Site Updates

For the past several weeks, I have been working on some reasonably substantial changes to the site that should make it more useful and beneficial. With these changes completed and my comprehensive exams on the horizon (in both a hermeneutical and a temporal sense), I hope to begin regularly posting again quite soon. For anyone who may be interested, the following are among the most significant of changes to the site:

• The Bookshelf is now visual. Instead of an increasingly long list of text-only links for the publications mentioned on this site and other helpful works, the Bookshelf now uses book cover thumbnails with the author(s) or editor(s) names captioned below.
• Complementing the new design for the bookshelf are the “In this post” sections that have been added. This section provides for each post a kind of quick reference bibliography that can be consulted more extensively if one so desires. This section allows any in-text references in the posts to be more abbreviated and, hence, less intrusive, while at the same time providing an additional means of informally facilitating content control and readerly review.
• The Bookshelf page and the “In this post” sections are now powered by the Westminster Bookstore and DealOz.com. Although Governor Perdue has recently sent the update to the North Carolina Sales and Use Tax back to the North Carolina General Assembly, Amazon.com has preemptively terminated North Carolina-based blog affiliations as infeasible for them under the pending, proposed revisions to the sales and use tax code. In addition, on the positive side, the Westminster Bookstore and DealOz.com have several good features that should make them more useful based on how their resources are being used on this site.
• Links to http://bible.logos.com have been implemented for the biblical and most of the apocryphal literature. It seems that there may still be some quirks with some of the apocryphal literature (e.g., the additions to Daniel and Esther); otherwise, things seem to work quite smoothly.
• Added Widgets
  • Series of posts are now tagged, and the series names appear in a sidebar widget.
  • The “Current and Recent Reading” section from the Bookshelf has moved to a sidebar widget.
  • In addition, I have added added a widget that lists select new and forthcoming publications.
• According to my records, the following blogs have been added to the blogroll since the last blogroll update:
  • Ben Witherington – The blog of Ben Witherington, Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. Among Dr. Witherington’s specialties is socio-rhetorical criticism.
  • Biblical Languages – The blog of Phillip Marshall, Assistant Professor of Biblical Languages at Houston Baptist University.
  • Codex: Biblical Studies Blogspot – The blog of Tyler Williams, Professor of Old Testament at Taylor University College. Tyler’s teaching interests include historiography, Psalms, Genesis, wisdom literature, hermeneutics, religion and popular culture, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls.
  • Ecce Homo – The blog of Mike Whitenton, a Biblical Studies student, whose main research interests are research interests are Jesus studies, the Gospels, and Pauline soteriology.
  • Greek language and Linguistics – The blog of Micheal Palmer, a resident of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and a former teacher of Classical and Hellenistic Greek.
  • Hebrew and Greek Reader – The blog of Daniel and Tonya from the University of Stellenbosch.
  • Jesus Creed – The blog of Scot McKnight, Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University. Dr. McKnight specializes in New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus.
  • Koinōnia – A blog oriented toward biblical theology sponsored by Zondervan with contributions from numerous scholars.
  • Novum Testamentum – The blog of Matt O’Reilly, a student at Asbury Theological Seminary.
  • NT Blog – The academic blog of Mark Goodacre, Associate Professor of New Testament at Duke University. This blog focuses on issues of interest in the New Testament and Christian Origins.
  • NT Pod – The podcast of Mark Goodacre, Associate Professor of New Testament at Duke University. This podcast focuses on the New Testament and Christian Origins.
  • NT Resources – The blog of Rod Decker, Professor of Greek and New Testament at Baptist Bible Seminary.
  • Paul of Tarsus – The blog of Kevin Scull, a PhD candidate at the University of California. The blog focuses on Paul with occasional entries about other topics, including broad New Testament issues, the historical Jesus, the Apostolic Fathers, papyrology.
  • Review of Biblical Literature – The blog of the Review of Biblical Literature.
  • Sitz im Leben – The blog of Brandon Wason, an incoming PhD student at Emory University. Brandon will specialize in New Testament, but he also has interests in the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament Apocrypha.
  • Source Theory – The blog of Tim Lewis, an MTh student specializing in Syriac Lexicography.
  • Tyndale Tech – The blog of Tyndale House devoted to highlighting electronic resources for biblical studies.
  • Westminster Bookstore Blog – The blog of the bookstore at Westminster Theological Seminary.
• A Student Resources page has been added as a parent page for the previously independent New Testament Greek, Other Websites, and Theological Writing pages. Links in older versions of the writing handout will be automatically redirected to the new Theological Writing page location.
• The New Testament Greek page has been updated to revive what had apparently become dead links, add files that had previously been corrupted, add audio files for the optative mood, and add miscellaneous other files.
• Finally, the site has a new theme and a new logo. The image is clipped and edited from a photograph of a leaf from Codex Sinaiticus online at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Beginning on the seventh line from the top, is Luke 10:26, which, in the NA27/UBS4 text, reads: ὁ δὲ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτόν· ἐν τῷ νόμῳ τί γέγραπται; πῶς ἀναγινώσκεις; (And he said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”).