Most journals are in the BS410 section, and are listed alphabetically in that section. We have a fairly good selection of biblical and religious journals. For a list of abbreviations for the journals, see Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988), pp. 588-96.

It is always a good idea to check bibliographical selections with me. A lot of material you may find on the library shelves will be somewhat dated, or will take an approach to our subject matter which is inappropriate or unhelpful for the kind of study we are doing.

Electronic databases and library resources available on the net are an invaluable way to find information fast.  At the same time, anyone can put just about anything on the net, so there is a tremendous amount out there that is unhelpful, misleading, and so on.  Check my links page for useful resources.  Most importantly, be sure to visit the Holy Cross library's page on aids to research in religion.  It is located at the following link:

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/library/website/religion.html

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/library/website/religion.html

NEW TESTAMENT ABSTRACTS (NTA):

This journal comes out three times a year, and reviews books and articles on the Bible and related subjects. It is broken up into categories such as "NT General" and "Gospels-Acts." The category "New Testament World" is helpful for topics on first-century Judaism or the Greco-Roman milieu of early Christianity. Within the categories mentioned, articles (in periodicals) and books are treated separately. If you think, judging by its title, you might be interested in an article or book, there is a short abstract (summary) of it there.

OLD TESTAMENT ABSTRACTS (OTA):

This journal does for the Old Testament what NTA does for the New Testament.

ELENCHUS OF BIBLICA

This is more difficult to use than NTA, but might be of use to you. It lists articles and books for an entire year under a broad range of topics.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES IN ARTICLES AND BOOKS

Many recent articles and books that you may use will contain helpful bibliograpies. In some cases, the bibliographies will not be collected in a convenient list form, but will have to be gleaned from footnotes or endnotes. If you are reading an article that is particularly good and that makes a detailed argument for some specific position, it will often do so in deliberate dialogue with a number of other positions to which it will refer frequently in the text and in footnotes. It is usually a good idea to look at those other positions, too.

There are a large number of reference works that can help you. The following is a partial list, consisting of items that we have in our library.

**New Jerome Biblical Commentary

**The Anchor Bible Dictionary

**Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible

Interpreter's Bible

Harper's Bible Commentary

**Harper's Bible Dictionary

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament

(You will probably need some guidance from me on how to use these last two works. The starred items are especially useful.)

A useful work for Israelite and Jewish topics is Ancient Israel by Roland de Vaux.

In the stacks, books on each biblical book are shelved in the BS section according to the order in which the biblical book occurs in the Bible. For example, for the New Testament you will find works first on Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, and so on.

It is wise to learn to use the "keyword" function of the library system. If you find a work on a topic you are interested in, you can see what keywords are used to describe that work, and then get a listing of all other works in the library with that keyword. You can discover a lot of useful material that way.

A tool that you may find useful is the concordance. It is a list of every word in the Bible and where it occurs. For example, if you are doing a paper on Mark's use of "faith," the concordance will give you every occurrence of that word in the gospel.