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Randall Tan

Posted: July 1st, 2011, 1:19 pm
by Randall Tan
I was first inspired to seek reading fluency in biblical Greek by my NT Professor (& eventual mentor & Ph.D. supervisor), Tom Schreiner, who teaches & preaches with ease directly from the NA27 Greek text. The example of two OT Professors, Peter Gentry & Russell Fuller, who read both the Hebrew OT & Greek NT fluently, spurred me further.

During my Ph.D. studies, I became convinced that extensive new work on the biblical languages was required to generate a new generation of data & tools because it seemed to me that biblical exegesis & theology were increasingly substantially divorced from sound & thorough interaction with the original texts of the Bible. After much personal research & study, I settled on a course that marries traditional grammatical knowledge, modern linguistics, computational technology, & intensive empirical study of the biblical source texts as my life project. My current goal is to produce flexibly reusable & adaptable data & tools that can (a) assist scholars in the study of both the language & text of the Greek NT (& to a lesser extent the LXX & possibly other Hellenistic Greek texts) & the Hebrew OT; & (b) bridge the gap to allow non-experts access to original language analysis of the biblical texts. Ultimately, I dream of the day when practically all exegesis & theology (from scholars, pastors, & laypeople alike worldwide) will be based on extensive & sound interaction with the source biblical texts in the original Greek & Hebrew. I believe that this vision will be realized on the backs of voluminous new scholarly research & sweeping technological innovations now beginning to take shape from a multitude of disparate sources. Lord willing, I am hopeful that I will see the dawning of a new age of biblical enlightenment within my lifetime.

Academic Career (as relevant to Greek):
2008-present Linguist, Asia Bible Society: My main responsibilities are to edit & manage the Hebrew Old Testament & Greek New Testament syntactic treebanks & all Hebrew & Greek datasets produced in conjunction with them.
2008-present co-chair for the Biblical Greek Language & Linguistics section of the Society of Biblical Literature http://greeklanguageandlinguistics.wordpress.com/
2005-present occasional independent contractor working on original language data on the Greek New Testament & Septuagint for Logos Bible Software
2005-2008 Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies, Kentucky Christian University, Grayson, Kentucky: Taught Greek along with other biblical & theological courses.

Contributions to Electronic Greek Resources:
2010 General Editor, The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint (Logos Bible Software)
2009 Co-editor with Andi Wu, The Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament (Logos Bible Software)
2006 Co-primary annotator and co-editor with Matthew Brook O’Donnell, The OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament (Logos Bible Software or http://www.opentext.org/texts/NT.html)
I also worked on the NASB English-Greek New Testament Reverse Interlinear and recently filled in the gaps in the Göttingen Septuagint morph for Logos Bible Software

Education:
2004, Ph.D. New Testament, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY
1999, M.Div. Biblical & Theological Studies, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY
1996, B.A. Political Science & History, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY