Note: this is the abridged verion of a talk I gave at Seminario ESEPA, on the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. To download the entire article with footnotes, go HERE or download the pdf here: Shogren_The Priesthood of All Believers in the Reformation En español: Shogren_El sacerdocio de todos los creyentes We are celebrating the 500th anniversary of... Continue Reading →
The Priesthood of All Believers in the Reformation
To download the entire article with footnotes, click here: Shogren_The Priesthood of All Believers in the Reformation En español: Shogren_El sacerdocio de todos los creyentes Introduction 1. The Catholic Doctrine 2. The Reformation and Beyond: Luther, Calvin, the Anabaptists, the Wesleyans 3. Modern Abuses of the Doctrine: Anti-Intellectualism, the "Super-Anointed" Leader, Hyper-Individualism Conclusion Introduction Some years back three... Continue Reading →
The NIV and six degrees of Rupert Murdoch
We see it in panicked blog posts and garish YouTube videos, and hear it in whispers from concerned friends! That Rupert Murdoch is trying to take your Bible away from you and make you use the NIV Bible instead! That he is a friend to the Vatican and a pornographer and the guy who put... Continue Reading →
My month with the Book of Mormon – May 2017
To download the article as a document, take a picture here: The Bible is really, incredibly old! The Old and New Testaments were copied by hand for centuries, if not millennia! And to interpret the Bible correctly, an expert ought to be well aware of the original languages! At least, that’s how it is with my... Continue Reading →
Holy books, wholly understandable
I try, every year, to read the scripture of some other faith. That is, read the books themselves, not just a second-hand analysis of them In 2016 it was the Koran, which I found well worth the read, if a little repetitious. It is about 4/5 the length of the New Testament. In 2017 I... Continue Reading →
What I read in 2016, the short list
I have always been a big reader, but never anything close to my list for 2016. That’s when I began to use the wonderful online group, Goodreads.com, to log the books that I have read, am reading, and want to read. I am up over 1900 books that I have logged as "read" in my lifetime, so... Continue Reading →
A Year of Aramaic and Syriac!
October 10, 2016 is the day! We will be launching Peshar (Aramaic for "interpretation"), our new Facebook group for learning and reading Aramaic and Syriac. If you can already read biblical Hebrew and would like to expand your skills, let me know if you want to join! Visit HERE. Within a few weeks we will be... Continue Reading →
Thoughts on Hebrew and Greek from a Scholar: Will Varner
Thanks to Dr. Will Varner for this article, to which I here post a link. It's a topic that interests me, but once in a while I come across an article and have to conclude, "This person expresses it so much better than I could, so I'll just link to their article!" DO WE NEED TO... Continue Reading →
Strong’s Concordance – a Good Tool Gone Bad
To download the entire article, click here Shogren_Strongs Concordance For Bible students who don’t use Hebrew and Greek, the Strong Concordance is a popular tool, available online. [1] But it has a serious limitation – namely: the “dictionary” in the back of Strong’s is not really a dictionary at all, and should not be used... Continue Reading →
Is the KJV a perfect translation? According to its translators, no
George Guthrie has an informative and edifying article on the King James Version. In particular, he explores how the translators themselves regarded what they were doing and how it stood in relation to other versions. They also expected the KJV to be later corrected and improved! By implication, they did not hold to the doctrine... Continue Reading →