Gary Shogren's Blog
By “Highlights” I do not mean the kids’ magazine, that staple of my dentist’s office as a kid, but rather my favorite reads of the year. I read 104 books in 2018 as I pursued my goal of two books a week; this does not include daily Bible reading or magazines. One happy turn was... Continue Reading →
Last month we announced a two-year safari, reading through the Septuagint version of the Scriptures, from cover to cover! Our friend David Baer (PhD from Cambridge, specialist in the Septuagint of Isaiah) has decided to join the group. He wanted to say a few words! Why read the Septuagint? The whole Septuagint??!! Over two years??!!... Continue Reading →
Our Goal: A two-year excursion through the Septuagint, including the Deuterocanonical books, from January 1, 2019 through the close of 2020. We will offer weekly reading plans that will average about a chapter and a half per day; for example, the week of January 1-6 we will read Genesis 1-12 LXX. The Psalms will be... Continue Reading →
It is common knowledge that the apostle knew by heart the entire text of the Hebrew Scriptures. He also was able to cite another version at will: the Greek version of the Bible known as the Septuagint. This is the version he almost always quote in his letters to Greek-speaking Christians. Thus: when he quoted... Continue Reading →
I have been working on and off for the past few years on a new book. It is a real departure for me, working through how to face ministry disappointments, whether minor or major. What happens when God's servants face apathy, ingratitude, racism, psychological issues, physical ailments, lies, and other problems? Our solution is not... Continue Reading →
Have you seen the memes that go like this? A pastor friend just mentioned something that I had also wondered, that the figure 365 seemed really high! So I ran it through my Bible software, and within a few minutes found that the number indeed was way off.[1] “Fear not” is a Kings-James-ism; the NET... Continue Reading →
Originally published as: “The ‘Ultracharismatics’ of Corinth and the Pentecostals of Latin America as the religion of the disaffected.” Tyndale Bulletin 56.2 (2005): 91-110. This is a detailed exegetical study, more technical than most of what I post on this blog. To download the article as a pdf, click here Ultracharismatics in Corinth and in Latin... Continue Reading →
When I first saw the title of the epic novel Cien Años de Soledad by Gabriel García Márquez, and got that it meant “one hundred years of solitude,” my heart leapt in anticipation. But 500 pages later, I finally grasped that the protagonists of the story didn’t get their promised seclusion; the title seems to... Continue Reading →
Gary's Introduction: this concept of Band-Societies was a small group dynamic, in which believers would volunteer to be accountable to one another. It has inspired similar meetings for almost three centuries. By the way, this was not simply a "lowest-common-denominator" group to share your feelings and that was that! These same men also gathered for... Continue Reading →
