With various helpful videos in the internet about helping us understand the modern world by asking "what if the world were 100 people" I have had in my mind to make something similar for my own discipline, namely what would the Roman Empire look like if it were 100 people during Jesus' day?
As a teacher and a scholar of the New Testament, I’m passionate about good resources for Bible study. The reality is that most of the best resources cost something, particularly the more in-depth resources. But, the good news is that there are still a number of great resources that don’t cost a dime.
I am teaching for the first time a class on the Gospel of John, and having a great time doing so. One of the first things I tackled in the class was authorship – namely, who is the Beloved Disciple, the author of the Gospel?
I'll make a confession on behalf of all professors: we dislike poorly formatted papers. And while students may find it nitpicky, there are actually very good reasons for properly formatting an assignment. It allows the professor to focus on your content, rather than getting distracted by how presentation.
It has been awhile since I made a YouTube video and thought it was about time! I chose a passage of scripture that for pretty much my entire Christian life I have seen misused in the context of a communion service. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and please be sure to share this post if you liked the video, so more can see it! (below is a transcript if you'd rather read it than watch it).
Most of us who have desk jobs know that sitting so much isn't good for us, but we also tend to do nothing about it. I certainly didn't do anything. But once I read the aforementioned blog post (and was sufficiently alarmed by the infographic below), I decided to start being proactive. Not only did it make more sense to me that sitting too much wasn't good for me, but I have struggled with a lower back problem since I was 22 and threw it out while working at a warehouse.
Have you ever wondered why Matthew and Luke's genealogy of Jesus is different? It is clear to most scholars that Matthew is not intending to create and exhaustive genealogy of Jesus (or more specifically Joseph), but rather a dynastic genealogy. Matthew is using the genealogy to show how Jesus is in the line of dynastic succession. As such, the evangelist is not focused on an exhaustive list.
Google Books is an awesome resource to help you in your study. I am on the site constantly and have found it invaluable in my academic studies. Let me tell you how.
I’m not a fan of silence, particularly when I’m in my office working. But I’m also an easily distracted person. For awhile, I tried to multi-task my mind by listening to podcasts while working. While I enjoyed the podcast content, it didn’t take me long to figure out that this was bad for productivity. I then moved to just putting iTunes on random.
Most of you know that I publish mobile apps for learning Greek - one of them being FlashGreek Pro. If you have ever wondered exactly what FlashGreek is all about and how it might be able to help you, this demo video will explain it all. Please pass the video along to any Greek students, seminary students, and Bible College students that you know.
A while back I was listening to a podcast about mentors by Michael Hyatt (one of my favorite podcasts) and it had me reflecting on people that have had an influence on me. One of the things Hyatt talked about was finding mentors and learning from people you don’t necessarily even know - learning through podcasts, books, etc. There are a number of people I would point to as being mentors in my life: people I try to continue learning from. From time to time on this blog I want to take time to reflect on some things I’ve learned from my mentors.
Where Did The Greek Deponents Go? Answer - they never existed in the first place. I learned Greek from David Alan Black’s book Learn to Read New Testament Greek. But over the course of teaching introduction to Greek and developing mobile apps to learn Biblical Greek, I have become familiar with all of the major intro Greek grammars and have now written my own too.
I am a fan of video courses, and given my use of Udemy.com for my own courses it should be no secret that I’m a big fan of that platform. Over the next little while I will be recommending some video courses which will appear on my recommended courses page. The first recommended course that I want to recommend today is the Critical Thinker Academy.
One of the biggest impediments to my own productivity are the time wasting sites -– in particular Facebook and YouTube. I enjoy both sites, so I do not want to totally ditch them. Not only does Facebook keep me connected, but as I mentioned before, it is how I keep up on reading interesting articles.
For a long time I read blogs using Google Reader. Even before its unfortunate demise I found myself frequenting Google Reader less and less. And when I did go to it the feed list was so long I didn't end up reading much of it at all.
Maria and I try our best to be intentional parents. We think about what we do and why we do it. We don't always get it right, and there are a few places I feel we need to improve. But one place I feel we got it right is in the area of screen time.
Those of you in the field of Biblical Studies know that it is important to keep your eyes out on the latest journal publications. Even if you don't read every article, you want to keep an eye out on the articles coming out so that you can keep on top of areas of your own interest. Even for those articles that aren't in your area of interest, reading the abstracts quickly on new articles is a great practice to cultivate.
During my final year in seminary I watched a video that interviewed Dr. Andrew MacRae and several of the ADC alumnus. I don't remember the class I was in, and I don't even remember why we were watching the video. But there is one thing that stuck out in my mind, and it was a question they asked the alumnus they talked to: "what are some of the most important books on your bookshelf." Every single one of them said it was their commentaries.
Hey, thanks for checking out my new little corner of the web.
I've actually been on the internets for quite some time. It was now many moons ago, but I (and my friend Paul Nikkel) were among some of the first bibliobloggers (i.e. folks blogging about biblical studies) around. Now there are hundreds. But I remember the time when there was only about a dozen of us (Goodacre, Davila, Carlson, Heard, etc.) It was actually kind of fun being an M.Div. student and having conversations with these scholars. The blog and website was called deinde.org (still sitting there but not really maintained anymore). What made it really fun for me as a junior scholar was going to SBL for my first time – people knew who I was!
My blogging slowly wound down as I got busy with life, but I started focusing on other things like creating free content (check out the freebies page for some examples) as well as starting to work on creating apps and even publishing.
Once I launched my first mobile app ParseGreek, I started www.NTGreekResources.com to house all of my Greek related resources. Once I did that, though, I realized that it wasn't really scalable in that it was specific to Greek stuff, and not necessarily the other content I was creating as well as some of my other interests. And I have thought about blogging again for a little while now.
Then it happened. The server holding www.NTGreekResources.com crashed. The server is owned by a friend, and I can't seem to get a hold of that friend. Given that I'm trying to promote all my stuff, not having a website isn't a great idea. So that pushed me to get this website up and going. So NTGreekResources.com will now point to this site, and I'll have a place to promo any stuff I'm doing, plus start blogging again (which I've been thinking about for awhile).
The topics will be varied, as the sidebar states. I'm obviously interested in Biblical Studies. But if you know me, you know I'm a bit of a tech geek too. I'm also interested in productivity as well as parenting and leadership. This blog will reflect all of that, plus I'll try and point out interesting stuff I find from time to time.
