About us

Overview

Archive.org contains a vast array of audio, video, and text. In the “text” category are out-of-copyright books from American and Canadian university libraries. There is an abundant wealth of valuable resources here for the scholarly study of the Bible. The aim of BibleRefShelf is to identify, describe, and link to the best of these. So far, there are about 19 book entries.

Each entry has a typical format: some brief background on the author/work, something about its reception and/or continuing value, and a suggestion about the best version(s) available (if there are multiple copies) on Archive.org with links for downloading or viewing online.

Structure

There are five main subject areas, corresponding to the main navigation:

  • Classical Hebrew language
  • Old Testament/Hebrew Bible
  • Koine Greek language
  • New Testament
  • Biblical Studies

The latest work to be added in each section is featured on the Homepage. Each section has its own author index, and there is also a cumulative author index for all the works listed on the site. My main area of expertise is Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (and if you're curious, you can read a bit of information about me), so as the site develops, expect this area to grow at a faster rate than the others.

The "Site News" section allows for things that don't quite fit into the other sections, or for musings relevant to this ongoing project.

Finding things

  • Simply browse the subject area of greatest interest. Things are linked in several ways, so just follow your nose.
  • Use the article “tags”. Each entry is tagged with a number of terms which allows for cross-linking between sections. For example grammars of both Hebrew and Greek (filed in different categories) both are tagged with "language", so clicking on that tag will find all the "language" books, regardless of subject category. Likewise, all the International Critical Commentaries are tagged with "icc", irrespective of whether they are OT or NT, etc.
  • There is a rudimentary search facility. It will only provide links to the page in which your simple search-term is found, but that should help.

Suggestions

I welcome input on this project. There are two means for providing feedback or suggestions for the site and the works it lists:

  1. Comments: each book entry has a comment form. Feel free to suggest better copies that you might find than the ones I have linked, or further reviews or evaluations of the work listed. Nota bene: the commenting system is moderated, and inappropriate comments will be deleted without notification.
  2. Recommendations: use the contact form below to alert me to works you believe belong here. A link to the preferred copy on Archive.org would help, along with a brief case for the value of the work.

Contact

Feel free to get in touch using this form.