Musings of a Snickerdoodle

Fiction Polycarp: a destroyer of our gods  - By Rick Lambert This book will work even for those who don't normally read novels, as it's not just fiction, it is also instructive and edifying, it's like a book on spiritual growth only in the format of a novel. Most novels are entertaining, carrying you along by the emotions and imagination and, although they are certainly enjoyable to read, it is a bit discouraging that, when one is done with them, one is left with the feeling of having catered to oneself rather than having grown in any way. This book is an edifying novel, wherein you learn along with the main character rather than merely being an observer of him and the different events in his life. You are carried along by a desire to learn, not merely a desire to be entertained. While most novels inspire you to read more novels, this one inspires you to read God’s word. Instead of making you want to live in a different time, a different pl...

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...

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...

Greek for Everyone by A. Chadwick Thornhill presents a unique book on New Testament Greek.  His  stated goal is to have those reading this book learn  "Greek in order to become better students of the Scripture rather than students of Greek."  The aim of the book is not to  "gain reading proficiency but rather are working to establish the ability to use various tools to study the text in Greek".    And I think that Thornhill accomplishes his goals with this book, he   takes you through a basic (though it still seems quite thorough) overview of the various parts of Greek so that you may then use lexicons, parsing guides, and other Greek tools in your Bible study without having to become an expert Greek scholar.  Thornhill starts out by explaining that one of the most important things to do in acquiring a knowledge of Koine Greek that is useful to Bible study is to remember to keep looking for the 'big picture' in a text/pas...