Think Wink.

Okay, so I know that it isn’t even Reformation Day (aka Halloween but Martin Luther nailing the 95 at Wittenburg has done more to change the world than a holiday about dressing up in costumes to scare away demons, imho) but I was checking out what I would like to have for Christmas. One of the areas I am planning on increasing my class load in is the original languages of Scripture: Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew. So I was just checking out Christian Book Distributors for what I could find and wow.

First on my wish list is Daniel B. Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. It is an intermediate grammar that is used here at MBTS for second-year Greek students. Okay actually if you have Dr. Tomlinson it is additional material that you can use to supplement his lectures…if you would want to, that is. But I really want this book to have and read through before I get into the more advanced Greek courses so that I will be a step ahead of the rest and can focus more on the lectures.

Then there is the abridged version of Wallace’s grammar called The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Grammar. I think I want this just to be able to have more exposure to Wallace and his grammar of the NT.

Next on my list is Guthrie’s and Duvall’s Biblical Greek Exegesis: A Graded Approach to Learning Intermediate and Advanced Greek. This book is seeking to help the student of New Testament Greek to apply what they will learn from Wallace’s grammar to exegeting a text of the New Testament. It will help take theory and put it into practice.

Fourth on my list is William D. Mounce’s A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek: Companion to Basics of Biblical Greek and Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. William Mounce wrote the book for first-year Greek studies, Basics of Biblical Greek. He wrote this book to help move the student along in his/her studies to prepare them for Wallace’s book. It is the bridge between these two grammars.

The Next book in my Christmas list is Dr. Gordon Fee’s text New Testament Exegesis, Third Edition: A Handbook for Students and Pastors. I have been a fan of Dr. Fee for some time, I love his commentary on 1 Corinthians. So I would like to read his book on exegesis to further and broaden my understanding of how to understand the biblical passage from a linguistic point of view.

To do that, I have two lexicons on my list. First is the BDAG, or A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. It is a CD-ROM version of the lexicon that is one of the most widely used lexicons. If I get it, I would like to get it for LOGOS from Libronix because they offer BDAG with the HALOT, Hebrew Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, for a sweet deal. These are just really expensive and I want to make sure I can drop that kind of cash.

The second lexicon is the Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon. This is the ninth edition of this work and on CD-ROM with a supplement from 1996. This is also another widely used lexicon that some of my favorite pastors and teachers use (e.g. Dr. John Piper, who if you don’t know used to teach NT Greek when he taught at Bethel College in MN before he became pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church).

One final book that I’d like to get is a Hebrew supplement book written by the gentleman who wrote Basics of Biblical Hebrew, Dr. Gary Pratico, is the book The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (co-authored by Miles V. Van Pelt).

If I can get my hands on some of these books, I’ll be in my own little dream land for a while. With the exception of the two (or three) lexicons, the books are actually really cheap if I go through Christian Book Distributors. So who knows what Christmas will bring since I am picking up about twenty more hours and $11.76 per hour at work. May be I can get these text-books and have a holly-jolly Christmas, this year; or a major headache from all of the reading on one subject.

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Ecclesiastes and the Election