Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Stan and I took an unofficial break from blogging last year, as we have been busy navigating the pandemic in our respective primary roles, Stan as seminary president and I as lead pastor. However, with a new year, we have decided to turn our attention back to the blog and continue to post on topics of interest to us, namely biblical studies, linguistics, church and culture, higher education, and publications related to these topics. While we have been busy leading our respective institutions during this pandemic, we have also tried to remain productive in our scholarship, although as with most of you, it has been a real challenge for us to be in normal work mode during this time.

In this post, we want to highlight a few new and forthcoming books and volumes. First, Stan has co-written (with philosopher Jason Robinson) a book titled Active Hermeneutics: Seeking Understanding in an Age of Objectivism, in which they argue that understanding is complex and must be done carefully and with appropriate humility. They reject the kind of objectivism that is so widely found, not just in the sciences but also in a lot of contemporary and recent biblical and theological studies. The book puts forward a constructive proposal of an active hermeneutics, a kind of hermeneutics of virtue, that embraces the notion of transcendence. The book has just been published by Routledge, and is now available in digital form, even if we have not yet seen a physical copy of it.

Second, the long-awaited The Perfect Storm: Critical Discussion of the Semantics of the Greek Perfect Tense Under Aspect Theory with Stan, Buist Fanning, and Constantine Campbell, edited by D.A. Carson, should be out with Peter Lang this year as well. This book is the result of the panel discussion at the 2013 annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, where presentations on and debate of the perfect tense-form from the three different perspectives (pun intended) of the authors took place. No doubt the book will (re)generate some more discussion on verbal aspect and the perfect tense-form.

Third, several edited volumes have just appeared or are expected to come out this year as well. One is a book on Christian higher education in Canada, which has just emerged with the title Christian Higher Education in Canada: Challenges and Opportunities, co-edited by Stan and Bruce Fawcett. The most recent volume of Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (volume 15) has now been published and the Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters (volume 10.1) should be appearing any day. Another anticipated volume is a collection of essays on paratextual features of New Testament manuscripts, including some of the top scholars in New Testament papyrology from all over the world. Next are the fourth volume of the Johannine Studies (JOST) series on the Johannine Prologue and probably the eleventh volume of the Pauline Studies (PAST) series on Paul and ethics. And finally, there are several journal volumes, including Filología Neotestamentaria and Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics that are complete and soon to appear, while we look forward to this year’s volumes being published in due time.

We are hopeful that this year will result in returning to some sense of normality, so that we can go back to doing some of the things we enjoy, such as reuniting with our friends and colleagues at the annual conferences and buying books at the conference book displays. Until then, we are trying to redeem this time by working hard on research, writing, and editing, while we continue to navigate this pandemic.

— Dave