Text, Community & Mission

After moving 1,200 miles, finding a beautiful home to rent, having that home flooded by a burst pipe ruining a shelf and books and having the furnace die, I am back and ready for a New Year.  My dad and I should have the last of the repairs done on our rental house today and then life should return to normal.

After seeing Nick’s goals from 2008, I decided to set some of my own.  So here they are:

1.  Read through the Bible using a daily reading plan. – I have read through the entire Bible many times, but never using a daily reading plan.  I also plan to journal it as well.

2.  Read through the Greek New Testament. – I will be using Lee Irons schedule and syntax notes.  I had them bound in a spiral for easy use and am excited to start this.  This is a great resource for any NT student.

3.  Translate John. – I started recently and I hope to be disciplined enough to finish it in the next few months.

4.  Finish my old series in the blog. – I never finished Who Gets to Narrate the World by Robert Webber, because I had to return the book to the SWBTS library and could not get it back.  Once I am able to access the TEDS library I will try to get a copy and finish off the series.  Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles by Francis Watson was destroyed by the flood so I will either try to get it from the library or search for a replacement copy once everything settles down.

5.  Read some Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth. – Another idea I stole from Nick.  I have Barth’s Romans commentary but I think I will look for a copy of Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament.

Reading through Calvin’s Institutes with Princeton sounds like a lot of fun, but that might be a bit too much to add to the daily reading schedule this year.  But I might listen to it if I have time in the evening.

Oh…and I hope to do well in my classes at TEDS too.

If you are moving into a house for the first time, and do not yet know, do not turn off your heat when you leave for a winter vacation.  Your pipes will freeze and burst and ruin your books.  Just in case you did not know.

Check out this link for a chance to win a bunch of good free books…Trevin Wax is the blogger and a student at Southern.

I forgot to post on Saturday before we left.  My wife and I are moving to Chicago to transfer to TEDS.  I will be continuing my graduate studies, pursuing a both an M.A. in Old Testament and an M.A. New Testament.  My wife will be continuing her education to become a marriage an family counselor by working toward an M.A. Counseling and Psychology.  We should be moved into our new home soon, so I can get back to regular posting.

The question of how to categorize the aspect of the perfect and pluperfect tense forms is taken up in chapter 5.  Campbell begins by acknowledging that traditionally the perfect has been understood to be indicate past completed action with ongoing results.  He then comments that the problem with this explanations that it simply does not work, giving John 1.26 and Revalation 8.5 as examples.  Stative aspect has been suggested as a solution to the perfect problem.  McKay’s definition of the stative is given: “the stative aspect views the state, or state of being, of the subject of the verb.”  Some problems arise from this understanding and Wackernagel’s suggestion that stativity should be applied to the object of the verb.   (more…)

The following lectures have been added to the lecture page:

Brueggemann, Walter

Old Testament Lectures – First Presbyterian Church – 2004 – MP3 -

http://fpcknox.org/daily-readings/walter-brueggemann/

Wright, Tom

The Roots, Basis And Fruits Of Christian Hope. – Psalm 98 – St Aldates, Oxford – http://www.staldates.org.uk/mp3/3246_The%20Roots%20Basis%20And%20Fruits%20Of%20Christian%20Hope_01-06-2008%20PM.mp3

The Problem of Evil (with Bart Ehrman) – San Francisco – http://rstshahinian.hipcast.com/download/89da4a31-d939-088a-0259-1a0cf353618e.mp3 (HT: Ben Blackwell)

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In the fourth chapter, Campbell turns to discussing the imperfective aspect.  His basic definition of imperfective aspect is “the view from the inside-an action is presented as though unfolding before the eyes.”  Campbell states that the present and imperfect tense-forms universally accepted as imperfective.  The difference between the present and imperfect-forms is their spatial reference.  Porter suggests that the imperfect is remote and the present is perfect and non-remote.  Campbell distinguishes what Porter calls non-remote as proximity.  He claims non-remoteness is not just the absence of remoteness, but a positive quality opposite of remoteness.  Here, Campbell provides a helpful diagram to visually show these spatial concepts.  Campbell moves on to discuss the use of present tense in narrative as part of direct, indirect or authorial discourse, which seems natural because of (more…)

The third chapter of BVABG Campbell begins his description of the different verb-forms and their aspects.  Perfective aspect occupies this chapter.  Campbell defines perfective aspect as “the external viewpoint, with which an author portrays an action, event or state from the outside.”  The aorist tense-form is regarded by all as perfective and that it presents events is summary and not detail.  Campbell also stresses that this does not mean aorist actions are unimportant.  Campbell also recognizes the fallacy of thinking that the aorist always expresses a punctillar action.  Summary does not mean instantaneous.  

Next, Campbell describes the role of tense in aorist.  Campbell argues that the aorist does not semantically carry past tense and notes that only 85% of the aorists (more…)

Chapter 2 of BVABG is concerned with the history of verbal aspect study in New Testament Greek.  Personally, I found this chapter delightful.  I find learning the history of how an idea cam about very influential in understanding the idea and wish more works would include a section like Campbell does.  

In the introduction Campbell discusses the difficulties in the history of verbal aspect because of its convergence of three disciplines: linguistics, philology and New Testament studies.  It seems that each discipline can, at times, be guilty of over emphasizing their role and accusing the others of emphasizing their too much.  Studying verbal aspect in the Greek New Testament, however, must consider all three of these disciplines. (more…)

Campbell, Constantine R. Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008.

First of all I would like to thank Jesse Hillman and Andrew Rodgers at Zondervan for providing me with this review copy.

Well, I am a few weeks behind the biblioblogesphere’s obsession with Verbal Aspect.  For a listing of other reviews see the list over at Koinonia.  My plan is to post on each chapter a small summary of the major points what I learned.  While this will not be my first exposure to aspect theory it will be the first book I work through on the subject, so I am excited to dig deeper into the topic. (more…)