On Reading 1

Posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 2:10 pm

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I have decided to devote the next few days to a discussion of reading.  Often my student’s will ask me what I read or how I am able to read so much.  I will answer a few questions about reading in the days to come.  Today we will talk about knowing what to read.

How do I know what I should read?  There are so many books that come out in the field of Biblical studies, Greek language studies, Jewish and Greek background studies and theological studies how does one keep up? 

The short answer is that it is almost impossible to read everything that is coming out so I depend on help from other people. If a book is written by a name that I know and trust I will not hesitate to purchase it.  Otherwise I try to get some idea of the quality of the book by talking to my fellow professors, reading book reviews, or looking carefully at the table of contents, the footnotes, and the bibliography.

While book reviews are a wonderful source of information about new books, the problem is that they are often just not timely. Since most theological journals are quarterly at best, you can’t hope to get a review of a book in a journal until about a year or so after it has been published.  Nonetheless there are certain journals that theological students should subscribe to.

Every student should either subscribe to, or read in the library, the journal “Themelios.â€?  This is a journal that is designed for students of theology.  The articles are written in a style that is not nearly as demanding or as academic as many of the other journals, you need not read Greek or Hebrew to understand the articles, the book reviews are very helpful, and the price is reasonable. You can find out about getting a subscription by writing to .  The journal is published three times a year

Evangelical students will likely want to be a member of the Evangelical Theological Society.  Membership in this society includes the quarterly journal and you will often find good articles as well as good book reviews (though not as timely as they could be because of the publishing factor mentioned above).  The price for being a member of this society is very reasonable considering the journal and the annual meeting that you get for it.  To find out more about joining see the website http://www.etsjets.org.

Pride of place in terms of journals must go to the Journal of Biblical Literature, which is published by the Society of Biblical Literature.  The articles in this journal, while not evangelical, are often very good, well written, carefully researched, and insightful.  The student price for a membership in the society is reasonable, so take advantage of it while you can.  To find out more check out http://www.sbl-site.org.

There are other places to get good book reviews although they will not be the scholarly texts that will be reviewed in the journals.  I enjoy reading “Books and Cultureâ€? and am often surprised to find a good, serious theological work reviewed there.  If you are looking for good things to read, “Books and Cultureâ€? can be a wonderful help.  An article may put you on to a book that you would never have read, or save you the trouble of buying a book only to find out how bad it really is.
That will do for journals.  There are of course, magazines like “Christianity Todayâ€? that will be more timely, but less critical with their reviews.  These act more as advertisements than true critical reviews, but they can help keep you aware of books that are coming out.

Tomorrow we will talk about buying books.  Should you buy new or used?  Then on to tell you a little bit about how I read a book, how I mark it, and how I try to keep track of both my books and journal articles.  For now, just pick up a book, sit by a warm fire (unless you are in Florida, like I am, in that case you can sit on a warm beach) and enjoy the pleasures that are between those two covers.  There is another world waiting for you in there you know.

SamLam