greek email list is that so many of you have taught yourselves Greek.Now, my experience is not universal, but I judge learning languages on...
I have a friend who began college as a religion major because he didn’t know what else to do, but who is now pursuing a PhD in English. He wasn’t much of a reader in high school, kind of a slacker, really—until one day in a freshman Old Testament...
I am a member of OLSHA, the Original Languages Safely Handled Association. Our mission—well, okay, my mission (nobody else has yet joined the association)—is to help people who love Scripture but don’t know Greek and Hebrew to use the original...
Here’s a great question for you Greek students to ask, and a helpful (I hope) answer for you Greek teachers to give. J.H. writes: I am a second-year student in [a theological seminary] in Nigeria. I am presently taking Greek Grammar 1. My challenge...
Most people who speak English know that Bobby, Billy, Betsy, and Benjy are all short for something else. Your little Suzy will likely one day outgrow her nickname and revert to the more adult “Susanna.” But nicknames sometimes go through a reverse...
The style and arrangement of words in your Bible is like wallpaper for most people: you only notice it if it changes, and maybe not even then. But in fact, the typography in our Bibles matters a great deal—and it matters because it means. For...
You do and you don’t need Hebrew to understand the Old Testament. You don’t, because the Bible has already been translated into English. You do, because there are different levels of understanding: There’s your certified mechanic and your weekend...