ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ: Love God and Others: ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ

Monday, July 30, 2007

Love God and Others: ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ

The blog title ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ is the Greek word for "you will love." It's the word used in the Greek New Testament (e.g. Mark 12.30) when referencing the Hebrew confession of faith—the Shema’—in Deuteronomy 6.4-5. I have chosen ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ as the title of this blog because its double use in Mark 12.30-31 summarizes what this blog is about:

knowing God's word
in order to love God
and love others

In Mark 12.29-31, Jesus anwers the question, "What is the greatest commandment?" He responds by quoting the Shema’ from Deuteronomy 6.4 that pious Jews would have confessed every morning and evening:

Hear, oh Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Jesus continues from Deuteronomy 6.5:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

While the Hebrew only has a tripartite division of the person, Jesus adds the 'mind' as a fourth aspect with which to love God. The meaning is the same: love God with all of who you are.

In Mark 12.31 Jesus continues with the second greatest commandment:

The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

This blog is devoted to the interpretation of scripture in order to love God and love others. Some of my primary interests to be included in this blog are...

biblical exegesis
biblical theology
use of OT in the NT
Greek language
Hebrew language
Bible translation
linguistics
discourse analysis
cognitive semantics
the Letter of James
textual criticism
teaching
preaching

Many of my interests are quite academic in nature, yet I do not wish to live in my own little world of books and research. I want to pursue these interests in such a way that I love God with all of who I am and also love others more than myself. Thus, in this blog I wish to love God and others by sharing my everyday thoughts concerning the above disciplines.

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Recent James Research

Carson, D. A. 2007. James. Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, 997-1014. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.
Horrell, David G. 2007. The Catholic Epistles and Hebrews. Redemption and resistance: The messianic hopes of Jews and Christians in antiquity, ed. Markus Bockmuehl and James Carleton Paget, 122-35. London: T&T Clark.
Darlack, James M. 2007. Pray for reign: The eschatological Elijah in James 5:17-18. M.A. thesis, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Hartin, Patrick J. 2007. The religious context of the Letter of James. Jewish Christianity reconsidered: Rethinking ancient groups and texts, ed. Matt Jackson-McCabe, 203-31. Minneapolis: Fortress.
van de Sandt, Huub. 2007. James 4,1-4 in the light of the Jewish two ways tradition 3,1-6. Biblica 88:38-63.
Bauckham, Richard. 2007. James and the Jerusalem community. Jewish believers in Jesus: The early centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, 55-95. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
John S. Kloppenborg. 2007. “Diaspora discourse: The construction of ethos in James.” New Testament Studies 53:242-70.
Spitaler, Peter. 2007. Διακρίνεσθαι in Mt. 21:21, Mk. 11:23, Acts 10:20. Novum Testamentum 49:1-39.
Richardson, Kurt Anders. 2006. Job as exemplar in the Epistle of James. Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter, 213-29. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Taylor, Mark E., and George H. Guthrie. 2006. The structure of James. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 68:681-705.
Byron, John. 2006. Living in the shadow of Cain: Echoes of a developing tradition in James 5:1-6. Novum Testamentum, 48:261-74.
Kamell, Mariam. 2006. The concept of “faith” in Hebrews and James. Paper delivered at the St Andrews Conference on Hebrews and Theology, 19 July. University of St Andrews.
Verseput, Donald J. 2006. James 1:19-27: Anger in the congregation. Interpreting the New Testament text: Introduction to the art and science of exegesis, ed. Darrell L. Bock and Buist M. Fanning, 429-40. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
William R. Baker. 2005. "Book of James." In Dictionary for theological interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 347-51. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.
Bruce Chilton. 2005. "James, Peter, Paul, and the formation of the Gospels." In The missions of James, Peter, and Paul: Tensions in early Christianity, ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig Evans, 3-28. Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 115. Leiden: Brill.
Peter H. Davids. 2005. "James and Peter: The literary evidence." In Chilton and Evans, 29-52.
John Painter. 2005. "The power of words: Rhetoric in James and Paul." In Chilton and Evans, 235-73.
Bruce Chilton. 2005. "Wisdom and Grace." In Chilton and Evans, 307-22.
Wiard Popkes. 2005. "Leadership: James, Paul, and their contemporary background." In Chilton and Evans, 323-54.
Peter H. Davids. 2005. "The test of wealth." In Chilton and Evans, 355-84.
Marianne Sawicki. 2005. "Person or practice? Judging in James and in Paul." In Chilton and Evans, 385-408.
Jacob Neusner. 2005. "Sin, repentance, atonement, and resurrection: The perspective of rabbinic theology on the views of James 1-2 and Paul in Romans 3-4." In Chilton and Evans, 409-34.
Peter H. Davids. 2005. "Why do we suffer? Suffering in James and Paul." In Chilton and Evans, 435-66.
Ithamar Gruenwald. 2005. "Ritualizing death in James and Paul in light of Jewish apocalypticism." In Chilton and Evans, 467-86.
Bruce Chilton. 2005. "Conclusions and questions." In Chilton and Evans, 487-94.
Watson, Duane F. 2005. A reassessment of the rhetoric of the Epistle of James and its implications for Christian origins. Paper delivered at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA (November 2005): 1-11.
Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. 2005. A letter from Jerusalem: James in the mind of the recipients of his epistle. Paper delivered at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA (November 2005): 1-10.
Botha, J. Eugene. 2005. Simple salvation, but not of straw... Jacobean soteriology. Salvation in the New Testament: Perspectives on soteriology, ed. Jan G. van der Watt, 389-408. Leiden: Brill.
Luke Timothy Johnson. 2004. "Prologue: James's significance for early Christian history." In Brother of Jesus, friend of God: Studies in the Letter of James, 1-23. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Luke Timothy Johnson. 2004. "Epilogue: The importance of James for theology." In Brother of Jesus, friend of God: Studies in the Letter of James, 235-59. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Robert W. Wall. 2004. "A unifying theology of the Catholic Epistles: A canonical approach." In The Catholic Epistles and the tradition, ed. J. Schlosser, 43-71. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press.
Richard J. Bauckham. 2004. "The wisdom of James and the wisdom of Jesus." In Schlosser, 75-92.
John S. Kloppenborg. 2004. "The reception of the Jesus traditions in James." In Schlosser, 93-142.
Jonathan P. Yates. 2004. "The reception of the Epistle of James in the Latin West: Did Athanasius play a role? In Schlosser, 273-88.
David Instone-Brewer. 2004. "James as a sermon on the trials of Abraham." In The New Testament in its first century setting: Essays on context and background in honour of B. W. Winter on his 65th birthday, 250-68. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Bruce Chilton. 2004. "James, Jesus' brother." In The face of New Testament studies: A survey of recent research, 251-62. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.
Bauckham, Richard. 2004. The Spirit of God in us loathes to envy: James 4:5. The Holy Spirit and Christian origins: Essays in honor of James D. G. Dunn, ed. by Graham N. Stanton, Bruce W. Longenecker, and Stephen C. Barton, 270-281. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Spencer, Matthew, Klaus Wachtel, and Christopher J. Howe. 2004. Representing multiple pathways of textual flow in the Greek manuscripts of the Letter of James using reduced median networks. Computers and the Humanities 38:1-14.
Mink, Gerd. 2004. Problems of a highly contaminated tradition: the New Testament—Stemmata of variants as a source of a genealogy for witnesses. Studies in stemmatology II, ed. by Pieter van Reenen, August den Hollander, and Margot van Mulken, 13-85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Wachtel, Klaus. 2004. Kinds of variants in the manuscript tradition of the Greek New Testament. Studies in stemmatology II, ed. by Pieter van Reenen, August den Hollander, and Margot van Mulken, 87-98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
David E. Aune. 2003. "Letter of James." In The Westminster dictionary of New Testament & Early Christian Literature & Rhetoric, 238-41. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.
Pehrson, Benjamin J. 2002. Noachic allusion and echo in James 3.1-12: Implicatures of new creation eschatology. M.A. thesis, Wheaton College Graduate School.
David C. Parker. 2002. "The development of the critical text of the Epistle of James: From Lachmann to the Editio Critica Maior." In New Testament textual criticism and exegesis: Festschrift J. Delobel, ed. A. Denaux, 317-30.
Wesley Hiram Wachob. 2002. "The apocalyptic intertexture of the Epistle of James." In The intertexture of apocalyptic discourse in the New Testament, ed. Duane F. Watson, 165-86. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.
Reumann, John. 1999. Christology of James. Who do you say that I am? Essays on Christology, ed. Jack Dean Kingsbury, David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell, 128-39. Louisville, KY: Westminster.