A feather in your theological cap.
The personal blog of pastor, grammarian, and runner Brent Niedergall
Text and Paratext
A Book Review The Bible is full of words, which we expect because Scripture is a text. The Bible also includes many paratextual features that, by definition, are not the words of Scripture. Gregory Goswell, in Text and Paratext: Book Order, Title, and Division as Keys...
Scribes and Scripture
A Book Review What paths and processes stand between the original written words of Scripture and modern Bibles printed today? The Bible’s history is complex and often misunderstood. You can find technical books about textual criticism and canonicity—specific aspects...
Jesus and the Gospels
A Book Review Craig Blomberg’s Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey is now in its third edition. First published in 1997, Bloomberg’s work has been updated to benefit a new generation of students, professors, and pastors. According to the introduction,...
The King of Christmas
A Book Review The King of Christmas: All God’s Children Search for Jesus is the third book in a growing series of FatCat Books from Lexham Press. Author Todd Hains and illustrator Natasha Kennedy have, once again, made Cat-echism spiritually edifying, colorful, and...
Five Views on the New Testament Canon
A Book Review While the canon of Scripture is settled, a consensus on the questions of its formation and entailments is not. In Five Views on the Testament Canon, five biblical scholars respond to three questions: How did the 27 books of the New Testament come to be...
The Lord’s Prayer: For All God’s Children
A Book Review Award-winning author Harold Senkbeil has written an excellent children's book in Lexham’s FatCat series called The Lord’s Prayer: For All God’s Children. Other books in this series include The Apostles’ Creed: For All God’s Children and The King of...
Logos 10 Review
Introduction This is a review of Logos 10. (The package I used for this review is Logos 10 Academic Professional.) As a Bible curriculum editor, adult Sunday school teacher, church member, recent DMin graduate, and soon-to-be Ph.D. applicant (hopefully), I’m using...
The Book of Enoch for Beginners
A Book Review Phil Long’s The Book of Enoch for Beginners: A Guide to Expand Your Understanding of the Biblical World is a clear and compact introduction to 1 Enoch, a Jewish apocalyptic work composed “as early as the third century BCE in Judea” (3). According to the...
Postclassical Greek Prepositions and Conceptual Metaphor
A Book Review William A. Ross and Steven E. Runge, eds., Postclassical Greek Prepositions and Conceptual Metaphor: Cognitive Semantic Analysis and Biblical Interpretation, Fontes et Subsidia ad Bibliam pertinentes 12 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022). Introduction This book...
Wet Bread in Ecclesiastes
I've spent the last year writing a verse-by-verse devotional on the Book of Ecclesiastes. Below, I've shared the original version of a devotion that was later shortened to fit on a single page. "Cast your bread upon the waters, "the Book of Ecclesiastes advises us,...