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I hadn’t noticed until today, but among the volumes available at Loebolus is Aristotle’s Rhetoric (vol. 193; ed. J. H. Freese, 1926).

Similar to rollApp, which debuted earlier this year, InstallFree is offering a no-cost web-based version of LibreOffice that can be run inside a browser and that integrate with various online storage platforms like Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive. For free, users can also use InstallFree’s Microsoft Office application to view Microsoft Office file formats with full fidelity. Native editing privileges for Microsoft Office formats are available in InstallFree, after the initial 60-day trial, starting at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year for academic users. For more information about InstallFree, please see the videos below or visit the website. ...

Earlier today, the program director, Robert Woods, announced that the Christian Institute for the Study of Liberal Arts would begin offering a SACS-accredited, fully distance-based PhD program: This PhD is literally one-of-a-kind in that it is fully accredited (SACS), offered fully distance with the dissertation being defended via conference call with a designated Research Fellow, and the student’s full committee having guided the research. This PhD is uniquely interdisciplinary in structure and practice. A number of the highly qualified faculty are generalists and encourage the kind of readings, research, and writing that reflects an interdisciplinary drive. ...

From the latest Zondervan academic update: If you can’t make it to ETS, however, there is now a next-best option. We are sponsoring live webcasts of all plenary speakers, including E. Calvin Beisner, Russell Moore, Richard Bauckham, and Douglas Moo. Visit www.LiveStream.com/ZondervanAcademic to RSVP and get reminders. ...

Joe Puckett One of our recent MLitt graduates through the Christian Institute for the Study of Liberal Arts, Joe Puckett, completed his thesis earlier this year, and it has now come to press with Wipf and Stock under the title, The Apologetics of Joy: A Case for the Existence of God from C. S. Lewis’s Argument from Desire. The title should soon also be available through other booksellers. ...

On the web: David Pao’s Colossians and Philemon, latest volume in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, is now available at CBD (HT: Matthew Miller). ACU Press works toward releasing all its texts in various ebook formats. Lawrence Schiffman reproduces his recent Discovery Times Square interview.

The Chrome Web Store now includes individual Chrome web apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides: To make it even easier for you to create stuff quickly, Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations–now called Docs, Sheets, and Slides–are available as apps in the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, shortcuts to these apps will appear when you open a new tab in Chrome. ...

The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 55, no. 3 includes several articles of interest.

If I had noticed it before, it had since slipped my mind. But, the PDF archive for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society is largely open-access. The open-access portion of the archive contains all the Journal’s volumes except those from the past two full years, which are accessible to subscribers. The archive also contains the first four volumes of the older Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society. ...

On the web: Jim Davila and Hershel Shanks, among others, pay tribute to the fallen titan, Frank Moore Cross. Michael Bird joins Joel Watts in reflecting on Justin Martyr, Xenophon, and the Gospels. The Cornell University Library has a collection of Eleusinian inscription images available (HT: Charles Jones).

On the web: Charles Jones notes the open-access availability of some of the Journal of Roman Studies. Brian LePort completes a two-part reflective digest of Amy-Jill Levine’s recent San Antonio lectures on Jewish-Christian relations ( part 1, part 2).

Richard Baxter (1615–1691; photo credit: Wikipedia) For today’s “Pastor Appreciation Month” sale, Logos Bible Software is offering volume 14 of their series of Richard Baxter’s practical works for free. The volume includes Baxter’s classic The Reformed Pastor (1655) and his Confirmation and Restauration (1658).

Graeme Goldsworthy New out earlier this year was Graeme Goldsworthy’s Christ-Centered Biblical Theology: Hermeneutical Foundations and Principles (InterVarsity). On the volume’s product page, the folks at the Westminster Bookstore have made available a PDF containing the volume’s first chapter, “Biblical Theology: Lame Duck or Eagles’ Wings?” (19–37). ...

The University of Pennsylvania has made available online a series of PDFs containing the New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford, 2009). In keeping with the NETS’s printed text, the beginning of each file also contains a good introduction to the translation that it provides (HT: Charles Jones). ...

University of Oxford (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The Oxford University Classics Faculty’s PINAX “is a digital library comprised of collections of displayed papyrus images and texts at Oxford.” Texts include papyri from Antinoopolis, Herculaneum, and Oxyrhynchus, as well as magical texts (HT: Charles Jones). ...

In acknowledgement of Westminster Seminary’s Preaching Conference later this month, the Westminster Bookstore is running a half (or more)-off special on Edmund Clowney’s Preaching and Biblical Theology, Graeme Goldsworthy’s Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, as well as a number of other resources. ...

The Journal of Theological Studies 63, no. 2 includes several articles of note.

Further thanks to Jonathan Kiel (via Brian Davidson) for passing along Miles Van Pelt’s Göttingen Septuagint sigla chart PDF.

To demonstrate the superiority of Jesus’ sacrifice to those previously offered under the Torah, the writer to the Hebrews quotes a version of Ps 40:6–8 (Eng; 40:7–9 HB; 39:7–9 OG; Heb 10:5–9). 1 In so doing, Hebrews fairly clearly situates its rendition of this psalm’s words as Jesus’ own (cf. Heb 10:10). 2 If one were to read the entire psalm in this direction however, 3 problems would seemingly arise (e.g., vv. 12–17 Eng). 4 ...

[caption id="" align=“alignright” width=“80”] John Walton, Victor Matthews, and Mark Chavalas[/caption] Ahead of class this fall, the folks at InterVarsity have kindly forwarded John Walton, Victor Matthews, and Mark Chavalas’s Old Testament backgrounds commentary (2000). According to the publisher’s description, ...

David between Wisdom and Prophecy Psalm 7 is an individual lament, 1 and the superscript situates it as “concerning the words of Cush, the Benjaminite” ( Ps 7:1 HB; על־דברי־כושׁ בן־ימיני‎). 2 This situation is rather difficult to pinpoint precisely in the biblical narratives of David’s life. 3 The OG reading Χουσί is reflected in Augustine’s text and leads him to relate Ps 7 to 2 Sam 15:32–37. 4 Yet, this rendering seems as though it may suggest a different Vorlage than is available in the MT. 5 ...

On the web: Tommy Wasserman notes a new iOS app for New Testament manuscripts. E. K. McFall has the latest article in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism: “Are Dionysos and Oedipus Name Variatnios for Satan and Antichrist?” Dan Wallace recounts an experience of reading a manuscript that “doesn’t exist.” Alin Suciu highlights Lorenzo Perrone’s lecture on recently-discovered texts of Origen’s homilies on the Psalms. For a selection of previous background posts, see here.

Tommy Keene notes the revival of an automatic link builder for Firefox and the Westminster Bookstore’s blog partner program. Tommy’s earlier Firefox search bar add-on for the Westminster Bookstore is also a very helpful tool. ...

Ezra and Nehemiah each provide their own distinct reports of the Jews’ return from Babylonian exile. Even if the portrayal of this return as a “second exodus” is not a particular, literary concern in these books, 1 the narrative’s inclusion of elements like captivity, release, land resettlement, and covenant establishment certainly echo important features in the narrative of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. 2 Even so, Ezra and Nehemiah include in their portraits of the people’s experience of some “reviving” (מחיה) a stroke in which the people also found themselves still to be slaves ( Ezra 9:8–9; cf. Neh 9:36). 3 ...

Emmanuel Tov has made available the full text of his 2009 monograph Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert in two PDF files in the “Publications” section of his website. Excepting certain “minute changes,” these files are substantially identical to the printed versions. ...

On the web: Tokens makes available the final part of their interview with Walter Brueggemann. Theological Studies has back issues from 5 years ago and beyond freely available online (HT: Charles Jones). Michael Halcomb reflects on some of Albert Schweitzer’s comments on Christian scholars. Tommy Keene highlights BibleArc. Archive.org has Gordon Fee’s PhD thesis available online (HT: Larry Hurtado). Bavarian authorities are commissioning annotated editions of Mein Kampf in hopes of further defusing the work’s value for extremists’ use as it comes into the public domain. Joel Willitts reflects on some of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s comments on “self forgiveness.”

In Acts 13:16–41, Paul addresses the Pisidian synagogue. In this discourse’s context, Paul asserts “we preach to you the good news concerning the promise that had come to the fathers—that this promise God has fulfilled for us their children by raising Jesus” ( Acts 13:32–33; ἡμεῖς ὑμᾶς εὐαγγελιζόμεθα τὴν πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας ἐπαγγελίαν γενομένην, ὅτι ταύτην ὁ θεὸς ἐκπεπλήρωκεν τοῖς τέκνοις [αὐτῶν] ἡμῖν ἀναστήσας Ἰησοῦν). From here, the following quotation of Ps 2:7 confirms Jesus’ resurrection by Yahweh’s hand (cf. Acts 13:37). 1 This resurrection in incorruption situates Jesus as the means by which the ancestral promise becomes actualized ( Acts 13:34–37) because it situates him as the recipient and mediator of the things vouchsafed to David ( Acts 13:34)—namely, an everlasting covenant in which the wandering return and receive forgiveness from Yahweh ( Isa 55; cf. Deut 30). 2 ...

In contemporary English parlance, to call someone a “man” or “woman of God” substantially means that individual is “godly” or “pious.” As such, the phrase is a descriptor of a person’s moral or religious standing in relation to some perceived measure. In the Hebrew Bible, however, אישׁ (ה)אלהים ([the] man of God) regularly designates a “prophet.” To be sure, these prophets were often “godly” or “pious,” but even here, there were occasional exceptions to this behavior (e.g., 1 Kgs 13). Rather, when the Hebrew Bible applies this same phrase to David, it fits him into the framework of the broader tradition of the prophet as Yahweh’s representative ( Neh 12:24, 36; 2 Chron 8:14). In these particular texts, David’s status as an אישׁ אלהים (man of God) revolves around his plans for the temple’s administration. Even so, scarcely can at least the Davidic psalms be separated from vocation as a royal אישׁ אלהים (man of God). 1 ...

ABC News (HT: Michael Bird) and the AFP (HT: Jim Davila) are reporting that the regional court in Cologne, Germany, has rendered a verdict that makes involuntary circumcision on religious grounds illegal, although the practice remains permissible if done for medical reasons. The decision follows on the treatment of a four-year-old Muslim boy for post-operative bleeding and the prosecution of the doctor who had performed the procedure. ...

Charles Jones notes that the May issue of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research is available for free online through July 31 and that ClassicsTeaching.com contains some valuable resources for teachers of classics, compiled by Steven Hunt (Cambridge) and Aisha Khan-Evans (University of London).