Resources for New Testament Exegesis

Provided by: Roy E. Ciampa, Ph.D.

Professor of New Testament

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Welcome to Resources for New Testament Exegesis. This site has been prepared for my students at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary but I am happy to know that others have found it useful as well. I would be very grateful for reports of errors or broken links. (My e-mail address is composed of my first initial and last name [all as one word] @gcts.edu) I highly recommend checking out my Desktop Two, the compact page of links and tools that I use for most of my online research. That page gets updated more frequently than this one.

Orientation for Writing Exegesis Papers (These are general guidelines. Be sure to consult your professor regarding his or her expectations.) The structure I prefer for exegesis papers for my courses. Guide to Footnote and Bibliography Style for Articles and Commentaries (following The SBL Handbook of Style). Further Guidelines for Footnote and Bibliography Style (following The SBL Handbook of Style). SBL Student Supplement (guidance from the SBL for students writing papers in college or seminary). Be sure to review what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.

The Student, the Fish, and Agassiz, by Samuel H. Scudder. An insightful story about the importance of patient and rigorous inductive study.

Abbreviations for Ancient Literature (According to the standards of The SBL Handbook of Style. Use the search feature within your browser to find the author, work, or abbreviation you need).

Journal and Reference Work Abbreviations (According to the standards of The SBL Handbook of Style. Use the search feature within your browser to find the work or abbreviation you need).

Bibliographic Research in Biblical Studies

Resources for New Testament Textual Criticism

The Analytikon: A New Testament Greek Grammar Review Tool. A great way to get that rust off your Greek! Refresh and sharpen your basic knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, word functions and translation. A great tool put together by wonderful friends and colleagues at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

The Perseus Project: Lexical Form and Morphological Analysis (Parsing) Find the lexical form and all possible parsings of any Greek word.

Early Jewish Literature (links to primary sources).

Scripture Indices for Early Jewish Literature.

The Use of the Old Testament in the New.

Septuagint (LXX)

Links to (Older) Modern (mainly English-)Greek Lexicons (for partial tracing of English-Greek Lexicography)

Greco-Roman Sources

Google Bookmarks (bookmarked sites from the ministries of Jesus and Paul)

ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World

New Testament Research Reference Sheet (prepared by James Darlack of the GCTS Goddard Library).

Reference Charts for Textual Criticism. On this page you will find charts I have prepared in an attempt to place key information at the fingertips of my students for their work in textual criticism. An outdated Portuguese version of these charts is also available (but should be compared to updated information).

Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament (search inside the book for the information you need). To find the contents of NT papyri search inside the book for “Contents Papyri Matthew Mark Luke John 28” (without the quotation marks) and click on the link. To find the contents of NT uncial manuscripts search inside the book for “Contents Uncial 0298” (for Matthew-Luke), “Contents Uncial continued 0299” (for John-Epistles), or “Contents Uncial continued Thessalonians” (for more epistles-Revelation) and click on the link. You may also want to search inside Bruce M. Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration.

Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (search inside the book for the information you need). This is a superb introduction to the most basic background information. You will want to consult your professor’s bibliography and/or some of the other more detailed background studies listed under Biblical Studies Resources at Amazon.com.

Silva Rhetoricae - The Forest of Rhetoric: A website providing a wonderful “guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric.”

Charts for the Transliteration of Greek and Hebrew

Reference Manual for New Testament Interpretation (© various). This document reflects the latest edition of a variety of sources prepared or employed by various professors who have taught New Testament exegesis at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary over many years.

Non-Indicative Verbs of the LXX, NT Josephus and Philo (based on BibleWorks databases). You may find this chart helpful in deciding whether there is any significance to an author’s use of a present vs. aorist imperative, subjunctive or infinitive verb. Often one can discern a default usage for a particular verb, or stylistic tendencies that vary from author to author. Before making a statement about the significance of a present or aorist imperative, subjunctive or infinitive one should look up the particular verb in this chart to see how much variation is found in these sources

Chart of Synoptic Parallels. From the index to the English edition of Kurt Aland’s Synopsis of the Four Gospels. The Greek text edition of this volume is highly recommended for anyone doing research on the Gospels.

“Advice for Christian Philosophers” by Alvin Plantinga. From Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Software/Web Tutorials

Basic Searches in BibleWorks

Searching Greek in BibleWorks

BibleWorks Command Line Examples

Basic Searches with Perseus Project

How to Read Virtually Any Greek Text (hyperbolically named)

Searching Brill’s Dead Sea Scrolls in English

Searching Brill’s Dead Sea Scrolls in Hebrew

Bibliographic Research

Perseus Project Quicktorial (by James Darlack)

TLG (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) Quicktorial (by James Darlack)

EBSCO Tutorial. (Prepared by James Darlack)

Logos/Libronix Video Tutorials

Free Downloads

The Adobe Acrobat Reader

I recommend the Firefox web browser. (Try using the tab feature to keep several web pages open in the same window.)

Need to write Greek or Hebrew in Unicode, or convert SPIonic font to Unicode? Check out Unicorn

Hebrew and Greek font files from BibleWorks

Biblical fonts from the Society of Biblical Literature

SIL fonts for Greek, Hebrew and transliteration. I recommend their Apparatus font for symbols used in textual criticism. I recommend their Doulos SIL font for transliteration. The Doulos SIL font is a Unicode font. You will find the Tavultesoft Keyman program very helpful for writing with Unicode fonts. I recommend the IPA Unicode 1.0.5 Keyman 6 Keyboard for working with the Doulos SIL font.