Quick Bible Study on James

I challenged our 20s & 30s to pick a book of the Bible and study it. We can talk about how to all day long but it does no good if Bibles don’t come off shelves. I encouraged them to start with James due to its brevity and practicality and several of them have taken [...]

Must Have Bible Resources

My list of “must have” Bible resources has certainly changed over the last couple of years. This is certainly not an exhaustive list but it is a list of books that I believe you can’t go wrong in purchasing.
1) The Anchor Bible Dictionary (6 Volume Set)
(David Noel Freedman) – This is one impressive piece of [...]

Passing Notes in Class Goes All the Way Back to Ancient Biblical Copyists

I just love this quote from Bruce Metzger’s book The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (4th Edition)
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Though scribes were forbidden to talk to one another in the scriptorium, the more irrepressible found devious ways to communicate with each other. One such means was to jot remarks in the margin of [...]

ZHubert is No More

It is a sad day. The Zhubert website is down for good. I guess I will actually have to open my Greek New Testament now. At least I am up 50% on my retirement account since the beginning of March and I saved a load of money by switching to Geico.

Rhetoric in Paul’s Letter to Philemon

I am uploading a paper I wrote at Harding Graduate School of Religion for Dr. Oster’s class on Paul’s Prison Letters on Paul’s Use of Rhetoric in Philemon for all you Philemon fans out there. This paper discusses slavery in the ancient world, ancient Greek rhetoric and more specifically the rhetorical devices that Paul uses [...]

Resources on How to Read the Bible More Effectively

For those of you who want to read their Bible more effectively (in terms of interpretation and application) here are some resources you may want to consider:
Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight (more conversational)
Eat This Book: a conversation in the art of spiritual reading by Eugene Peterson (more conversational)
Elements of [...]

Biblical Archaeology Blogs and Books

Blogs
There are some blogs out there specifically for the study of the ancient near east that offer some really interesting posts that connect recent archaeological finds with the Bible. One of my favorites is Dr. Claude Mariottini’s blog aptly titled “Dr. Claude Mariottini – Professor of the Old Testament“.
Some of his recent posts include:
The largest [...]

Small Group Lesson Downloads Top 4000

I am very, very happy to say that we have had our 4000th download of the free small group curriculum provided here at kingdom living. It is exciting to me to know that this is changing lives and being used. I have received many emails stating how successful these have been used and the difference [...]

How To Read the Bible as Literature by Ryken

A great quote that I ran across as I am starting to read this excellent book by Leland Ryken:
“What does it mean to approach the Bible as literature? It means first of all to be sensitive to the experiential side of the Bible. It means to resist the tendency to turn every biblical passage into [...]

More Links – Oprah, Tolle, and Witherington on Choosing a Bible Translation

I appreciate Margaret Manning of Ravi Zacharias ministries for pointing me in the direction of this blog. There are some lengthy posts and discussions of various components of Oprah and Tolle’s New Earth spirituality. I found it very interesting and helpful. Here is the link.
I also wanted to mention some audio from Ben Witherington on [...]