The study of the Old Testament requires students to engage a variety of resources covering numerous research disciplines. This guide will introduce students to the most salient resources for Old Testament research.
Primary sources are the heart and soul of Old Testament research. (What is a primary resource? Click here!) First and most obviously, the text of the Old Testament in its original languages is a primary source with which all students of the Old Testament should interact. There is no single authoritative textual tradition of the Old Testament; rather, scholars draw upon a variety of textual traditions, fragments, and translations to understand and in some cases reconstruct early versions of the Old Testament that have since been lost to antiquity.
Moreover, it is important when studying the Old Testament to place it within its historical and cultural millieu. Therefore, the literature from the ancient Near East is a second primary source with which students of the Old Testament need to be familiar. This includes literature from Egypt and Mesopotamia from the 2nd millenium B.C.E. (Middle to Late Bronze Age) to the common era, and it also includes the literature from the people groups that lived in and around Palestine from throughout the first millenium B.C.E.
Students studying the Old Testament in its original languages require the aid of Hebrew and Aramaic lexical and grammatical resources. The resources listed on this page represent the current field of intermediate and advanced language study.
Journals publish articles that, ideally, contain carefully crafted arguments that undergo a rigrous proccess of peer review. These articles cover a variety of specialized topics in academic study. Listed on this page are journals that publish articles that address issues significant to Old Testament study, journals which are available at the Boyce Library in print and/or online format.
In order for students of the Old Testament to locate resources germane to their area of research, the library provides access to databases that aggregate bibliographic information and in some instances provide abstracts and/or full-text access to academic literature. Searching these databases will turn up everything from journal articles, books, chapters of edited works, dissertations, and book reviews, to newspaper and magazine articles, audio visual materials, and websites. The databases listed on this page are those most relevant to Old Testament research.