If you’re one of the few people who actually read this blog, you’ve seen some posts recently about prepositions and “presence language.”

I’m still very interested in this, but need to switch my focus. I’m feeling the call back to the Pastoral Epistles, so will be digging around there in the future.

For those who don’t know, ten years ago my focus was on the Pastoral Epistles. It was actually this work that pushed me into the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the Septuagint, and noncanonical gospel material.

I’ve written (but never published) a lot on the Pastorals. I have a far too wordy examination of the vocabulary of First Timothy (over 400 pages) that I plan on trimming and revising, and then extending with material for Second Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (letters written from Paul to individuals). My hope and plan is to get this mass of stuff into a usable format, and maybe even published somewhere. If that ends up being both interesting (to me) and helpful (to others), maybe I’ll even extend it to other NT books.

If you’re interested, I’ve attached a sample of the material I’ll be revising. The sample covers 1 Timothy 3.14–16. My basic approach is to discuss vocabulary through how the word is used both canonically and extra-canonically; essentially providing in-context word studies, but based on a corpus larger than the New Testament. It almost amounts to a lexicon in context, with cited material included.

I’m interested to know what you think of the general idea (there is much to be revised, even in the sample provided).