Old Testament for Everyone Series
Accordance has had the complete series since September 2016, when are you planing on completing it in Logos?
-Dan
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Would love this in Logos.. There is a NT one too..0
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Dan Francis said:
Accordance has had the complete series since September 2016, when are you planing on completing it in Logos?
-Dan
Dan, since you have the series, do you find the new testament series worth buying?
In you opinion what other commentary in Logos is simular?
I am fighting the temptation to buy the Anglican Bronze to get the series in the new testament.
Any thoughts on the matter?
Thanks, Tom
http://hombrereformado.blogspot.com/ Solo a Dios la Gloria Apoyo
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I own all the volumes Logos Has, all the NT volumes and the OT up to Jeremiah. Both sets are good Wright's are good but I do find Goldingay's volumes are great. It is very similar to Barclays daily study bible, but I would say I like the NDSB a bit more since there is more info and less personal blather. FE is more upto date and a bit more conservative.
-dan
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Here is DSB FE and WBC (Westminster Bble Companion ) all on luk 10:38f. For comparison to my 3 favourite devotional commentaries.
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THE CLASH OF TEMPERAMENTS
Luke 10:38–42
As they journeyed, Jesus entered into a village. A woman called Martha received him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, and she sat at Jesus’ feet and kept listening to his word. Martha was worried about much serving. She stood over them and said, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me alone to do the serving? Tell her to give me a hand.’ ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered her, ‘you are worried and troubled about many things. Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, and it is not going to be taken away from her.’
It would be hard to find more vivid character drawing in greater economy of words than we find in these verses.
(1) They show us the clash of temperaments. We have never allowed enough for the place of temperament in religion. Some people are naturally dynamos of activity; others are naturally quiet. It is hard for the active person to understand the person who sits and contemplates. And the person who is devoted to quiet times and meditation is apt to look down on the person who would rather be active.
There is no right or wrong in this. God did not make everyone alike. One person may pray using Fay Inchfawn’s words:
Lord of all pots and pans and things.
Since I’ve no time to be
A saint by doing lovely things,
Or watching late with thee,
Or dreaming in the dawnlight,
Or storming heaven’s gates,
Make me a saint by getting meals
And washing up the plates.
Another may sit with folded hands and mind intense to think and pray. Both are serving God. God needs his Marys and his Marthas, too.
(2) These verses show us something more—they show us the wrong type of kindness. Think where Jesus was going when this happened. He was on his way to Jerusalem—to die. His whole being was taken up with the intensity of the inner battle to bend his will to the will of God. When Jesus came to that home in Bethany it was a great day; and Martha was eager to celebrate it by laying on the best the house could give. So she rushed and fussed and cooked; and that was precisely what Jesus did not want. All he wanted was quiet. With the cross before him and with the inner tension in his heart, he had turned aside to Bethany to find an oasis of calm away from the demanding crowds if only for an hour or two; and that is what Mary gave him and what Martha, in her kindness, did her best to destroy. ‘One thing is necessary’—quite possibly this means, ‘I don’t want a big spread; one course, the simplest meal is all I want.’ It was simply that Mary understood and that Martha did not.
Here is one of the great difficulties in life. So often we want to be kind to people—but we want to be kind to them in our way; and should it happen that our way is not the necessary way, we sometimes take offence and think that we are not appreciated. If we are trying to be kind the first necessity is to try to see into the heart of the person we desire to help—and then to forget all our own plans and to think only of what he or she needs. Jesus loved Martha and Martha loved him, but when Martha set out to be kind, it had to be her way of being kind which was really being unkind to him whose heart cried out for quiet. Jesus loved Mary and Mary loved him, and Mary understood.Barclay Daily Study Bible
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LUKE 10:38–42
Martha and Mary
38 On their journey, Jesus came into a village. There was a woman there named Martha, who welcomed him. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Master’s feet and listened to his teaching.
40 Martha was frantic with all the work in the kitchen.
‘Master,’ she said, coming in to where they were, ‘don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work all by myself?’
41 ‘Martha, Martha,’ he replied, ‘you are fretting and fussing about so many things. 42 Only one thing matters. Mary has chosen the best part, and it’s not going to be taken away from her.’
If you thought ‘the good Samaritan’ was radical, this powerful little story suggests that Luke has plenty more where that came from. In describing Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, he has chosen this incident as part of his introduction. It took place at Bethany, as we know from other accounts of these sisters, and Bethany was not far from Jerusalem—near, in fact, the top of the road described in the parable we’ve just studied. The incident can’t, therefore, have taken place at this point in the story, but Luke has placed it here to alert us to something special about Jesus’ work. Not only was he redrawing the boundaries of God’s people, sending out a clear message about how the gospel would reach to those outside the traditional borders. He was redrawing the boundaries between men and women within Israel, blurring lines which had been clearly laid down.
The real problem beween Martha and Mary wasn’t the workload that Martha had in the kitchen. That, no doubt, was real enough, but it wasn’t the main thing that was upsetting Martha. Nor was it (as some have suggested) that both the sisters were romantically attracted to Jesus and Martha was jealous of Mary’s adoring posture, sitting at Jesus’ feet. If there was any such feeling, Luke neither says nor hints anything about it. No: the real problem was that Mary was behaving as if she were a man. In that culture, as in many parts of the world to this day, houses were divided into male ‘space’ and female ‘space’, and male and female roles were strictly demarcated as well. Mary had crossed an invisible but very important boundary within the house, and another equally important boundary within the social world.
The public room was where the men would meet; the kitchen, and other quarters unseen by outsiders, belonged to the women. Only outside, where little children would play, and in the married bedroom, would male and female mix. For a woman to settle down comfortably among the men was bordering on the scandalous. Who did she think she was? Only a shameless woman would behave in such a way. She should go back into the women’s quarters where she belonged. This wasn’t principally a matter of superiority and inferiority, though no doubt it was often perceived and articulated like that. It was a matter of what was thought of as the appropriate division between the two halves of humanity.
In the same way, to sit at the feet of a teacher was a decidedly male role. ‘Sitting at someone’s feet’ doesn’t mean (as it might sound to us) a devoted, dog-like adoring posture, as though the teacher were a rock star or a sports idol. When Saul of Tarsus ‘sat at the feet of Gamaliel’ (Acts 22:3), he wasn’t gazing up adoringly and thinking how wonderful the great rabbi was; he was listening and learning, focusing on the teaching of his master and putting it together in his mind. To sit at someone’s feet meant, quite simply, to be their student. And to sit at the feet of a rabbi was what you did if you wanted to be a rabbi yourself. There is no thought here of learning for learning’s sake. Mary has quietly taken her place as a would-be teacher and preacher of the kingdom of God.
Jesus affirms her right to do so. This has little to do with the women’s movements in the modern West. They do have some parallels with Jesus’ agenda, and the two can make common cause on several issues; but they should not be confused. Jesus’ valuation of each human being is based not on abstract egalitarian ideals, but on the overflowing love of God, which, like a great river breaking its banks into a parched countryside, irrigates those parts of human society which until now had remained barren and unfruitful. Mary stands for all those women who, when they hear Jesus speaking about the kingdom, know that God is calling them to listen carefully so that they can speak of it too.
We would be wrong, then, to see Martha and Mary, as they have so often been seen, as models of the ‘active’ and the ‘contemplative’ styles of spirituality. Action and contemplation are of course both important. Without the first you wouldn’t eat, without the second you wouldn’t worship. And no doubt some people are called to one kind of balance between them, and others to another. But we cannot escape the challenge of this passage by turning it into a comment about different types of Christian lifestyle. It is about the boundary-breaking call of Jesus. As he goes up to Jerusalem, he leaves behind him towns, villages, households and individuals who have glimpsed a new vision of the kingdom, and for whom life will never be the same again. God grant that as we read his story the same will be true for us.Luke For Everyone
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MARY AND MARTHA
Luke 10:38–42
10:38–42 The narrative continues with a note about a change of location, but the name of the village to which they have come is not given. The introduction of the characters as Martha and her sister Mary lead persons familiar with the Gospel of John to understand them to be the sisters of Lazarus, who lived in Bethany (John 11:1–12:8). Luke does not provide that additional information, but it seems likely that the same women are meant. The only detail speaking against it is that in Luke Martha is said to welcome Jesus into “her” home (10:38), which would be an unusual way for Luke to describe it if he knew of the existence of her brother Lazarus. On the other hand, both women are named in two Gospels that appear to come from different sources of traditions about Jesus. That fact testifies to the prominence of these women in the Christian tradition, especially given the many women who remain unnamed or identified only by a husband’s or a father’s name.
In both Luke and John, Martha appears as the more active and outspoken sister, while Mary seems to hang back in the shadows. In John, both sisters eventually get starring roles—Martha in making the first formal confession of Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” (11:27), and Mary in anointing Jesus (12:1–8). In Luke, however, Mary is the one praised for having “chosen the better part,” while Martha receives only condescending criticism for her hard work (10:41–2).
This story stands in an interesting parallelism with the preceding one. In the previous story, the respectable lawyer, who is concerned with the definition and delimitation of details of the law, learns from a most unlikely person to focus on what he himself should know is the heart of the law: He is told to “go and do.” In this story, Martha, who excels in “doing”—in the traditional woman’s task of providing for her household—learns from her own sister a different model: Jesus tells her to sit and listen. In the first story, the lawyer is left on his own to draw his conclusion, whereas in this one, Jesus gives the answer to the problem that Martha has identified. Both stories introduce radically fresh perspectives: A Samaritan models the compassionate ways of God that redefine “neighbor,” and a woman is praised for not fulfilling her prescribed social role.
Despite what seems to be the point Luke is making, however, the story of Mary and Martha is a sad one for women. Martha, who welcomes Jesus and expends considerable energy in providing hospitality for him and those traveling with him, is called “distracted” and “worried.” She is blamed for doing what she would have been expected to do in her society. Furthermore, she is portrayed as whining to the man Jesus about her sister’s failure to help her, instead of resolving the matter herself, woman to woman. Instead of receiving a blessing as someone who welcomes Jesus and his followers (9:48; 10:8–9), she receives a scolding.
Mary fares no better. She gets to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to his teaching, just as the male disciples do, and she is praised by Jesus for it. But she is a silent learner. She poses no questions to Jesus, and she does not interact with him as the male disciples do. Unlike male disciples who are described as learning from Jesus, and who then are charged to carry the message on to others, Mary gets no commission to preach, no speaking part whatsoever. Whatever may have been Jesus’ relationship with women followers (8:2–3), Luke allots them carefully circumscribed roles. For them, the lifestyle of discipleship—at least in Luke’s church—promises few real changes.Westminster Bible Companion
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Now WBC has the advantage of many authors and Is the one I would choose if I had to have only one of the three. But all are useful for devotions and general insights.
Dan
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Hi Tom,
I agree with Dan that the "For Everyone" series is similar in style to Barclay's NDSB, although I cannot comment on the Westminster series because I haven't used it.
Barclay is a wonderfully readable treasure store of sermon illustrations. The "For Everyone" series reflects top contemporary scholarship distilled into an accessible style. All three authors are/were (UK) Professors which means they have excellent academic credentials yet Goldingay and Wright benefit from archaeological and textual discoveries that were not available to Barclay.
Don't forget that Logos has a useful 30-day money back guarantee. That means that you could order all of the above products, including the Westminster set, "road-test" them for for four weeks, return those which you decide to be of least benefit to you and keep whichever you think best.
Blessings on your studies.
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Here are samples from the beginning of Hebrews:
THE END OF FRAGMENTS
Hebrews 1:1–3
It was in many parts and in many ways that God spoke to our fathers in the prophets in time gone past; but in the end of these days he has spoken to us in One who is a Son, a Son whom he destined to enter into possession of all things, a Son by whose agency he made the universe. He was the very effulgence of God’s glory; he was the exact expression of God’s very essence. He bore everything onwards by the word of his power; and, after he had made purification for the sins of men, he took his royal seat at the right hand of the glory in the heights.
This is the most stylistically impressive piece of Greek in the whole New Testament. It is a passage that any classical Greek orator would have been proud to write. The writer of Hebrews has brought to it every possible skill and form of word and rhythm that the beautiful and flexible Greek language could provide. In Greek, the two adverbs which we have translated in many parts and in many ways are single words, polumerōs and polutropōs. Polu- in such a combination means many, and it was a habit of the great Greek orators, like Demosthenes, the greatest of them all, to weave such sonorous words into the first paragraph of a speech. The writer to the Hebrews felt that, since this letter was to speak of the supreme revelation of God, the ideas must be clothed in the noblest language that it was possible to find.
There is something of interest even here. The person who wrote this letter must have been trained in Greek oratory. When he became a Christian, he did not throw his training away. He used the talent he had in the service of Jesus Christ. The lovely legend of the acrobatic tumbler who became a monk is familiar to many. He felt that he had so little to offer. One day, someone saw him go into the chapel and stand before the statue of the Virgin Mary. He hesitated for a moment and then began to go through his acrobatic routine. When he had completed his tumbling, he knelt in adoration; and then, says the legend, the statue of the Virgin Mary came to life, stepped down from her pedestal and gently wiped the sweat from the brow of the acrobat who had offered all he had to give. When people become Christians, they are not asked to abandon all the talents they once had; they are asked to use them in the service of Jesus Christ and of his Church.
The basic idea of this letter is that Jesus Christ alone brings to men and women the full revelation of God and that he alone enables them to enter into the very presence of God. The writer begins by contrasting Jesus with the prophets who had gone before. He talks about him coming in the end of these days. The Jews divided all time into two ages—the present age and the age to come. In between, they set the day of the Lord. The present age was wholly bad; the age to come was to be the golden age of God. The day of the Lord was to be like the birth-pangs of the new age. So, the writer to the Hebrews says: ‘The old time is passing away; the age of incompleteness is gone; the time of guessing and feeling our way is at an end; the new age, the age of God, has dawned in Christ.’ He sees the world and human thought enter, as it were, into a new beginning with Christ. In Jesus, God has entered humanity, eternity has invaded time, and things can never be the same again.
He contrasts Jesus with the prophets, for they were always believed to be the confidants of God. Long ago, Amos had said: ‘The Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets’ (Amos 3:7). Philo had said: ‘The prophet is the interpreter of the God who speaks within.’ He had also referred to the prophets as ‘interpreters of the God who uses them as instruments to reveal to men that which he wills’. In later days, this idea had been turned into a mechanical exercise. The second-century Christian writer Athenagoras spoke of God moving the mouths of the prophets as someone might play upon a musical instrument and of the Spirit breathing into them as a flute-player breathes into a flute. At about the same time, another Christian scholar, Justin Martyr, spoke of the divine coming down from heaven and sweeping across the prophets as a plectrum sweeps across a harp or a lute. In the end, the prophets were seen as having really no more to do with their message than a musical instrument had to do with the music it played or a pen with the message it wrote. That was making it all too mechanical, for even the finest musicians are to some extent at the mercy of their instruments and cannot produce great music out of a piano in which certain notes are missing or out of tune, and even the finest writers are to some extent at the mercy of their tools. God cannot reveal more than human beings can understand. His revelation comes through human minds and hearts. That is exactly what the writer to the Hebrews saw.
He says that the revelation of God which came through the prophets was in many parts (polumerōs) and in many ways (polutropōs). There are two ideas there.
(1) The revelation of the prophets had a magnificent diversity which made it a tremendous thing. From age to age, they had spoken, always fitting their message to the age, never letting it be out of date. At the same time, that revelation was fragmentary and had to be presented in such a way that the limitations of the time would understand. One of the most interesting things is to see how, time after time, the prophets are characterized by one idea. For instance, Amos is ‘a cry for social justice’. Isaiah had grasped the holiness of God. Hosea, because of his own bitter home experience, had realized the wonder of the forgiving love of God. Out of their own experience of life and out of the experience of Israel, the prophets had each grasped and expressed a fragment of the truth of God. None had grasped the fullness of truth in its entirety; but with Jesus it was different. He was not a fragment of the truth; he was the whole truth. In him, God displayed not some part of himself but all of himself.
(2) The prophets used many methods. They used the method of speech. When speech failed, they used the method of dramatic action (cf. 1 Kings 11:29–32; Jeremiah 13:1–9, 27:1–7; Ezekiel 4:1–3, 5:1–4). The prophets had to use human methods to transmit their own part of the truth of God. Again, it was different with Jesus. He revealed God by being himself. It is not so much what he said and did that shows us what God is like; it is what he was.
The revelation of the prophets was great and came in many forms, but it was fragmentary and presented by such methods as they could find to make it effective. The revelation of God in Jesus was complete and was presented in Jesus himself. In a word, the prophets were the friends of God; but Jesus was the Son. The prophets grasped part of the mind of God; but Jesus was that mind. It is to be noted that it is no part of the purpose of the writer to the Hebrews to belittle the prophets; it is his aim to establish the supremacy of Jesus Christ. He is not saying that there is a break between the Old Testament revelation and that of the New Testament; he is stressing the fact that there is continuity, but continuity that ends in consummation.
The writer to the Hebrews uses two great pictures to describe what Jesus was. He says that he was the apaugasma of God’s glory. Apaugasma can mean one of two things in Greek. It can mean brilliance, the light which shines out, or it can mean reflection, the light which is reflected. Here, it probably means brilliance. Jesus is the shining of God’s glory among us.
He says that he was the charactēr of God’s very essence. In Greek, charactēr means two things—first, a seal, and, second, the impression that the seal leaves on the wax. The impression has the exact form of the seal. So, when the writer to the Hebrews said that Jesus was the charactēr of the being of God, he meant that he was the exact image of God. Just as, when you look at the impression, you see exactly what the seal which made it is like, so when you look at Jesus you see exactly what God is like.
In his commentary, the nineteenth-century scholar and churchman C. J. Vaughan has pointed out that this passage tells us six great things about Jesus.
(1) The original glory of God belongs to him. Here is a wonderful thought. Jesus is God’s glory; therefore, we see with amazing clarity that the glory of God consists not in crushing men and women and reducing them to miserable submission and slavery, but in serving them and loving them and in the end dying for them. It is not the glory of shattering power but the glory of suffering love.
(2) The destined empire belongs to Jesus. The New Testament writers never doubted his ultimate triumph. Think of it. They were thinking of a Galilaean carpenter who was crucified as a criminal on a cross on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem. They themselves faced savage persecution and were the humblest of people. As the Yorkshire poet Sir William Watson said of them:
So to the wild wolf Hate were sacrificed
The panting, huddled flock, whose crime was Christ.
And yet they never doubted the eventual victory. They were quite certain that God’s love was backed by his power and that in the end the kingdoms of the world would be the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ.
(3) The creative action belongs to Jesus. The early Church held that the Son had been God’s agent in creation, that in some way God had originally created the world through him. They were filled with the thought that the one who had created the world would also be the one who redeemed it.
(4) The sustaining power belongs to Jesus. These early Christians had a tremendous grip of the doctrine of providence. They did not think of God as creating the world and then leaving it to itself. Somehow and somewhere, they saw a power that was carrying the world and each life on to a destined end. They believed, as Tennyson wrote in In Memoriam:
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.
(5) To Jesus belongs the redemptive work. By his sacrifice, he paid the price of sin; by his continual presence, he liberates from sin.
(6) To Jesus belongs the exaltation as mediator. He has taken his place on the right hand of glory; but the tremendous thought of the writer to the Hebrews is that he is there not as our judge but as one who makes intercession for us, so that, when we enter into the presence of God, we go not to hear his justice prosecute us but to hear his love plead for us.Daily Study Bible
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HEBREWS 1:1–5
God’s One and Only Son
1 In many ways and by many means God spoke in ancient times to our ancestors through the prophets; 2 but at the end of these days he spoke to us in a son.
He appointed this son to be heir of all things;
through him, in addition, he created the worlds.
3 He is the shining reflection of God’s own glory,
the precise expression of his own very being;
he sustains all things through his powerful word.
He accomplished the cleansing needed for sins,
and sat down at the right of the Majesty Supreme.
4 See how much greater he is than the angels:
the name he was granted is finer than theirs.
5 For to which angel did God ever say, ‘You are my son, today I became your father’? Or, again, ‘I will be his father, and he will be my son’?
I had an email this morning from an old friend in another part of the world. He had heard that my daughter was getting married, and in congratulating me he brought me up to date on the progress of his own daughter. Now in her teens, she was wearing seven earrings, bright purple hair, and rings in her lip and navel as well. He told me all this as though seeking my sympathy for his plight, but underneath that I heard a very different note: pride and delight. I well remembered my friend’s own teenage years: a typical rebel, with long hair, loud music, a cigarette hanging from his lip … clearly his daughter was (as we say) a chip off the old block. Looking at her, he could see his own true self. His character—or one aspect of it, at least—was shining out of her.
This is a cheerful and low-grade example of the sublime and exalted point which the letter to the Hebrews offers as its opening description of God and his only son. The son is ‘the shining reflection of God’s own glory’; he is ‘the precise expression of God’s own very being’. He is, dare we say, not just a chip off the old block—as though there might be many such people, perfectly reflecting God’s own inner being—but the unique son. Look at him, and it’s like looking in a mirror at God himself. His character is exactly reproduced, plain to see.
Actually, the word used for ‘precise expression’ here is the Greek word character, the origin of our apparently identical English word. But this is an interesting word in both Greek and in English. When we talk about the ‘characters’ in a play, and when we talk about the ‘characters’ of an alphabet (the Hebrew ‘characters’, say, or the Japanese), what have the two got in common? Where does the idea begin?
At the bottom of it all, in the ancient world, lies the idea of engraving, or of stamping soft or hot metal with a pattern which the metal will then continue to bear. Though the ancient world didn’t have printing presses such as we have had since William Caxton in the fifteenth century, it had early equivalents that were used, particularly, for making coins. The emperor would employ an engraver who carved the royal portrait, and suitable words or abbreviations, on a stamp, or die, made of hard metal. The engraver used the stamp to make a coin, so that the coin gave the exact impression, or indeed expression, of what was on the stamp.
The word character in ancient Greek was widely used to mean just that: the accurate impression left by the stamp on the coin. From there it came to mean both the individual letters that could be produced by this method (hence the ‘characters’ of a language) and the ‘character’, in the broader sense, of a person or thing: the sort of person, the ‘type’ if you like (think about that word, too). And this is what our writer is saying about Jesus. It is as though the exact imprint of the father’s very nature and glory has been precisely reproduced in the soft metal of the son’s human nature. Now it is there for all the world to see.
Stay with the image of the emperor and his engraver a moment longer, and think about the opening two verses of this remarkable letter. Supposing the emperor had been wanting for a long time to tell his subjects who he was, to give them a good idea of his character. And supposing the metal stamp, or die, hadn’t been invented yet. The emperor would only be able to send out drawings or sketches, which might tell people something but wouldn’t give them the full picture. Then, at last, the reality: hard metal on soft, original picture exactly reproduced. Yes, says the writer: God had for a long time been sending advance sketches of himself to his people, but now he’s given us his exact portrait.
With this idea, written as a grand and rather formal opening to the letter, the writer invites us to look at the whole sweep of biblical history and see it coming to a climax in Jesus. (Unlike the letters of Paul, this one doesn’t tell us who it’s from or who it’s intended for, which is frustrating at one level but shouldn’t spoil our enjoyment of its marvellous and rich thought.) Look back at the great prophets: Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and then of course the writing prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and the rest. Our author would have included David in the list as well, as we can see from the way he quotes the Psalms.
This opening sentence isn’t just a rhetorical flourish. It tells us clearly how the argument of the whole letter is going to run. Again and again we start with a passage from the Old Testament, and the writer shows us how it points forwards to something yet to come. Again and again the ‘something’ it points forwards to turns out to be Jesus—Jesus, as in this passage, as God’s unique son, the one who has dealt with sins fully and finally, the one who now rules at God’s right hand, the one to whom even angels bow in submission.
The next passage will develop this last point more fully. But we should notice, before we go any further, that the passages our writer quotes in verse 5 are two of the Old Testament passages the early Christians used most frequently when they were struggling to say what had to be said about Jesus. Psalm 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14 both speak of the Messiah, the ultimate son of David, as God’s own special son. Like all the early Christians, the writer of this letter begins his thinking with the belief that Jesus was and is the Messiah, Israel’s true king. Everything else follows from that.
So, though we don’t know who the author of this letter was, we know something even more important about him. Right from the start, he has his eyes fixed on Jesus; at the end of the letter, when he draws everything together, he urges us to have our eyes fixed on him, too (12:2; 13:8). Are you ready for the challenge?Hebrews For Everyone
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Placing Things in Perspective: A Cosmic Panorama
Hebrews 1:1–4
1:1–4 Hebrews, as we have noted, is addressed to weary Christians in need of rekindled vision, renewed perspective. Thus it opens with a majestic, staggering panorama. It lifts the eyes of its readers to a breathtaking, cosmic plane as it surveys God’s purpose in the world and the career of the Son through whom God has spoken decisively. Hebrews’ four opening verses are among the most polished and profound in the New Testament, and they introduce key themes. Moreover, by stretching the horizon of Christian vision, they lay the groundwork for a deepened and more mature understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
GOD HAS SPOKEN!
Hebrews strives to set things in perspective for its jaded readers, first of all with an affirmation of the God who has spoken. Indeed, God has never been silent: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets …” (1:1). The “prophets” refer to all those through whom God has spoken—from Abraham, through Moses, Joshua, David, and the classical prophets, and thus through all the writers of scripture. And as the biblical witness attests, “in many and various ways” (that is, through dreams and visions and signs, in a burning bush, in a pillar of cloud and fire, through the presence of angels) God has continually addressed the people. Hebrews proclaims that we are not alone in this universe! The God whom we confess to be our God is no isolated and remote deity but one who speaks, who is present to be experienced and known, who has continually reached out to the creation.
But now, claims Hebrews, “in these last days [God] has spoken to us by a Son” (1:2). These two opening verses sound the note of continuity and discontinuity that is central to the argument of Hebrews, as I noted earlier. Continuity is apparent, for God has spoken with power and authority in the past, and the events Hebrews describes are to be viewed within the context of the plan that God has been unfolding throughout the ages. “But in these last days” sounds the note of discontinuity: God has spoken climactically, decisively, and finally through a Son. This new agent of God’s speaking marks, in fact, the appearance of the “last days,” the beginning of the end, for in him God’s purpose for the world comes to fruition.
What this means is that we live in a new age. The decisive events in God’s plan for the world—the crucifixion and exaltation of Jesus—have taken place, and God’s purpose for the world now moves toward its completion. What this also means is that the God who speaks, who is present to be experienced and known, is now known completely. The fullness of God’s revelation is available in a Son. Indeed, as Hebrews goes on to explain, “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (1:3). These are staggering affirmations of the Son’s unique and preeminent status: He is one who partakes of, and mirrors, the very being and glory of God.
Other New Testament witnesses echo this profound confession. Colossians, for example, praises the Son as “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), and in the Gospel of John, Jesus declares that “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The very being and glory of God have been extended to us and made known to us—decisively, finally, and fully by a Son!
THE SON’S COSMIC CAREER
The opening verses of Hebrews address the Son’s unique work as well as his unique status. Indeed, they stretch our horizon and set things in perspective with a breathtaking overview of the Son’s cosmic career. That career spans universal history, for God’s Son stands at both the beginning and end of God’s purpose for the world. He is there at the beginning, as the very agent of creation, through whom God “created the worlds” (1:2).
The Gospel of John echoes this remarkable claim of the Son’s “preexistence” and creative agency in its own prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (John 1:1–3). With affirmations such as these, early Christians gave expression to their growing conviction of the ultimate significance of God’s Son for the life of the world. So central is he to the meaning and purpose of the world and of all human life that he must have been present at its inception, the very agent of its creation. Moreover, his sustaining power continues to uphold and preserve the world: “He sustains all things by his powerful word” (1:3).
For the author of Hebrews, however, it is during the Son’s earthly life that he carries out the work that is most central to his mission and God’s purposes: his cross and death, which deal decisively with human sin. Although Hebrews alludes but briefly to this preeminent priestly work in its opening lines (“he had made purification for sins”; 1:3), Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice for sins is here introduced and will later receive considerable elaboration.
Finally, Hebrews surveys the last stage of the Son’s career: His central work complete, he is exalted to the right hand of God, where he “sits down” and now reigns, superior even to God’s heavenly angels (1:3–4). Although, curiously, Hebrews alludes but once to Christ’s resurrection (see 13:20), one may assume that exaltation encompasses resurrection. As exalted, reigning Lord, he stands at the end of God’s purpose for the world. All things began in him, and will return to him, for God appointed him “heir of all things” (1:2). He is indeed the Alpha and the Omega, as The Revelation to John maintains (Rev. 22:13). He is the beginning and end of all that is. He is the eternal, cosmic Lord!
This is very “high” Christology indeed, that is, a portrait of Christ that highlights his divinity and exalted status. Moreover, in order to articulate the Son’s preeminent status and work, the author of Hebrews has made use of a variety of resources at his disposal, two of which are particularly noteworthy.
First, it may be observed that Hebrews draws heavily on the imagery of Lady Wisdom, or Sophia—a striking female figure who emerges in Israel’s wisdom literature as an expression of God’s own being and gracious outreach to humanity, and as a partner in God’s creative work (see especially Proverbs 8–9; Job 28; Wisdom of Solomon 6–9; Sirach 1, 6, 24). Indeed, Hebrews appears to be directly dependent on the description of Lady Wisdom/Sophia, as found for example in Wisdom of Solomon 7:25–26, which describes her as
a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty.… For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of [God’s] goodness.
A second resource, Psalm 110, supplies the imagery for Christ’s exaltation:
The Lord says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” (Psalm 110:1)
This psalm, which will provide the imagery of Christ’s eternal priesthood as well, plays a prominent role in the argument of Hebrews. Through a creative use of resources such as these, Hebrews strives to rearticulate the significance of Jesus Christ and stretch the limited horizon of its readers.
Hebrews’ opening prologue—its staggering panorama—continues to stretch the horizon of Christian vision and to set things in perspective for us. It reminds us that our lives are not products of chance but rather are bound up with the life of God in Christ. God is indeed one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
For God in Christ is at the beginning of our time, as the one who precedes us and creates us, as the one who breathes within our nostrils the breath of life; God in Christ is in the midst of our time, sustaining us and addressing us through Christ’s powerful word; and God in Christ is at the end of our days—the frontier ahead, toward which we and the whole creation move. God in Christ represents our past, our present, and our future—“our dwelling place in all generations,” as the psalmist said (Psalm 90:1).
Moreover, contemplation of Hebrews’ panorama will guard against a restricted vision and limited appreciation of the story of Jesus Christ. Thus it is highly appropriate that the church’s lectionary holds this passage before us at Christmas, when we contemplate a baby in a manger. Christians who do not attend church regularly, making an appearance only at Christmas and Easter, may envision Christ only in diapers or nailed to a cross! Hebrews, however, encourages a broader perspective. It fills out the big picture, thereby laying the groundwork for a more mature understanding of the one who stands at the beginning and end of God’s purposes for the world, and who makes available to us God’s own life.Hebrews and James Westminster Bible Companion
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You will note that in both NDSB and FE you start out with a fresh translation which is nice, in this sample I give FE shows some of the extraneous personal talk that is nice in allowing you into the authors mind, but I find at times adds very little to the textual understanding for me, Goldingay does the same style of personal comments to start out. I could share a section from the OT but Logos stopped selling the Daily Study Bible Old Testament back in 2005 or 2006 so pretty had to get a hold of unless you can find someone wanting to sell their copy.
-dan
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Here is An OT sample looking at opening of Ecclesiastes
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A MAN AND HIS THEME SONG—I
Ecclesiastes 1:1–2
1The words of the Preacher, the
son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
“The words of the Preacher”: “Preacher” is a translation of the Hebrew word Koheleth—see RSV footnote—which we owe to Martin Luther. It is not a very happy translation. Few congregations would put up with this preacher for very long in the pulpit. Other modern translations go for “the Philosopher” (GNB), “the Speaker” (NEB) or “the President”: thus the opening phrase would be a reasonable Hebrew equivalent to “The Thoughts of Chairman Mao”. We shall stick from now on to the Hebrew word Koheleth, since there is perhaps no one English word which exactly conveys its meaning. It is a word related to the Hebrew word kahal, a ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’, very often an assembly of the people for worship and instruction. This word kahal is rendered in the Greek Old Testament by the Greek word ecclesia; hence “Ecclesiastes”, as a translation of Koheleth, and the name which we normally give t o the book. It is from this same Greek word, of course, that we get our English word ‘ecclesiastical’. Koheleth may very well mean someone who holds a particular office or who has a particular function in a kahal. Koheleth is therefore not this man’s personal name. We only know him by his title, as if we were to speak all the time simply of ‘Mr President’ or ‘the Prime Minister’.
But what kind of gathering or assembly was this in which he functioned? There is so much in the book about Wisdom—the search for wisdom, the value and limitations of wisdom, so many passages that contain typical wisdom sayings like those we find in Proverbs—that it is best to think of him as one of the learned wise men whose thoughts, teaching and advice on everyday problems and on the affairs of state were valued in ancient Israel. Such a man, who had a reputation for wisdom, would gather round him a group of people anxious to learn from him. So Koheleth is a kind of teacher in a wisdom school. Perhaps we might think of him today as a university Professor or Lecturer—Professor Wise?—and like many other Professors, not least those in theology, his views could be sometimes upsetting. The description of this man as “the son of David, king in Jerusalem”, taken together with the words of 1:12—“I … have been king over Israel in Jerusalem”—may have been intended to provide a link with Solomon, the royal patron of wisdom. As we have seen, this is impossible. Koheleth lived many centuries after Solomon. The words may, however, indicate that here is a man accustomed to moving in high society. It was at court and under the auspices of the king that the wise men came into their own in Israel. As advisors to the king on matters of state, they were like ‘Privy Counsellors’ or the White House Staff. The words translated “king” may indeed mean simply ‘counsellor’. Everything else in the book points to a man who is essentially artistocratic in out-look, conservative in his tastes, with wealth enough to get whatever good things in life take his fancy.
We are moving here in a different world from much of that which we find elsewhere in the Old Testament. The sense of identity with the poor, the championing of the cause of the victims of social change, which are such marked features of the teaching of many of the Old Testament prophets, are here entirely lacking. Nor does he claim, like a prophet, to be giving us “the word of the Lord”. The book begins, like some of the prophetic books, with the phrase “the words of X”; but in the case of a prophetic book, eg Jeremiah, this opening is further explained by a phrase such as “to whom the word of the Lord came”. There is no such claim here; only “the words of Koheleth”, his own opinions, his own comments and observations on life. But such observations and comments may be just as challenging and provocative as the words of one who claims to be giving voice to “the word of the Lord”. There are those today unmoved by many a sermon claiming to proclaim “the word of the Lord” to them, yet who are arrested and challenged by the words of a C. S. Lewis or of a David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham.
A MAN AND HIS THEME SONG—II
Ecclesiastes 1:1–2 (cont’d)
Just as certain TV programmes can be immediately identified by their theme music, just as the opening bars of Beethoven’s fifth symphony spelled out the V for Victory message to occupied Europe in the dark days from 1940 onwards, so there is one phrase forever associated with Koheleth: “Vanity of vanities … vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2), words which in one form or another echo across the book from beginning to end.
But what do they mean? Modern English translations, unless they stick to “vanity of vanities”, offer us a wide variety of interpretations. “It is useless, useless...life is useless, all useless,” says the Good News Bible; “Emptiness, emptiness...all is empty,” says the New English Bible; “Meaningless, meaningless ...utterly meaningless,” says the New International Version. Let us take a closer look at the Hebrew word translated “vanity”. It is the word hebel, whose basic meaning seems to be ‘breath’ or ‘vapour’. Always it points to something which is insubstantial or transitory or in some sense futile. It is frequently used in the Old Testament to describe the gods of other people, powerless idols (eg Jer. 8:19; 10:8). It can refer to any activity which seems to be pointless. There is, however, no other writer in the Old Testament who takes a look at the whole of life, all human experience, and sums it up in the words “vanity of vanities”. Just as in Hebrew, “king of kings” means the greatest king, and “slave of slaves” the meanest slave, so this expression is a way of saying ‘it is all completely hebel’. There seems to be no point or purpose in life.
We must not misunderstand what Koheleth is saying here. This does not mean that he finds life uninteresting. Far from it; he is fascinated by life and its curious twists and turns. It does not mean that he does not enjoy life. He gets a great deal of enjoyment out of life. What he is saying is that when you take a long hard look at life, you must place beside it a large question mark. It just does not add up. It does not make sense; it is empty of any ultimate meaning. While other voices in the Old Testament may speak with assured certainty about the meaning of life, Koheleth cannot and does not. While others claim to know the will of God, God’s purposes for him remain an insoluble puzzle.
At this point he stands alongside many people today; good people who have been brought up in a tradition of faith, but for whom many of the ancient certainties no longer make sense. They are people who enjoy life, who get a lot out of it and give a lot to it, but who when pressed can only say, ‘I don’t know what it all means’. We may seek to meet their perplexities with our certainties, we may try to replace their ‘no answers’ with our answers. We might be better advised at times to direct them to this interesting fellow traveller in the Bible, who may have something to say to them as they share his journey. Perhaps if we are honest we shall all find something of ourselves in him.Robert Davidson, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. The Daily study Bible series
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INTRODUCING KOHELETH
Ecclesiastes 1:1
1:1 It is fitting that the book begins with a puzzle, the author’s peculiar name. “Koheleth” does not in fact seem to be a name at all but rather a job title. It means the convener of an assembly (kahal), maybe something like “speaker of the house.” The rendering “Ecclesiastes” derives from the ancient Greek translation; the Greek word ekklesia designates a public gathering (equivalent to the Hebrew kahal). Later, ekklesia came to mean “church,” and so Koheleth is traditionally known as “the Preacher.” The ironic humor that characterizes the whole book is present already in this title, for Koheleth’s ruminative, contradictory, and highly personal style seems at the furthest pole from the discourse of public assemblies.
Martin Luther, who takes the ascription to Solomon to be historical, comments that it would be more correct to call this “the Politics or the Economics of Solomon” (Notes, 5). He comments perceptively that it offers help to the heads of state or households—or, one might add, people with any administrative responsibility, for it exposes the foibles of bureaucracies and offers help in remedying them. “Therefore this book should especially be read by new rulers, who have their heads swollen with opinions and want to rule the world according to their own plans and require everything to toe the mark. But such people should first learn to know the world, that is, to know that it is unjust, stubborn, disobedient, malicious, and, in short, ungrateful” (Luther, Notes, 140).
THE GREAT QUESTION
Ecclesiastes 1:2–3
1:2–3 (On the meaning of the initial phrase, see pp. 166–69 above.)
“What do people gain …?” This is the question that prompts Koheleth’s investigation into the nature of human experience. The term “gain” comes from the language of commerce; it means: “profit, the bottom line” (since the word is a noun, the line is better translated, “What is the gain for a person …?”). Yet the fiction that Koheleth is king over Jerusalem implies that he already has every imaginable material asset. Thus we recognize that Koheleth is asking more than the common question of economic self-interest, “What will I get out of this?” His question is not utilitarian but existential: “What is the human value? Is there any meaning? Will it make me any more of a person?”
Koheleth begins with a question that many people stop asking early in life. This gives the book a tone of youthfulness, despite the vast experience it reflects. Koheleth never loses the restless spirit most often seen in adolescents. Like them, his company is stimulating and sometimes irritating to more settled souls. We often look to the Bible to soothe us. But there is such a thing as a holy restlessness, which Augustine’s prayer expresses beautifully: “You made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in You” (Confessions 1.1).ELLEN F. DAVIS, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs:Westminster Bible Companion
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ECCLESIASTES 1:1–11
Under the Sun, Where Randomness Rules
1 The words of Churchman, son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 “Utter emptiness,” said Churchman, “utter emptiness, everything is empty.
3 What value is there for a person in all the toil that he undertakes under the sun?”
4 A generation goes, a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and rushes to the place where it rises.
6 The wind goes south and turns north, it turns,
turns as it goes, and on its turnings the wind returns.
7 All streams go to the sea, but the sea isn’t full;
to the place where the streams go, there they go again.
8 All the things are laborious;
no one could speak [of them].
The eye isn’t replete as regards looking,
the ear isn’t full as regards listening.
9 What has happened is what will happen;
what has occurred is what will occur;
there’s nothing new under the sun.
10 Where there is something that someone says, “Look, this is new,”
already it has happened in ages that were before us.
11 There is no remembering on the part of earlier people,
and also on the part of the people who are to come.
There will be no remembering on their part,
among the people who will be after them.
I noted in connection with Proverbs 11 that I am inclined to think that nothing I do has any effect, though from time to time God sends me someone to tell me they have been affected by something I’ve said or written, which reminds me to be less gloomy. But if I doubt whether spending so much of my time writing books has any effect on people, why do I do it? Partly because it’s like an artist painting a picture; it’s a way I do something a bit creative. Partly because I learn a lot; I’ve never read through Ecclesiastes in Hebrew before. I am paid to be a teacher, but I doubt if my teaching has any effect on people. I can tell that it is so from many student papers I read; and if some of my students “get it,” I suspect they will soon lose it after they finish at seminary. I celebrate the Eucharist and preach every Sunday, and people appreciate my doing so, but I’ve buried a couple of them in the past month, and there’s little sign of their being replaced by others. What’s the point?
I therefore identify with “Churchman’s opening observation, that everything is totally empty.” It’s a striking observation from a churchman. The Hebrew word for “churchman” is qohelet, which is thus the name of the book in Hebrew. It comes from the Hebrew word for a “congregation,” which can denote any form of assembly but more often refers to a religious or worshiping assembly. So “Ecclesiastes” is a good Greek equivalent, as it comes from the equivalent Greek word ekklēsia, which means “church” and “churchman” would be an English equivalent. A key characteristic of Ecclesiastes is that it keeps saying things that you wouldn’t have thought a churchman would say, and it’s thus significant that it begins this way. The questions in Ecclesiastes are not the questions of an atheist or an agnostic. They are the questions of a believer who wants to keep faith honest.
“Son of David” has the same implications. A son of David could suggest any of the kings who were descended from David and could refer to Solomon, but the verse doesn’t use his name, which suggests there’s something else going on. More likely its point is that the author associates himself with David as “churchman,” as the patron of Israel’s worship, the person who arranged for the building of the temple and set up its worship arrangements. It’s such a person’s questioning that we’ll be made to think about. It would be evident to readers that the book isn’t written in the kind of Hebrew that Solomon would have used. It’s as if someone wrote a play by “a son of Shakespeare” but used modern English.
The radical nature of the book’s questions is immediately announced in the declaration about everything being “empty.” The word more literally means a breath, so it suggests things that are evanescent, that pass away, that have no substance. The Old Testament applies the words to images of a god who has no real power, to plans that lead nowhere, and to promises that don’t get fulfilled. But half the occurrences of the word come in Ecclesiastes, where it describes pleasure, achievement, work, wealth, politics, and the general randomness of the way life works. The expression “utter emptiness, everything is empty” recurs near the end of the book and thus forms a bracket around it and declares a basic conviction.
The next line, about the uselessness of all the effort that people put into their lives, in turn constitutes a summary of the reason for viewing everything as empty and helps us see in what sense things are utterly empty. There’s no point putting effort into trying to achieve things, because life’s randomness means you can never know whether you achieve anything in the long run. It’s chance that determines things. This explanatory line introduces another of Churchman’s key expressions, “under the sun,” which occurs twenty-seven times. Although it never occurs in Proverbs or Song of Songs (or anywhere else in the Bible), it could have done so, because all these books look at life resolutely from this angle, from the perspective of what you can see. It doesn’t mean leaving out God or leaving out right and wrong. It does mean focusing on what we can experience as human beings in the now, on the earthly plane. These books don’t talk about the exodus or the covenant, about heaven or hell, or about a coming messiah. They talk about what we can see now. They ask, What can you learn by simply focusing on what you can see now? Here, randomness often rules. That fact is one aspect of how things are “under the sun.”
The main paragraph that follows offers another comment on how things are “under the sun.” There’s nothing new there, it says. Things just go around and around. The nature of these observations introduces another feature of the book. You could take its point that nothing new ever happens as bad news or as good news. In Western culture we are inclined to put a positive estimate on new things. Advertisers seek to get us to buy things because they are new. But the reliable cycle of sun and moon and the unchanging circulation of water (evaporation, rain, rivers, sea; you could say that Churchman is talking about ecology) provides important undergirding for human life. Everything depends on how you look at the phenomena.John Goldingay. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs for everyone / (Old Testament for Everyone)
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the DSB OT printed not a fresh translation but the RSV and you will note that by the very scope of the series the OTFE series feels in many ways much more compressed, Indeed even though the entire OT is covered quite often the new translation is only on the key passage covered in a section as you can see in this snippet from Exodus Fro Everyone:
EXODUS 25:1–26:30
How to Build a Church—I
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses: 2 “Speak to the Israelites so that they take an offering for me. You are to take the offering from every individual whose resolve impels them. 3 This is the offering you are to take from them: gold, silver, copper; 4 blue, purple, and scarlet yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair, 5 tanned rams’ skins, dolphin skins, acacia wood; 6 oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and the aromatic incense; 7 onyx stone and stones for setting in the ephod and the breast piece. 8 They are to make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in their midst. 9 In accordance with everything that I am going to show you, the pattern of the dwelling and the pattern of all its accoutrements, so you are to make it.
10 “They are to make a chest of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. 11 Overlay it with pure gold, overlay it inside and outside, and make a gold molding on it all around. 12 Cast four gold rings for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on one side of it and two on the other. 13 Make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold, 14 and insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the chest, so as to carry the chest by them. 15 The poles are to be in the rings of the chest; they are not to be removed from it. 16 Put into the chest the declaration that I will give you.
17 “You are to make an expiation cover of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide, 18 and to make two gold cherubs (of hammered work you are to make them) at the two ends of the cover. 19 Make one cherub at one end and the other cherub at the other end, and make the cherubs one with the cover at its two ends. 20 The cherubs are to be spreading out their wings upwards, shielding the cover with their wings, and with their faces towards each other; their faces will be towards the cover. 21 Put the cover on the chest, on top, and put into the chest the declaration that I will give you. 22 I will meet you there and speak with you from above the cover, from between the cherubs that are above the declaration chest, all that I shall command you for the Israelites.”
[Yahweh goes on to give instructions for making a gold table for the “presence bread,” a six-branched gold candelabrum for the sanctuary, the curtains that form its walls, the covering of hides that goes over it, and the supports that hold these in place.]At our church we have just begun inviting ourselves to make offerings for work that needs to be done to the buildings. We have a list of priorities, like the replacement of some wooden beams that have rotted in the rains (it is California) and the building of proper handicap access (that was my personal priority because I had to lift my wife’s wheelchair up a step or two in order to get into church each Sunday). The
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but again this is somewhat understandable covering the entire OT in 17 volumes is not going to be as in depth as the NT in 18 volumes.
-dan
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Dan Francis said:
I own all the volumes Logos Has, all the NT volumes and the OT up to Jeremiah. Both sets are good Wright's are good but I do find Goldingay's volumes are great. It is very similar to Barclays daily study bible, but I would say I like the NDSB a bit more since there is more info and less personal blather. FE is more upto date and a bit more conservative.
-dan
Dan, thank you very much for your view point and all of the actual examples.
I was not familiar with the Westminster Series you illustrate in other posts.
I am almost ready to buy the Anglican Bronze to get both the FE and The Message series.
Thank you very much for your help. Tom
http://hombrereformado.blogspot.com/ Solo a Dios la Gloria Apoyo
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Gordon Jones said:
I agree with Dan that the "For Everyone" series is similar in style to Barclay's NDSB, although I cannot comment on the Westminster series because I haven't used it.
Barclay is a wonderfully readable treasure store of sermon illustrations. The "For Everyone" series reflects top contemporary scholarship distilled into an accessible style. All three authors are/were (UK) Professors which means they have excellent academic credentials yet Goldingay and Wright benefit from archaeological and textual discoveries that were not available to Barclay.
Thanks for your input Gordon [:)]
http://hombrereformado.blogspot.com/ Solo a Dios la Gloria Apoyo
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Dan Francis said:
Accordance has had the complete series since September 2016, when are you planing on completing it in Logos?
-Dan
Hey, Logos, it would be great if you could reply to Dan's question. I for one am keen to complete my set. :-)
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Bump
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Gordon Jones said:0
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The two final volumes are now available to pre-order. Yay! www.logos.com/product/145414/old-testament-for-everyone-upgrade-2 [:D]
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