A. T. Robertson's Grammar (3rd ed.)

For those of you hardcore Greek guys, A. T. Robertson's magisterial A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research is available on the three main bible programs and the third edition (greatly expanded) is available as a very nice pdf. If you want original pagination for citation purposes, you can use the 2nd edition from archive.org. The 4th, and final, version is what bibleworks has (and I assume the other programs as well). The difference between the 3rd and 4th is apparently quite small. Robertson says "The Fourth Edition is a reprint of the Third with the correction of a few errata that remained." (pg. xx)

If you are interested, read a few reviews off of amazon.com (the link to the fourth edition).

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Online

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were discovered by the archaeologists Grenfell and Hunt in Egypt. "The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and Latin documents, letters and literary works."¹ Many NT and OT mss were discovered at this time. There were, at it's completion, about 85 volumes published, some of which are available online.


Roger Pearse has linked to the first 14 volumes, with the 15th volume also available. Images of the papyri for vols 41-68 are now online, and it also includes an index to vols 1-68 (this means there is a short description of each papyri--very useful).


Papyri.info is a searchable papyri database that is not limited to just the P.Oxy. group. 


A list of OT and NT P.Oxy. documents. 


A closing word from A. T. Robertson from his book The Minister and His Greek New Testament:

But enough has been said to show how rich the papyri are for the student of the Greek new Testament. The best linguistic commentary on the Greek New Testament is the papyri of the first century A.D. and the Septuagint. It is now possible for any eager student to have both these privileges without having to sell his coat to get them. (last paragraph of Chapter II)

Sell your coat, nothing! With all of this available online, you won't even have to put it on.

Textual Commentary of the GNT Gospels

Wieland Willker has produced an incredibly helpful textual commentary on the Gospels of the Greek New Testament. Each Gospel has it's own pdf where Willker walks the reader through all of the disparate evidence for the textual variant and then he suggests a preferred reading. The best part about a commentary is that you don't have to trust the author's reading: all of the evidence is there for you to come to your own conclusion.

It looks like he's already updated it for 2012, and the full commentary comes out to approximately 2,600 pages and 2,000 variants.

You can look at the textual apparatus on your NA²⁷ to give you a quick idea of what is going on, but for the important variants, I would check out Willker's commentary.

Going further down the textual criticism rabbit hole, you can review all of the different papyri evidence for the GNT and then, if you so choose, look at the actual papyri images.

Merold Westphal Lectures for free download

This appears to be a class on Philosophical Hermeneutics (PH517) at Fuller Seminary taught by none-other than Dr. Merold Westphal. Dr. Westphal is not someone with whom I agree, but he is someone I am lucky to get a chance to listen to and learn from. I would encourage you all to download these lectures, because I have no idea how long they'll be up. It appears a student recorded the lectures with his personal recorder and then put the syllabus and lectures up on his blog.

Just found this over at the AOmin blog. This is a paper presented to Presbyterian students over at Westminster Seminary on how reformed baptists can still hold covenant theology.

TREN Database

TREN.com is the Theological Research Exchange Network, which, in practical terms, means it's a place for you to get (theological...duh) master's theses and doctoral dissertations. After you sign up, you'll even find some free resources. The interface is a bit clunky, but it works.

There are a couple of benefits of going to a place like TREN when you need to read that unpublished paper. 1) It's easier to deal with a website than it is to deal with the individual university library, 2) you might get lucky and find they have already scanned it, which means you can start reading it right away.

They are a bit more expensive than I would like, but hey, I'm not aware of any other options. To get a paper copy it's $0.15 per page, microfiche $3-5 per document, and pdf costs vary.

I'm not entirely sure what I would do with microfiche anymore...

For the City: Book Review

I am not a church planter. I am not an elder of a church. I believe this should be said at the outset, lest anyone give my opinion more credit than it deserves. However, I do have a teaching ministry at my church, and the joy and heartache of shepherding a small group of people. All of that to say: I was really excited to read this book and see how I could grow or change to further impact the people I am currently leading.

Darrin Patrick and Matt Carter wrote For the City which reads like an introduction to missional ecclesiology. They drive the point home over and over that they are calling for pastors and church planters to be a church that is for their city. They define this as being a church that

speaks the truth of the gospel and is not afraid to uphold a biblical worldview and moral standard. Such a church proclaims the truths of Scripture with passion, clarity, and boldness. At the same time, though, this is a church that commits itself to seeking the shalom, the flourishing of the city. This means seeking the shalom of the people they live in community with, living sacrificially and using their gifts, time, and money to seek the peace and prosperity of their neighbors. (26)

Their passion for the masses found in cities is understandable, laudable, and frankly should be on our hearts more and more, but to actually be in a city is not necessary to appropriate and grow from what they have written in this book (as they acknowledge, cf., 26). Anyone, in any church context can be challenged by what this.

These pastors are pleading for Christians to stop seeing their church as a “holy huddle” and instead to be entranced with the God-given mission of reaching the lost and seeing God's peace and grace overflow to those around them. We are called to do the same job that the prophets and the apostles did, call people to repent and live their lives under the rule of their king. If you are swept away by this vision, this will not be the only book you read. It was not meant to be. But if you believe there must be something more than a stale, inward focus for your church, then I think there are few places that would be as good as a place to start.

The chapter I appreciated most was written by Darrin Patrick on communities. As a small group leader, I know how easy it is to make the bible study the end-all and be-all of your small group event. But most leaders who develop small groups would say there is more to it than that. We all know that a small group is made to be an opportunity for people to practice the “one anothers” actually with one another. Patrick challenges us to see these groups as possible church plants that are radically oriented towards the radical proclamation of the gospel to a lost world. He argues that it is precisely when we stop focusing on ourselves and begin to focus on helping a lost and hurting world that we will actually begin to do the one anothers that we've been trying to do. It is only when we as Christians are brought to the “end” of ourselves that we begin relying on God and he most powerfully works through us.

The one thing I wish they would have spent more time on is how they see the role of partnerships with groups that do not believe the gospel. I'm not against that completely, but to see how the gospel is the one unifying factor in this whole book (as it should be) and to understand what it means to go from dead to alive in Christ, to know that everything else pales by comparison, how are we to understand partnering with groups that do not hold the gospel? The chapter on Equipping touches on this and other “sticky” spots as they seek the well-being of their cities. What is clear is that those partnerships were not taken lightly and without much thought, but I was still left unsure how I would make those same decisions.

This book will challenge you to question your interaction with your city and how you view the role of your church. You might not be left without questions, but you will certainly be blessed by how God has revealed his heart to bring people to himself as seen in these two churches. 

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review.