The term εκκλησια (ekklesia) or “church” is used to refer to the New Covenant Community of believers in Jesus throughout the New Testament (Matt. 18:17; Acts 11:22; 12:1, 5; 15:3f, 41; 20:17; Rom. 16:1, 23; 1 Co. 11:22; 14:12; 2 Co. 11:8; 12:13; Eph. 3:10; 5:23; Col. 1:18; 1 Tim. 3:5; Heb. 2:12; Jas. 5:14; 3 Jn. 1:6, 10; Rev. 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14).

This is the second post in a series on baptism. Primarily, my concern is to determine the various meanings of the Greek verb βαπτίζω (baptizō), and how those meanings may be used in the New Testament. Although I originally planned to publish the posts in this series every two or three days, I decided to [...]

Abbot-Smith’s A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament is available for free download at Google Books. (HT: Mark Goodacre at NT Gateway Weblog) The version that you can view or download from Google Books was originally published in 1922, but it remains a standard in Greek lexicons. Many modern lexicons are based on this [...]

From Dave Black:

Few of us are untouched by the dead hand of Christian jargon. Some idioms are so firmly entrenched in our vocabulary that any change is considered almost blasphemous. Using traditional terminology gives us a sense of security I suppose. But familiarity is not always a good thing. I’m trying to reform some of [...]

 Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis refers to “the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected spoken or written discourse.” [1] Discourse analysis provides tools and methods to assist in the interpretation of discourses, either spoken or written. Since each book of the New Testament is presented as a coherent discourse between an author and his recipients, the linguistic tools [...]

My concern in this post is to examine the various meanings of the Greek verb βαπτίζω (baptizō), and how those meanings may be used in the New Testament. In this post, I’ll begin by examining the use of βαπτίζω (baptizō) in the Septuagint (LXX) – the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
According to BDAG (the standandard [...]