Exegetically Speaking

Dr. Scott Callaham is Lecturer of Hebrew and Old Testament at Baptist Theological Seminary, Singapore. He has authored and edited a number of books and articles and is currently completing a new teaching grammar of Biblical Aramaic. Dr. Callaham discusses the form, meaning, and theological significance of the Aramaic term Abba, which Jesus uses in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and which also appears twice in Paul’s writings.

Andrew Burlingame is Assistant Professor of Hebrew at Wheaton College within the Department of Modern and Classical Languages. He has authored several articles, one of which received the 2018 Sean W. Dever Memorial Prize of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem. He observes that until now we have had to guess at the meaning of a rare Hebrew word translated as “bowed down” in 1 Kings 18:42. Recent scholarship devoted to cognate languages has led some to believe that Elijah was actually making a rumbling sound, imitative of thunder.

Dr. Richard Schultz, the Blanchard Professor of Old Testament in Wheaton College Graduate School, has co-edited with Daniel Block, Isaianic Intertextuality and Intratextuality as Composition-Historical Indicators: Methodological Challenges in Determining Literary Influence, along with other books and articles. In this episode he discusses the contexts and wording of the prophecy of Isaiah that Matthew applies to Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Matt. 1:23.

Dr. Julie Newberry, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, investigates the language of Joy and rejoicing in the Gospel of Luke.  The angel’s greeting (Luke 1:28) to Mary might not be just a greeting after all.  She considers the contrast between Zechariah’s encounter and Mary’s.

Dr. Alexander Loney, Associate Professor of Classical Languages at Wheaton College, stops by to talk with Dr. Capes about how the Greeks understood the gods, where they came from, how they functioned. Homer and Hesiod composed “the Bible” of the Greeks, and they provide a very different worldview than the biblical writers.

Travis Wright, a PhD student from Cambridge University, joins Dr. Capes to read aloud the poetic sounds of Psalm 1:1 and to consider a few of the artful metaphors that grace this wisdom Psalm. 

Dr. Peter Williams is Principal, Tyndale House in Cambridge, England. He is also chair of the International Greek New Testament Project, a member of the translation committee of the English Standard Version of the Bible, associate editor of The Greek New Testament produced at Tyndale House, and has authored other books and studies. In this episode he argues from both Jesus’ creative use of sounds and word plays in Matthew’s Gospel and our knowledge of Jesus’ life that Jesus would have taught in both Greek and Aramaic.

Dr. Michael Graves, Armerding Professor of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College, explores with David Capes how reading the Hebrew text of Psalm 1 leads us to a key background story in Joshua 1, and how both together shed light on faithfulness.

Dr. Robert Plummer,  the Collin and Eveyln Aikman Professor of Biblical Studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, started a free daily 2-minute screencast about five years ago designed to help pastors, seminary students, and others keep reading their Greek New Testaments. He describes how it has grown into thousands of archived episodes and expanded to do the same for Hebrew and Latin. There are Spanish versions of the Greek and Hebrew screencasts as well. Two to three minutes a day in the text. It’s like having a free personal trainer for your languages! 

Dr. Lynn Cohick, provost/dean and Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, has authored several books, including commentaries on Philippians and Ephesians as well as Christian Women in the Patristic World, with Amy Brown Hughes (Wheaton PhD ’13; MA ‘08). In this podcast she talks about how studying a text in its original language goes beyond words to the entire act of communication between author and audience. Phil. 2:5-8 provides a case study, as well as challenges for belief and life.