The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek

The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek is not intended for beginner-level Greek learners, but as clearly stated in the introduction, for second-year or beyond Greek students.  The book basically lays out “handy” charts for grammatical and usage references, i.e. syntax, conjugation, phrase diagramming, etc.

Huffman has composed a basic but accessible reference book that would be a great accompaniment to a full-sized textbook, but I think it would also be a useful tool for anyone studying Greek whether in school or out.  I found his inclusion of a Select Bibliography in Greek studies particular helpful in finding other works that could be used alongside the handbook.

All that said, I do have some critiques in terms of layout that might be addressed in future editions:

There’s very little that separates chapters and sections.  The entire book is printed in orange and black.  So if you’re hoping to quickly turn to and recognize a section that you’re studying, you’ll have to first take the time to look in the table of contents and find the page number. 

It seems to me if a press was going to take the resources to print in color, it could have changed up the colors for each section.  Tabs would have been a useful addition too, and maybe even a spiral binding so that the book can sit open flat in the section that you’re studying.  For an example of a great pocket style grammar manual (English not Greek) see Diana Hacker’s “A Pocket Style Manual”.

Also, I didn’t really see the logic in the organization within the three main sections.  Why go from nouns, to adjectives, to adverbs, to articles, to pronouns, to prepositions, to verbs?  It seems a little more logical to group parts of speech in the sense that they affect one another, for example adverbs affect verbs but they’re several pages away from one another. 

Overall, I think this was a great first edition, but I’d love to see a little better approachability in future editions.  There’s not much here that makes it a “quick” reference, just a lighter reference than carrying around a textbook.

The publisher provided a copy of this text in exchange for an honest review.  All opinions are my own.

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend

With the recent release of Peter Jackson’s directorial take on The Hobbit, it’s hard not to try to imagine what drove the man who created the fantastical world of Middle Earth.

The elusive answer to that question is the topic of Colin Duriez’s new biography: “J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend”.  Duriez does an amazing job of weaving together the stories of Tolkien’s life with the stories he creates.  For example, the farmer that chased J.R.R. Tolkien for picking mushrooms as a child, whom he and his brother nicknamed “the black ogre” (15) or of how the tale of Luthien and Beren in the Silmarillion was symbolic of Tolkien and his wife’s love (109).

I appreciated the scholarship foundational to this biography, but within that, as is the case of most biographies, the book felt like a biography written by a scholar.  It was in many respects a history text: not bad, but not a page-turner by any means.

If you’re looking for a glimpse of Tolkien’s life, this biography is definitely a good start, but I think it’s interest is geared more toward scholars, who might do better with Duriez’s primary sources in the notes.  If you're looking for a good examination of Tolkien's spiritual life, this probably isn't where you need to look either.

I enjoyed reading “The Making of a Legend”, and I think a Tolkein fan would too, but probably not as much as a Tolkein scholar might.

This book was sent to me for review.  All opinions are my own.

My First Handy Bible

Book Review

I often complain about the lack of aesthetics in most churches and ministries today. Once upon a time art in the church was all about giving God the best, not “our best” but “the best”, whether we’re talking about music, art, or even the Sunday morning bulletin.  It’s all a matter of how we view God. 

Is He worthy of the best? 

Let me ask this: if the president was coming to visit our church, would we settle for what we do every week, or would we try to up the ante and maybe hire in some professionals to give him an experience that’s worthy of his visit. 

How much more for the King of Hosts?

Is it any wonder that so many find the world more attractive?  At least they seem to care about and believe in what they’re doing enough to spend some effort and money on it.

This may seem like a strange rant to walk down for a review of a Children’s Bible, but often times I see Christian publishers doing the same thing: just throwing together some half-baked artwork for their cover, and crummy stories that took probably all of ten hours to write, draw, and color for children’s books.  

And then I there’s the Handy Bible. 

The book itself isn’t all that impressive.  Its gimmick is a cheap plastic handle and a cheap plastic latch that keeps it closed.  Imagine a tiny briefcase.  But inside . . . inside it’s amazing!

They hired professional cartoon artist Gustavo Mazali to illustrate the Bible stories, and the scenes and imagery are just gorgeous.  I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was about the artwork.  He has a style similar to Sam Butcher’s Precious Moments, and if you were just thinking about the commercialized version of his work, I’d encourage you to check out the Precious Moments Chapel and some of his finer paintings.  I think Mazali is much better at expression than Butcher was though.

My son loved the stories too, though at three, he wasn’t as excited about the professional quality of the art.  Someday he will be.  I learned to draw by copying out of a picture Bible, and maybe he will too.

At any rate, I highly recommend this book, but also all the other selections from Scandanavia Publishing with illustrations by Gustavo Mazali.

Buy the book for $11.01

About the Book

As soon as they can talk, most little ones begin asking for a Bible to hold in their very own hands. Now, from Denmark to America, comes My First Handy Bible (Scandinavia Publishing) for babies and toddlers, with all the best stories from Genesis to Revelation. Young children delight in carrying around the compact and colorful Bible—taking it to church, “playing” church or cuddling up in a lap to have it read to them. My First Handy Bible has huge appeal for parents, grandparents, teachers and children’s ministry leaders, but especially for the kids!

Miracles

What exactly is a miracle?  If you’re a Bible believing Christian, that’s probably not a question you’ve asked.  If you’re a skeptic, you’ve probably wouldn’t even waste much time pondering that question and dismiss it with a remark about ignorant people.  Yet miracles are part of the universal human experience.  There is no culture on Earth that doesn’t believe in miracles of some kind.

Tim Stafford is a senior writer for Christianity Today and has spent twenty-something years traveling the world and hearing accounts of miracles, which are the topic of his new book aptly titled: Miracles.

He admits that as a reformed Presbyterian, he didn’t have much faith in miracles and mostly leaned toward the position that God had gotten out of using people in His miracle working business after He finished his epic memoirs aka the Bible. (My words not his.)

But when a young man that he knew from his Presbyterian church, who had been bound to a wheelchair, went to a healing service at a more charismatic church and walked away from it pushing his wheelchair in front of him, Mr. Stafford decided to start digging a little deeper.

He found two things: there’s a lot of hyped-up, exaggerated miracles that people just want to believe but probably aren’t even close to true, but there are also real documented miracles happening all over the world.  He gives one example of watching Muslims come to Christ in Mozambique because a deaf man is healed in His name.

What is the thing that separates the real from the hype?  Well, the real are much rarer, usually important to an individual and those who know him/her, they’re life-changing for everyone involved, and most importantly God uses these “signs” as just that--signs that point to Him.

I have to say that I loved this book.

I’ve seen miracles first hand.  When my son was born, my wife went blind from complications because her blood started to clot and hemorrhage and damaged the tissue in her eyes, as well as other organs throughout her body.  It wasn’t certain whether she would live or die, but according to the doctors and the counselors that visited during that time, if she made it, her sight would be impaired for life.

I remember making videos of our son for her with the dim hope that God would heal her someday, and I wanted her to be able to see her son’s face when he was born. I also remember writing about healing during this time in the post Healing and God’s Heart.

People all around the world were praying for her recovery, and our boy was a month and half old when his mom was stable enough to come home from the hospital.  I can’t point to a specific moment when she got her sight back, but the next time we went to the doctor, she had 20/20 vision.

This is one of those examples Stafford would point to as hard to verify.  The medical records show that she was blind and got her sight back, but they chalk it up to the body healing itself.  They can’t explain how it healed itself, but it did.  It happens all the time.  Of course, that’s a skeptic’s response.  I don’t know how it happened, but it wasn’t a miracle because miracles don’t happen.

On the other hand, I’ve heard lots of people in the more charismatic side of things claim healing, but then a week later, they’re suffering again.  Were they healed or not? I’d say, no, and I think Stafford would too.

However, I think his summation is a good one.  If someone tells you they’ve been healed, hope that they have been and praise God.  Rejoice with those who rejoice.  If someone needs healing, pray that they will be, and mourn with those who mourn.  But don’t get so focused on signs and wonders that you forget whom the signs point to. 

Buy the book for $11.93