Oxford Bibliographies Online: An Excellent Tool

My colleague Daniel Driver directed my attention to Oxford Bibliographies Online (Biblical Studies). I have been looking around on the site and have only become more and more impressed. There are a signficant number of bibliographies and each one has been put together by top notch scholars in the various fields. You can search or browse alphabetically. The bibliographies name the author and the date the bibliography was posted. Each bibliography includes introductory information about the topic as well as introductory surveys, general overviews, and themes and topics related to the title topics. The specificity of these latter bibliographies continues to surprise me. All of the sources listed have a brief annotation as well as a links to World Cat and often to Google Preview. (I should mention that Oxford Bibliographies is only available through subscription which my university library has.)

The editor-in-chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online is Christopher R. Matthews who is also Editor of New Testament Abstracts and Associate Research Professor at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. The editorial board includes a "Standing Board" of John S. Kloppenborg, Carol Newsom, and Marvin Sweeney, and a much larger "Founding Editorial Board".

Here are a few NT highlights: James K. Elliot on New Testament Textual Criticism;  Daniel J. Harrington on Matthew; John S. Kloppenborg on the Synoptic Problem and Q; Peter Davids on the Catholic Epistles. David A. deSilva has put together the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha bibliography. deSilva's bibliography lists sources for a significant number of specific apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works (e.g., 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch). The breadth of the topics covered can be seen in the following titles: Galilee, Passion Narratives, Apocryphal Gospels, Afterlife and Immortality, Jesus of Nazareth, Slavery, Interpretation and Hermeneutics, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the New Testament and Early Christianity.

A full list of articles and contributors can be found here. It includes articles that are forthcoming in spring 2011, fall 2011, and spring 2012. I am looking forward to the articles on the 'Gospel of John' by Gilbert Van Belle, 'Second Temple Judaism' and 'Pseudepigraphy' by Annette Yoshiko Reed, and 'Apocalyptic Literature' by Greg Carey. Others forthcoming articles include 'Septuagint' by Leonard Greenspoon, 'Sermon on the Mount' by Jonathan Pennington, 'Parables' by Kloppenborg, 'Christology' by David Capes, 'Early Christian Art' by Gerhard van den Heever, and the list goes on.

Oxford Bibliographies Online is and wil be an excellent tool for Biblical Studies.

Some example of the detail put into the categorization of the bibliographies can be seen in the table of contents for the Matthew and Synoptic Problem bibliographies below:

Gospel of Matthew, Daniel Harrington
Synoptic Problem, John Kloppenborg

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