Musings of a Snickerdoodle

 "True spiritual illumination comes from Scripture,  which is 'profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for every good work' (2 Tim. 3: 16-17).  As the man of God is equipped for every good work, we see that Scripture is not only indispensable, but also sufficient.  No other supposed sources of truth need be consulted to receive the spiritual illumination necessary for salvation. "  Victor Kuligin The Language of Salvation: Discovering the Riches of What it Means to be Saved Find more quotes on my quotes blog: http://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

I was quite excited when I saw that a new English translation of the Septuagint was coming out. I'm always interested in new Septuagint resources.  The Septuagint is an old, Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Some (or all?) of the manuscripts of the Septuagint that we have today are much older than the Hebrew manuscripts on which most of our English Old Testaments are based so it can be pretty useful in textual criticism and Bible study as well (Some quotations that the Apostles made, from the Septuagint, are significantly different than our current Hebrew Old Testament text).   If an English speaking person says they're quoting from "the Bible", we don't associate "the Bible" as only referring to one particular translation (unless you're KJV only). When we talk about the "Septuagint", it's sort of like saying   "the Greek translation of the Old Testament", it's just a shorter way of saying it.   Th...

I saw that there was a book on hermeneutics coming out by Abner Chou.  I thought his name sounded familiar, looked it up and remembered that I had listened to a message by him a while back, critiquing the Christocentric hermeneutic and thought that it was pretty good.  Therefore I wanted to see how Chou would tackle hermeneutics overall in a book. This book, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles is written from the perspective that the Bible has a "built-in hermeneutic".   We don't have to come up with our own. I loved that Chou points out that we don't need to go searching the hermeneutical methods of the nations in the days that the books of the Bible were written, rather we search the Bible to see how the text interprets itself.   But sadly, overall I did not like the book.   Let me explain why.   First, I didn't like how the author keeps saying that the prophets were th...

The Baker Compact Dictionary of Biblical Studies is a dictionary that seeks to provide definitions and explanations for words that you will find in many books and articles that delve into the study of the text of the Bible.   It gives definitions and brief overviews of places, scholarly terminology, prominent people whose works are mentioned in theological books. It was pretty interesting to just sit and read through a lot of the information in the book, to learn a lot of new things and even to glean some extra helpful information about events, people and places that I already knew a few things about.   If I came across something that I've already become acquainted with I felt sort of reluctant to read those parts, thinking something along the lines of, "this is just a dictionary, what more could it tell me about that?" But I was surprised at some of the extra information I gleaned.   For example,   I have done a bit of reading on the "Counsel of Jamnia...

Spirituality is…not an individualistic experience of solitude, defined by the amount of time spent in protracted periods of communion alone with God, but  an active obedience to God's commands that practically demonstrates love to others and is integrally involved in Jesus's mission to the world.  Christian spirituality, properly understood is a spirituality of engagement, not withdrawal…There is nothing inherently spiritual about the study of Scripture if that study does not lead to obedient, active application.  - Andreas Kostenberger From his book   Excellence: The Character of God and the Pursuit of Scholarly Virtue See more quotes on my quote collection blog:   https://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

The Spurgeon Study Bible is a very neat idea.  As most people somewhat acquainted with Mr. Spurgeon know, he was not a verse-by-verse through a book of the Bible kind of preacher.  He usually would choose a verse (or portion of verses) for one Sunday and would preach on that and then preach on another (non-related, often from a whole different book)verse the next week. And also, some may also notice that his preaching was not always very exegetical. That being said, this  commentary is a great compilation!  It sort of gives a glimpse of how it would have been if Spurgeon went by a more verse by verse preaching style, and it focuses on snippets from his sermons that are more exegetical. The version that I have is the brown and tan cloth over board Bible.  It is very nicely bound and seems quite durable.  The spine has some fancy looking ridges on it and the front has Spurgeon's signature printed on the bottom left. There is a lot ...

Though I'm still a beginner in learning Koine Greek, I still like to snap up any Koine Greek language resource that I can when any becomes available to review - especially since my sisters are more advanced (and more faithful in) in the study of Greek than I am.  I like to find various language resources to use as Christmas presents for them and my dad (a pastor).  In The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament is an excellent idea! Upon receiving the book, I began having doubts as to whether I should actually have requested to review it, I became afraid that it was rather over my head - my fault because I have not kept up with my Koine Greek.  But in studying the book more closely, it proves to have great potential as an extremely valuable resource in New Testament reading, and one that I will definitely give to one of my more advanced family members for Christmas. This book compiles a list of difficult and...

The CSB Reader's Bible is designed to make it easy to sit down and just read each individual book. It is more along the lines of how it would have been read by the early Christians whose Bibles (or sections of the Bible/individual letters) were not divided into chapters and verses until many, many years after the Apostles had died. The text of this "Reader's Bible" is in a single column, like a regular book, instead being placed in two columns.  It has no chapter numbers and no verse numbers.   This edition is a nice looking grey cloth over board volume, and includes an attached ribbon marker.  The font is a nice size and seems about the size of a regular book's font and is a very readable edition. I do want to note that the pages are very thin and quite flimsy, much like, or exactly like, a regular Bible's pages. I think that the edition would be nicer if the pages were the same thickness as a regular book's.  But perhaps they would have to divide it...

(This is my full review - most of the other sites I posted an edited version as the full review could not be posted due to size limits)  Evidence For the Rapture: A Biblical Case For Pretribulationism - General Editor John Hart is a compilation of several essays by several men in defense of the pretrib rapture. I wanted to read this book primarily because it is a topic that our church is examining at the moment (we're in Matthew 24). We've been wrestling with the concept of the rapture and are actually leaning strongly in a Post-tribulational direction. My dad, a pastor has held a pretrib rapture stance for all of his life, until recently, and he wants to make sure that there is no compelling exegetical argument that he has not heard defending a pretrib rapture (and he's heard many arguments for it). I saw that this book was available for me to choose in the reviewing program I'm a part of and so I snatched it up. Each chapter of the book deals with various arg...

Looking for a book that will give you good guidelines for studying the Bible well? Inductive Bible Study by Richard Alan Fuhr Jr. and Andreas J. Kostenberger is a good resource on the topic. As the authors of this book explain, God chose to reveal His will to us through His written Word, rather than through personal revelation/new revelation.  He chose that it would be learned progressively with effort rather than instantly without any work on our part. We should revere God's choice method of conveying the knowledge of Him that He wants us to have and His will that is revealed through this collection of holy documents.  Fuhr and Kostenberger take you through a series of steps that will assist you in reverently discovering and handling what God's Word says with accuracy and reverence. The steps you are taken through range from: comparing English Bible translations, Asking the right questions of the text, using commentaries, word studies, practicing discernment and of cou...

A Syntax Guide For Readers of the New Testament by Charles Lee Irons is a nice addition to one's NT Greek tools library.  It is not a stand-alone tool, but meant to be used with  other lexical aids.  Irons notes that,  "This Syntax Guide does not duplicate the help provided by such tools.  Rather, it picks up where these other tools leave off"  and  "presupposes their use…"    The introduction explains that in this guide, "select cases, glosses and parsing are not the focus".  Rather, in some places it gives specific explanations of "syntactical, clause-level features". There is a chapter for each book of the New Testament, and each book is divided into chapters and each chapter has a list of select verse references from that chapter and next to the reference there may be  a section of the Greek wording of the verse and some comments .   Some of the verses only have a brief...