Lenski Commentaries

Dan,

I'm not in our publisher relations department, but I do know that we're in communication with all our publishers and are trying to get as many book available for the app as possible. With over 10,000 titles in our format, it might take a little while.

As for the fact that another publisher has the title in their app and we don't, that shouldn't be taken as an indicator that it is easy for us (or them) to get the title.

I know that this isn't a whole lot of help, but we are working to get as much in as we can. We'll keep you posted.

_ryan

As I said, I'm not in Publisher Relations, so I can't comment about Lenski Bible Commentaries in particular. Right now we have about 20% of our titles available for the iPhone app and adding more all the time. Our goal, of course, is 100%. But as has been stated elsewhere, most of the hold up relates to working with the publishers. So, as far as overall ETA, I can't give that either. Sorry if that isn't much help. It is the best I've got right now.

I know in the past it has been mentioned that the desire is to allow off-line use of books.

Check around the forums and see if you can find who said it. If it was Bob, then you can trust it. Anyone else and I'd take it with a grain of salt.

Is this a publisher relation issue as well, or would you be able to comment on whether that is a near future/far future feature, or whether it has been cancelled altogether?

I could comment, but I'm not heading up the App development so my comments would be primarily speculation. Sorry.

As I said, I'm not in Publisher Relations, so I can't comment about Lenski Bible Commentaries in particular.

I'll comment on them: they're exegetically irresponsible and attempt extract more meaning from the Greek text than Paul or Luke ever could.

I think enough said.

D. A. Carson:

"R. C. H. Lenski’s twelve-volume The Interpretation of the New Testament (/Augsburg Fortress, $29.99 per vol.—but most of the volumes are op [out of print]) aims to force the student to think through the Greek text and stimulate exegetical rigor, but his grasp of Greek is mechanical, amateurish, and without respect for the fluidity of Greek in the Hellenistic period."

D. A. Carson, New Testament Commentary Survey (6th ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 33.

"R. C. H. Lenski is notoriously unreliable in his treatment of the Greek article, frequently making appeal either to the presence (or absence) of the article in Greek to establish the corresponding pattern in English, or aligning the articular noun with a specific meaning"

D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (2nd ed.; Carlisle, U.K.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Paternoster; Baker Books, 1996), 80.

Richard A. Young:

Lenski often interprets the aorist as a point action, as in Romans 6:2, where the believer’s death to sin was one punctiliar act; and Romans 7:3, where the death of the husband was a “single brief act” (Lenski 1936:389, 446). Such information cannot be extracted from the aorist form.

Richard A. Young, Intermediate New Testament Greek : A Linguistic and Exegetical Approach (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 121–122.

Daniel Wallace:

As for the participle’s aspect, it still functions for the most part like its indicative counterparts. There are two basic influences that shape the participle’s verbal side, however, which are almost constant factors in its Aktionsart.6 First, because the participle has embodied two natures, neither one acts completely independently of the other. Hence, the verbal nature of participles has a permanent grammatical intrusion from the adjectival nature. This tends to dilute the strength of the aspect. Many nouns in Hellenistic Greek, for instance, in a former life were participles (e.g., ἀρχιτέκτων, ἄρχων, γέρων, ἡγεμών, θεράπων, καύσων, τέκτων, χείμων). The constant pressure from the adjectival side finally caved in any remnants of verbal aspect. This is not to say that no participles in the NT are aspectually robust-many of them are! But one must not assume this to be the case in every instance. In particular when a participle is substantival, its aspectual force is more susceptible to reduction in force.
Secondly, many substantival participles in the NT are used in generic utterances. The πᾶς ὁ ἀκούων (or ἀγαπῶν, ποιῶν, etc.) formula is always or almost always generic. As such it is expected to involve a gnomic idea.7 Most of these instances involve the present participle.8 But if they are already gnomic, we would be hard-pressed to make something more out of them—such as a progressive idea.9 Thus, for example, in Matt 5:28, “everyone who looks at a woman” (πᾶς ὁ βλέπων γυναῖκα) with lust in his heart does not mean “continually looking” or “habitually looking,” any more than four verses later “everyone who divorces his wife” (πᾶς ὁ ἀπολύων τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ) means “repeatedly divorces”! This is not to deny a habitual Aktionsart in such gnomic statements. But it is to say that caution must be exercised. In the least, we should be careful not to make statements such as, “The present participle βλέπων [in Matt 5:28] characterizes the man by his act of continued looking.”10 This may well be the meaning of the evangelist, but the present participle, by itself, can hardly be forced into this mold.11

Note 10: Lenski, St. Matthew’s Gospel, 226.

Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics - Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Zondervan, 1999), 615–616; my emphasis.

Many of the older commentaries and classroom books held that the aorist tense was a single point of action. Research during the last 50 years or so has shown that to be not necessarily true. Still, you do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That may be true, but it's not just research in the past 50 years that have challenged that. Robertson & Moulton never would have said such a thing (and in their grammars, they never do!). The idea that the aorist represented a single point of action developed from a misunderstanding of how Moulton used the word punctiliar. Had commentaries such as Lenski actually understood him for what he actually said and meant, the research of the past 50 years never would have been needed at all.