Several weeks (months?) ago I received a package in my faculty mailbox at work. I was so taken aback by it that I snapped a photo of it (at right). It was obviously a book mailer, but the label on the outside said this: “Are Conservative Evangelical Men More Likely To Abuse Their Wives?” I didn’t even know what was inside the package, but I already knew that this was a transparent troll—a marketing ploy. They send out a book to a bunch of conservative evangelical men, and then they put a label on the outside of the package with an ugly insinuation about conservative evangelical men. The publisher wasn’t…

James M. Hamilton, Jr., Song of Songs: A Biblical-Theological, Allegorical, Christological Interpretation, Focus on the Bible (Scotland: Christian Focus, 2015). 154pp. $14.99. Jim Hamilton has recently published a stimulating commentary on the Song of Songs. Readers familiar with Jim’s work know his passion for doing whole Bible theology. Likewise, this volume exposits the Song with respect to the overall storyline of scripture. In short, it’s a work of biblical theology. One of the big questions that any commentator on the Song has to answer is what this book is all about. Is it to be interpreted literally or allegorically? Is it about human love only or about Christ’s love for…

I have been reading my new copy of the ESV Reader’s Bible over the last week, and I have to say that I am really impressed with this work. If you are thinking about purchasing a reader’s Bible, there are at least five reasons that you really ought to consider this one. 1. Fine Translation: The most important thing about picking a Bible is the translation. There are many fine translations on the market today, and the ESV is leading the pack among the more literal versions on offer. As a revision of the RSV, the ESV does not use archaic expressions like “thee” and “thou.” Nevertheless, the ESV is…

Jim Hamilton has become quite the prolific commentator and biblical theologian, and he has a new commentary out on Ezra-Nehemiah that I highly recommend to you. It appears in Broadman & Holman’s new “Christ-Centered Exposition” series edited by Danny Akin, David Platt, and Tony Merida. Thus, the aim of the commentary is not only exegetical precision but also explaining how the message of Ezra-Nehemiah fits into the entire storyline of scripture—a story which has its culminating moment in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hamilton argues that Ezra-Nehemiah are enormously relevant, though many pastors only preach sermons on them during church building programs. This is unfortunate. Instead, Jim encourages…

I’ve been reading Dave Brunn’s stimulating book One Bible, Many Versions—a work discussing the translation philosophy of various English Bible versions. This is a fine book in many ways. It engages an old controversy with an irenic tone. But if the book does anything, it shows that there is some confusion among evangelicals about what Formal Equivalence (FE) translators are aiming to do in their work. Brunn’s book shows that all translations—including FE translations like the NASB and the ESV—resort to Dynamic Equivalence (DE). His point is that not even FE translations practice their theory consistently, and he illustrates this fact with voluminous examples.

In the Fall issue of JBMW, Ray Van Neste has a hard-hitting review of Joel Green’s Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (Baker, 2011). He observes that the volume is weak on biblical authority and biblical sexuality. In his conclusion, Van Neste writes, The volume as a whole is alarming and disappointing. I’ve focused primarily on entries concerning sexual ethics since they illustrate the dictionary’s general approach to scripture and since these issues are some of the most significant ethical issues facing the church today. The value of a tool is seen in how it works at the point of greatest pressure. At such points, Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics fails.

Douglas Moo is one of the bright lights of evangelical biblical scholarship. Countless pastors and teachers have come to know him through his important 1996 commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans. Seventeen years later, that commentary still stands as one of the finest expositions of Romans available. Indeed, many of us have become students of Paul’s theology and writings through Moo’s careful and faithful scholarship. That is why I was thrilled to see the release of Moo’s new commentary on Galatians for the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Moo has been marinating in Paul’s writings for decades, and this commentary reflects the depth of his long scholarship…