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.
Links to (Older) Modern
(mainly English-)Greek Lexicons (for partial
tracing of English-Greek Lexicography)
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
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
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
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.
For information on
other Unicode fonts for Greek and Hebrew see the Tyndale Tech
article on the subject by David Instone-Brewer.
Google Earth Bookmarks
for New Testament Sites
Other Useful Links for New Testament Research
Biblical Theology Briefings:
Biblical Theology Articles |
Christian Apocrypha
(English translations) |
Διοτίμα
[Diotima]: Materials
for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World |
Examples of
Grammatical Diagrams of the Greek New Testament |
Josephus’ Works
(English translation) |
Letters of Pliny
the Younger (translation) |
Midrash Bibliography (Hebrew Union
College) |
Non-Canonical Literature (OT Apocrypha,
OT Pseudepigrapha, etc.) |
Philo’s Works
(English translation) |
Plutarch’s Lives
(translation) |
Plutarch’s
Table-Talk and Selected Essays (translation) |
Resource Pages for Biblical Studies:
Focusing on the early Christian writings and their social world |
Search Index
to ANRW (Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt) |
|
TC Ebind Index (Digitized works of value to the study of
biblical textual criticism) |
Ted
Hildebrandt’s E-Sources (articles on the OT and NT from conservative
evangelical journals) |
The Nag Hammadi
Library (translation of Gnostic literature - searchable) |
The Online Greek Bible (26th
edition of the Nestle-Aland text) |
The Paul Page (Dedicated to the New
Perspective on Paul) |
The Perseus
Project: Lexical Form and Morphological Analysis (Parsing) |
The Unbound Bible (search Bibles in
various languages, including Greek) |
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG – must be accessed from GCTS) |
On the Ancient
Near East:
ABZU: A Guide to information related to the
study of the Ancient Near East on the Web
Electronic Publication of
Ancient Near Eastern Texts