I am a bit behind on reading blogs so if this has already been noted sorry.  Christianbooks.com has an Academic blog which looks pretty good.  Check it out when you get a chance.

I just picked up a copy this week of Gordon Fee’s New Testament Exegesis, and read through the preface, and the introduction.  In his introduction he writes:

The term exegesis is used in this book in a consciously limited sense to refer to the historical investigation into the meaning of the biblical text.  The presupposition lying behind this task is that the biblical books had “authors” and “readers,” and that the authors intended their readers to understand what they wrote.  Exegesis therefore answers the question, What did the biblical author mean?  It has to do both with what he said (the content itself) and why he said it at any given point (the literary context) – as much as that might be discovered, given our distance in time, language, and culture.  Furthermore, exegesis is primarily concerned with intentionality: What did the author intend his original readers to understand? p1

It is this next section that gripped me as a teacher, and pastor.  Our understanding of the scriptures must in turn communicate to our culture and generation in a manner that is both relevant and applicable to our lives today.

Exegetical essays put forward as “sermons” are usually as dry as dust, informative, perhaps, but seldom prophetic or inspirational.  Therefore, the ultimate aim of the biblical student is to apply one’s exegetical understanding of the text to the contemporary church and world. p2

Gordon Fee “New Testament Exegesis”

Well I had thought about doing this sometime back but honestly I just felt that it would have been too pompous of me to do so.  And I honestly don’t think I am that great to listen too, so how my church endures I don’t know, but God bless them.

My friend Nick really encouraged me to go for it, so if you really don’t like them just blame Nick because he is the one that convinced me that they are worth listening too

I added a Tab labeled Audio Teachings for easy access, so feel free to listen when you have some time.

Enjoy,

Robert

Will, is giving one away so check it out, or don’t and give me more chances to win

This bible is made of fine quality supple leather.  The best in terms of bible quality, and craftsmanship.  Also it is single column and no red lettering.

Limited Edition HCSB Minister’s Bible

Yup that’s right, the HCSB will be available on the Xbox360 early in December.  Check out the Press Release and Bible NavigatorX

I got the phone this week, and may still be a bit too early to give a solid review, but I think have used it enough to at least state that I am totally pleased and blow away by this phone.

Here are some things that I love about this phone.

1. HTC Sense UI – this is really amazing as it makes the user experience on this phone easy, fun, and extremely useful.  For a demo of HTC sense go here (it is the HTC Hero that they are showing, but everything it can do the Eris does)
   1. HTC Widgets – it comes with about 14 widgets everthing from Twitter, people contacts, mail, cool looking clocks, etc.  They are all very useful.
   2. Contacts are seamless as it will integrate your mail and facebook contacts in one location.  It will track all of your phone calls, emails,, facebook updates and text messages that you sent to a person in one location.   Just by sliding your finger across a set of icon you can chose what you want to see.  Again see the video to demo this.
   3. Scenes – Scenes are like setting up different views of your lifestyle.  Each scene is capable of holding up to 7 desktops or views. So far I have defined 3 of them, Home, Work & MyLife.  It is cool because you organized them based on how you live.
   4. Calendar integrates perfectly with Google Calendar.
2. Android has come a long way and I think they are totally ready to compete against the iPhone.  The only people who don’t think so are Mac fanatics.  I promise you this, that if the iPhone doesn’t expand beyond it’s exclusive deal with AT&T it will not remain the #1 App Phone on the market.  The OS is solid, and works very well.  My phone is running Android 1.5.
   1. Yes Android currently has 12,000+ apps, and iPhone has 100,000+ apps, but who even needs 12,000+ apps?  Why anyone needs more than that is beyond me.  So far I have not found any problems finding an app for something that I want to do.
   2. Gmail works awesome on here, as well as all of the other preloaded apps.
3. The Size.  It’s smaller than the iPhone with a 3.2 inch screen which fits perfectly in my pocket, but not too small where the screen is useless.  It is thin, and looks really nice.  It makes the iPhone look like it’s fat sister lol and we all know that “thin is in”.
4. The soft touch finish on the actual phone looks and feels real good, it’s this sort of metallic matte finish.
5. I do like the 4 touch sensitive buttons, and also the two phone buttons that it comes with.  I can live with out the track ball, but it does come in handy when typing if you need to make a correction, it allows you easy precision.
6. Music player is also really good.  I had heard that it was lousy compared to the iPhone.  So here is my take on it.  I think the music player is really good.  The complaints were that you can’t just plug it in and transfer music via iTunes.  Whatever, I plug my phone via USB and I drag and drop my songs to the Eris, and that’s it.  It’s that easy, and it’s faster because I can just drag a whole directory filled with songs.  The transfer is super fast (sorry don’t have any tech numbers for you), but trust me it is really fast.

There is a lot more I can say so if you have questions feel free to ask.  The last thing is the cost.  You can get it for $99 (once you get your rebate).  Since I have been a long time Verizon customer I had a $100 credit towards any phone, so all I had to pay was taxes and whatever surcharges, plus I still got the $100 rebate so that covered all my costs.  My Verizon rep took care of all of this for me over the phone and had them FedEx to me (no charge).  Great service from Verizon!  Now he is our representative at my job, so maybe that is why he was able to do everything over the phone.

I also got my son the Droid the one that they have been advertising.  That phone is incredible.  I would have gone with that phone as well, but I was already sold on the HTC Sense and since this is not an HTC phone it’s not available.  I with they would have gone with the motoblur on this phone, then I might have went for it.  But he loves it!

Although I didn’t make the  Biblioblog Top 50, I did manage to climb into the Biblioblog Top 100 which maybe a first for me, I would have to go back and check.  I placed as number 69, but I am surronded by good company and my good friends:

Wow that seems so far away.  I was hoping for early next year, but at last I must wait.  I also hope that they offer it in a premium leather, with quality binding (i.e. stitched binding), good paper, single column, no red lettering, and good size fonts, which is something that HCSB has always done well.  Even in their small editions of their bibles they have by far the best size fonts, that are very readable.  All of the leather bibles that I own are stitched bound, even the bonded leather ones.

Based on their advertising it appears that it will be a good enough size to carry around.  I never take my ESVSB anywhere it is just too big!  It is always at home and it is only used for reference.  Although I do use the on-line version much more.  My understanding is that they will be offering an on-line version of the HCSB study bible as well.  I hope it has good note taking abilities, although the ESVSB has note taking it is not as good as I would like it to be.  It would be nice to be able to take with me a decent study bible on the road, or when reading somewhere outside of my home (i.e. Starbucks).

Anyhow this is all good, but the real good news is that this will be the first printed version to have the revised HCSB 2nd edition.  Well at least I have the digital version (HCSB 2nd edition) of it for now, and do hope that they continue to improve it before they go to final print.

You can read a comparison I did of the HCSB 1st edition, and HCSB 2nd edition on the book of Ephesians.

It’s pretty funny as they are poking fun at the size of the ESVSB.  Check it out, it’s short and sweet.  Looking forward to this edition, hopefully it will be offered in some nice options.

This is a must see movie.  The voice acting was excellent, Jim Carey did an amazing job.  The animation is top notch, the rendering of the film was unbelievable.  You take all of that with a great story, and you end up with an amazing movie.  Robert Zemeckis is one of my favorite directors, and he really out did himself with this film.  I am not a big fan of 3D movies, as they go out of their way to stick things in your face for no apparent reason other than they can. But I must say that Robert Zemeckis did a great job in how implemented 3D into this movie.  This is a great example of how 3D can be properly used to enhance a movie, and just used as some gimmick.

The movie is not at all a slapstick type of comedic movie you might see Jim Carey in, rather it is a very well acted movie and does justice to the book.  I would say a few scenes might even be a bit scary for little kids.  Makes we wish I was still working for Disney.  So go out and see it this weekend and let me know what you think.