Stan and I have taken a brief break from posting for the past couple of months, due to general busyness and adapting to new circumstances, but we are back. For our first post, of 2020, we wanted to take a look at our most viewed posts in 2019 and highlight them for you. In reverse order, here they are.

5. Book Announcement: David I. Yoon, “A Discourse Analysis of Galatians and the New Perspective on Paul.” I published my dissertation with Brill this year, in their Linguistic Biblical Studies series, and I am hoping it will be a helpful resource for those exploring or interested in discourse analysis and register analysis from a Systemic-Functional framework. It is also a work that addresses the New Perspective on Paul, particularly on whether or not the context of situation reflects covenantal nomism.

4. Linguistics and New Testament Greek Conference. In April 2019, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary hosted the “Linguistics and New Testament Greek: Key Issues in the Current Debate” conference, with Stan being one of the keynote speakers. He recaps the conference in this post.

3. Thoughts about the NA29 and UBSGNT6. We had our friend, John Lee, write a guest blog post reflecting on the (still) upcoming publications of the 29th edition of the Nestle-Aland and 6th edition of the United Bible Society Greek New Testament. He shared some of his concerns regarding the publications of these editions, which generated some critical discussion, both on our blog and on other social media platforms.

2. I Kiss Celebrity Christianity Goodbye. Last year, Joshua Harris, well-known author and former pastor, announced not only his separation from his wife but also his abdication of the Christian faith he was raised in and fostered in others for many years. While it is impossible to prevent these sort of things from happening, I offered some solutions for the Christian general public in helping us see what contributes to these types of fall outs from so-called celebrity Christian leaders.

1. CT Caves to Pressure. The most viewed post in 2019 was on the article that Christianity Today initially published regarding well-known author Rachel Held Evans, who tragically passed away last year, and CT’s subsequent retraction of the article after negative public reaction to it. Stan notes several problems with their retraction and suggests that today’s society has lost a sense of how to engage in civic discourse. He notes that we would do well to accept that not everyone will have the same opinions on every issue and that mob rule and online bullying (which is what social media has become in some ways) are not helpful ways to move forward.

There you have it. We’ll continue to do our best to post thoughtful and informative posts in 2020.

— David I. Yoon