Gary Shogren's Blog
We hear Christians shout it - our post it, or mutter it: 'We're at WAR, man! Everyone to the barricade! Utterly destroy [this year's enemy]! Use sarcasm, invective, innuendo, false rumors, expletives, fake news, whatever it takes to wipe them out!' "In the name of God, I must annihilate thee! But don't worry, they tell... Continue Reading →
BACKGROUND: Every year, we run a Facebook Community page for people who want to do Bible study in the ancient languages. In the past we have done the whole New Testament in Greek, the Pentateuch in Hebrew, the entire Septuagint, the Apostolic Fathers in Greek, and an Aramaic self-study. In 2021 we will feature the... Continue Reading →
I have a limited number of people whom I would call my heroes. In fact, one time in an interview I was asked to name a hero of mine: "Uh...Abraham Lincoln" was all I could come up with. In fact, it was President's Day, and the picture of Lincoln hanging on the wall of the... Continue Reading →
When we celebrate Communion, we usually read from 1 Corinthians 11. That’s a right practice, but another layer of studying the Bible is to ask, Why did Paul bring this up, here, in this letter? It wasn’t to teach them the ritual, because they had been celebrating communion for years. So, why now? Paul tells... Continue Reading →
Not everyone can read the biblical languages. Some of us can read them at a decently intermediate level, a few people at a higher level. But there is an entire army out there with little to no Greek, who claim to be able to reinterpret the Bible from the original language, usually based on the... Continue Reading →
I am committed to using the very best edition of the Greek New Testament. At this moment, I accept as best the Nestle-Aland 28th edition (NA-28; I do not say this to put down the SBL or the Tyndale House New Testaments, but that is an issue for another day). Thus I am dumbfounded by... Continue Reading →
This material adapted from 1-2 Thessalonians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, from pages 161-66. The book is available from Amazon and as a discount from Amazon, and also from Logos, in Korean and also in Spanish. 1 Thess 4:4 is the most complex verse in the Thessalonian correspondence because of the difficulty of... Continue Reading →
Never before in human history have so many people had such easy access to the Bible - or people of any faith to their sacred books, for that matter - than we have to the Scriptures. Reading through the entire Bible in a year is a terrific goal for any year. And my very favorite... Continue Reading →
“Morpho-syntactical exegesis”: it all sounds so mysterious! It is not. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that there is no such thing as morpho-syntactical exegesis as such. Morpho-syntactical analysis, on the other hand, is a thing. Such analysis involves the identification and labeling of each word of a Greek sentence as... Continue Reading →
From the very beginning I was a reluctant blogger. Years ago, when my friend Mark suggested that I blog, my response was: “Isn’t that one of those things where I would go on and give random opinions and share vacation pictures?” Well, he answered, some blogs are like that, but listen, if it's your blog,... Continue Reading →
