Religion & Philosophy Research Guide: NBST 610 - Hermeneutics

This course guide for NBST 610-Hermeneutics, is intended to direct you to electronic resources that will aid you in your assigned exegetical paper and to instruct you in how to find commentaries and scholarly journal articles for your paper.

There are several ways to search for commentaries. Here are a few suggestions.

1. On the JFL main page for a Bible commentary, select the Books tab, then enter Commentary, and the biblical book in question. You can even cut and paste these sample search strings, then change the book of the Bible to your specific needs.

• Commentary AND Romans
• (commentary romans)
  For digital commentaries only, limit the results to Online Books. 

2. Try entering commentary as a general field search but then set the biblical book to a Title search.

• (TitleCombined:(corinthians)) AND (commentary)

3. Another search tactic is to pick a popular series and enter that name along with the biblical book of choice. If the series has more than one word, put quote marks around the exact title phrase.  

• "Baker Exegetical" AND Acts
• "Pillar New Testament" AND Ephesians 
• (commentary) AND (TitleCombined:(Ephesians)) AND ("Word Biblical")

4. Try an advanced search for either commentary or commentaries, then a specific kind of commentary (homiletical, preaching, expositional, devotional, exegetical, historical, critical, theological, Christ-centered, dispensational, reformed, etc.), and then set a search for Title as your biblical book. You can copy and paste this search string, but then change the biblical book to one of your choice. 

• (commentaries OR commentary) AND (Exegetical) AND (TitleCombined:(Acts))

5. And try entering Commentary as a Genre search, then adding in your book of the Bible as a secondary search term. 

• (Genre:(commentaries OR commentary)) Psalms

Note - Some older commentaries are available free online, typically on free Bible resources sites such as StudyLight.org. Many of these are helpful for devotional use, but they are not recommended as the best materials for college or graduate level work. The JFL provides many quality resources for your biblical studies projects.   

• The Theological Journal Library is an excellent database to use for full text articles on specific theological topics and biblical passages. It contains the full text articles from many conservative and evangelical journals.
  • Search the database by topic by choosing “Search Journals” located on the right-hand side of the page. Put your search terms in quotes followed by a tilde (~) and a number, e.g. “Holy Spirit eschatology”~10. The database will search for all these terms and retrieve articles that have these terms within 10 words of each other.
  • “Search by Verse” is also located on the right-hand side. Once you click on “Search by Verse” key in the verse or passage that interests you, e.g. 2 Thes 2:7.

  • After you enter a search a list of journal article titles should be retrieved; click on the title to see the full text.

     

• Another database you will want to use is the Atla Religion Database with Atla Serials.
  • This database can also be searched by biblical passages specifically with the ATLA Scripture Search option, located on the bottom left side of the screen.