Steve RungeDependent adverbial clauses are a common feature of Koine Greek, generally categorized based on the kind of content conveyed (e.g., conditional, comparative, spatial, temporal, reason/result, etc.). While many spatial and temporal adverbial clauses...
Often when we’re studying (a book of) the Bible, we come to a place where the author digresses from the big idea to make a side comment. To understand the passage, we have to figure out how to distinguish the main point from the digressions. In some...
I remember having my world turned upside down when I learned that there is a positive version of name-calling in the Bible. It’s everywhere. What might come to mind for you are places like Matt. 3:8 where John the Baptist greets the religious...
The Greek text has much to offer those teaching and preaching, but gleaning these insights can be a frustrating experience. Too often, people expect that word studies or assigning a syntactic label to a construction is as good as it gets. But the...
The following is excerpted from the High Definition Commentary: James. It is a sidebar about the linguistic implications of adopting (or rejecting) gender-inclusive language when NT writers directly address their audience. Should we stick with...
How is your summer going? How is your summer reading of Scripture going? Here’s another quick tip that can help you more deeply engage and understand what you are reading. As with all of the Summer Reading Challenge posts (here and here), the...
Most of the time when we are reading the Bible, we read about what happened to biblical characters e.g., David killing Goliath, Jesus feeding the 5000. In some places we even learn about what will happen in the future, as in the book of Revelation...
For those of you wondering where I’ve been, for the last two weeks I was at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology (WEST) and Cambridge, teaching and attending conferences. At WEST I taught a class similar to the Mobile Ed course now on Pre-Pub...
We are heading into the summer vacation season, the perfect time to let your bible reading go on vacation too! I am issuing a Summer Reading Challenge for those wanting to either enhance (or begin!) their regular time in Scripture. How? I will be...
Names are typically the best way of quickly achieving identification, especially if the person is already know to everyone. But sometimes context demands that you do something other than the ordinary. TV programs are a great modern example of this...
We’re going to take a look at another passage found in all three Synoptic gospels recounting Jesus’s response to the Pharisees complaint about His disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath in violation of law. All three gospels have the...
One of my favorite applications of discourse grammar is reading the Synoptic gospels, well, synoptically. Mathew, Mark and Luke have enough overlapping content that scholars often study the stories in parallel using what’s called a synopsis...
January marks the opening of the academic paper–proposal season for both the ETS and SBL annual meetings. These proposals play an important role in structuring my year, providing a theme or area of learning that I commit myself to for the year...
The Problem Few would deny the importance of learning Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic for teaching and preaching. Despite this high view of the original languages, I’ve heard numerous pastors lament the limited practical payoff of investing...
Expectation Expectations play a huge role in how we process life. Whenever I’m frustrated that God’s plan doesn’t match my expectations, the Apostle Peter’s experience gives me renewed hope. During Jesus’ last Passover...
We announced the Steven Runge’s presentation of  Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn to Levinsohn on the blog on July 5. Here is the story behind this event. We all have people...
Just in case you were wondering, Greek is different from English. But it’s not just the words that differ, there are also different preferences about how to get certain jobs done. These differences often result in a mismatch, where English won’t...