Resources for New Testament Exegesis

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

Associate Professor of New Testament

Welcome to Resources for New Testament Exegesis. This site has been prepared especially for students at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary but will be of use to many others seeking to carry out rigorous exegesis of the New Testament and especially those writing exegesis papers in seminary or college. 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) You may also be interested in my Desktop Two (a compact page of research links and tools).

Biblical Studies Resources at Amazon.com and Google.com. Some of the hundreds of books that can now be searched on-line at Amazon and Google, making those sites significant research tools. They now provide us with the equivalent to a full concordance to thousands of books. The books included in the list behind this link are just a tip of the iceberg, and the rate at which new books are being added to these “search inside the book” features is phenomenal. If you need to look up a quote or a reference in a book, before you make a trip to the library you may want to look up the book at Amazon.com or Google.com to see if you can access the necessary pages from any internet connection. To look up a specific book at Amazon use their search feature.

To search all available books at Amazon try this link (and choose “Books”). Here is Amazon’s explanation of how it works.

More on searching and reading parts of books at Amazon.com.

To search all available books at Google try this link. How to search and read parts of books at Google.com.

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.

Flow Chart for New Testament Exegesis from Gordon Fee’s Handbook (navigate to following pages using the arrow on the right-hand side of the linked page). This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in doing New Testament exegesis.

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).

Bibliography for Old Testament Exegesis. Prepared by Drs. M. Daniel Carroll R. and Richard S. Hess of Denver Seminary and available at the Denver Journal website.

Bibliography for New Testament Exegesis. Prepared by Drs. Craig L. Blomberg and William W. Klein of Denver Seminary and also available at the Denver Journal website.

Bibliographic Research in Biblical Studies

GNT Browser by Zack Hubert displays the Greek text of the 26^th edition of the Nestle-Aland text. Hover your cursor over a word and you will be provided with parsing and lexical help. Click on a word and you will see some charts and be provided with the options of seeing every text in the GNT where either that precise form appears or where any form of that word appears. If you have font difficulties, see his help page. To copy the text into your exegesis or research paper without the links, try copying and pasting it into Notepad, Wordpad or an e-mail message first and then copying it from there into your paper. That way you should lose the links and keep just the Greek text. You will probably want to change the Greek font afterwards. I recommend Palatino Linotype or Gentium.

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.

GreekGeek.net. Website with technical tools to assist students in writing exegesis papers. Especially helpful for installing Greek fonts and for preparing text-critical charts for external evidence regarding textual variants in the Greek New Testament.

Early Jewish Literature (links to primary sources).

Scripture Indices for Early Jewish Literature.

The Use of the Old Testament in the New.

Septuagint (LXX)

Greco-Roman Sources

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

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

Reference Charts for Textual Criticism (© Roy E. Ciampa, 2003). These are charts I have prepared in an attempt to place key information at the fingertips of my students for their work in textual criticism. It is best (quicker) to navigate through these charts using the bookmarks I have included. Note: This pdf file may also be copied from a CD with other relevant materials for NT exegesis which is on reserve in the Goddard library. A Portuguese version of these charts is also available.

Biblical Greek Exegesis by George H. Guthrie and J. Scott Duvall. For their simple chart indicating appropriate spacing for various grammatical features search inside the book for “28 basic principles” (without the quotation marks) and clink on the link to page 28. For search inside the book for other orientation on grammatical diagramming (e.g., “prepositional” in pages 27-38).

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.”

For Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary students only: To access my “Handouts for Interpreting the New Testament” (for NT502 at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) and other materials relevant to the exegesis of the New Testament visit the “Course Documents” section of the blackboard site of his NT502 class. If you are already enrolled, click here and then login using the username and password you were assigned by the IT department. If you are a GCTS student and would like to be enrolled in the site to gain access to these materials speak to him or contact him by e-mail. Once you have the access code you can click here to enroll in the blackboard site. It is faster and easier to navigate through this large document using the bookmarks embedded within it rather than simply scrolling down. Note: This pdf file may also be copied from a CD with other relevant materials for NT exegesis which is on reserve in the Goddard library.

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 and Josephus (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.

Bible Translation Links

Discourse Analysis

Resources for Preachers

“Advice for Christian Philosophers” by Alvin Plantinga. An important article on the challenges of working from a Christian worldview within disciplines where naturalistic presuppositions tend to hold sway. Especially important for doctoral students or those considering doctoral studies in environments that tend to be antagonistic towards traditional Christian convictions. From Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Software/Web Tutorials

Tools for Searching Greek and Hebrew in BibleWorks (for those who know almost nothing about either language)

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

How to find the lexical form and parsing for any Greek word through free websites

Perseus Project Quicktorial (by James Darlack)

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

EBSCO Tutorial. (Prepared by James Darlack. Access it here rather than through the link above)

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.

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

Theological Education

Dimensions of the Faith (free courses provided by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary)

SemLink: Gordon-Conwell’s Distance Learning Program

Other Useful Links for New Testament Research

The New Testament Gateway

The Perseus Project: Lexical Form and Morphological Analysis (Parsing)

The Perseus Project Greek Words in Context

Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG – must be accessed from GCTS)

The Online Greek Bible (26^th edition of the Nestle-Alandtext)

New Testament Transcripts Website