Internet History Sourcebooks Project

"The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use."

I've recently looked around at this website and think it's excellent. If you're interested in finding texts that relate to world history, this is one of the best places to look.

Some New Testament Resources

Over the last few days, I've taken a closer look at some Internet resources that I can use either for myself, or for the students who are a part of my New Testament course. Here are four:

1. A new scholarly journal called Early Christianity has published all of the content of its first issue online. Volume 1, Number 1 includes "An Editorial Manifesto" and a series of articles that deal with "New Directions in Pauline Theology," as well as some book reviews. Looks interesting. I'm wondering, though, if they'll provide free access to every subsequent issue. I'm thinking they won't.

2. New Testament scholar and Duke University professor Mark Goodacre has a site for his podcasts. I've listened to two or three of them so far.

3. As many have already discovered, Goodacre also hosts a much larger site called New Testament Gateway, an "award winning web directory." It's huge and first-rate.

4. Sometime back, Open Yale Courses posted the videos and transcripts of Dale Martin's lectures in an undergraduate class called "Introduction to New Testament History and and Literature." Ever wondered what it would be like to sit in on an Ivy League N.T. course? This is it.

Resources for Historians of the Holocaust

This semester I'm part of a graduate seminar at West Texas A&M University. The course, taught by Dr. Elizabeth Morrow Clark, is focused on the Holocaust.

Over the past few months, I've done a good bit of reading in the secondary literature on the subject. I've also spent a few hours identifying Web resources for those interested in exploring one of the most significant and defining events of the 20th century. Here's the best of the best of what I've discovered so far:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This nicely-done site is immense, yet easy-to-use. It includes a Holocaust encyclopedia, videos and photographs, transcripts of first-person accounts, lots of information about exhibits and events at the Museum located in Washington, D.C., and links to all sorts of related pages and sites.

Yad Vashem
The name of this museum located in Jerusalem comes from the Hebrew text of Isaiah 56:5, "And to them I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name . . . that shall not be cut off." Their site includes links to photo archives, podcasts, video lectures, a names database, and much more. First-rate.

Nazi Propaganda Archive
This site was put together by Professor Randall L. Bytwerk who teaches at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Bytwerk has written extensively on the subject of Nazi and East German propaganda. His site contains a wide array of translated texts as well as visual materials (posters, book covers and drawings, etc.) that give one a feel for the kinds of words and images that were common in Nazi Germany. Some, like Julius Streicher's anti-Semitic children's book, are downright chilling.

Starting Summer, Useful URLs

The spring semester at Amarillo College is long gone. Students were taking their final exams two weeks ago, and Commencement ceremonies were held on Friday, May 15th.

The week after that, I'd been preparing to teach a summer section of Introduction to World Religions. It was to have started yesterday. But hardly anyone had signed up for the class and it wound up being canceled late last week.

It's not like I don't have anything to do, though. Here's a bit of what's going on in my world:

• Last Sunday, I visited the little Church of Christ at Adrian, Texas. What a great group of people. When you go to Adrian, you teach the Sunday morning adult class and preach during the morning worship. Then, you go home for lunch with one of church families and, then, preach again at 4:00. It's a full day in the country.
• Tonight, at The Colonies Church of Christ, I'll finish out a series of lessons on the Psalms. We'll close with Psalm 137.
• Of course, a few projects around the Bible Chair are waiting to be done.
• Next Monday, we start a nightly Vacation Bible School at San Jacinto. As usual, I get to lead the opening and closing assemblies.
• At the end of next week it's off to Connecticut where I'll get to spend a little over a week.

- - - - - -

Every once in a while, I spend some time searching (not surfing) the Web for sites that I can use and recommend to my students and people who show up at this blog. Here's some of the better stuff I've recently seen for the first time:

1. A complete, searchable Greek New Testament edited by Westcott and Hort. Yes, that's an old edition of the Greek text. But most of the differences between this and newer editions are few and insignificant. What I really like about this on-line edition is that you can click on any Greek word and get a ton of grammatical information about it. One odd thing about this page is that the NT books are listed alphabetically.

2. Here's the English version of the official website of the Vatican. Want to look around? The homepage has a search window. I typed in celibacy and, later, Vatican II and came up with dozens of hits for each. Interesting stuff.

3. You might also check out the searchable Yale Divinity Digital Image and Text Library. By going to this site, you get both the image database for biblical studies plus the image and text database for Christian history. Thinking about biblical studies, I searched for Crete and came up with several photos (along with descriptions). Predictably, searching under Ephesus gave me even more hits. Turning to Christian history, Campbell brought up nothing (ironic for some Church of Christ people), but Geneva rendered several hits, and Luther dozens.

What are some of the more interesting or useful websites you've recently discovered?

Web Watch

Every once in a while, I like to talk about websites that most visitors to this blog are going to like. Here are a couple of my favorite recent discoveries:

1. Many serious Bible students recognize the name Harold Attridge. The Dean of Yale Divinity School, Attridge is one of today's top biblical scholars. He specializes in New Testament studies and has written one of the very best commentaries on the book of Hebrews.

Those who read in the area of New Testament and homiletics likely know the name David L. Bartlett. For many years, Bartlett was a professor of Christian Communication at Yale.

Anyway, recently the Congregational Church of New Canaan, Connecticut arranged for Attridge and Bartlett to discuss a few books of the New Testament. The sessions were taped, and the DVDs were used in the church's small-group Bible studies as a sort of primer to Bible reading and discussion within the group. In addition to the video sources, there are also some print resources. You might enjoy what they're calling the Yale Bible Study.

2. One of the better places for reading about the Bible and Religion on the Web is the site hosted by Hebrew Bible scholar Ehud Ben Zvi. Check it out. (Note: I have found a few dead links at this site, but most of them are good links to good sites).

Two Sites You Might Like

I recently discovered two websites that I plan to visit again. Maybe you'd like them too. . . .

1. Ever wished you could just sit in on a good, basic college course? You're in luck. Yale University is now offering what it calls "Open Courses." Here's a blurb from the website: "Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn." Check it out. The homepage is http://open.yale.edu/courses/

2. One of the best places I've found for clear, easy-to-use materials for study of the Bible is the website produced by Roman Catholic scholar Felix Just, S. J., Ph.D. The following URL is the homepage for his ENTER, "Electronic New Testament Educational Resources" http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/index.html

Happy studying!

Another Study Resource

Bible students and teachers should check out the “Christian Classics Ethereal Library.”

This site--sponsored by Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, Michigan--contains a tremendous amount of material in the public domain and is well organized. Here you can find the Bible in several translations, as well as Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias.  There are also countless items like Augustine’s “Confessions” and the commentaries of John Calvin.  (You don’t have to be a Calvinist to learn from his truly rich expositions).

The site also features the “Executable Outlines” section, where teachers can find detailed study guides covering various topics and books of the Bible. The author of these outlines is one Mark A. Copeland, who seems to have a connection to one of the two conservative branches of the American Restoration (a.k.a. Stone-Campbell) Movement.

The homepage can be found at the following address:  http://www.ccel.org/