My Library

Over at RDTWOT Nick has posted about what every Biblical Studies student’s library should have.

“Jim West gave a list of books that every young student needs in their library. I’m going to go item by item and see what I still need to pick up. Jim said:
Reference books ought to be purchased and held on to. You need bibles in a variety of languages as well as, of course, the Hebrew and Greek. You need a Septuagint. A Vulgate. You need Greek and Hebrew Grammars. You need commentaries. You need a Church history. You need Systematic Theologies by folk who aren’t fadists. You need standard theological works like Luther’s Works and Calvin’s and Zwingli’s and Aquinas’s. You need an OT Theology and a NT Theology. You need a History of Israel (but not Bright’s or Longman’s because they aren’t useful). And that’s essentially all you need.”

So, let’s take a look at my bookshelf!

I have:

Bibles: NIV, NKJV, KJV, NLT, and my favorite NASB. I have several Greek New Testaments, but no Hebrew Old Testaments. I don’t have a Septuagint or a Latin Vulgate.

Language: I have no Hebrew Grammer books (my Hebrew is dreadful), but I have several Greek grammers including: Mounce, Croy, and Summers.

Commentaries: I am slowly building my commentary collection. I don’t work with one commentary set exclusively (ie. Word Biblical Commentary), rather I tend to pick and choose from different commentary sets. My current purchases have been within the NICNT and NICOT series. I think my favourite commentary is Keener’s Commentary on Matthew.

Church History: I have Cairns’ “Christianity Through the Centuries”, and Gonzalez’s “The Story of Christianity”.

Systematic Theology: My favourite theology text is Stanley Grenz’s “Theology for the Community of God”. I also have Hodge’s “Systematic Theology”, and Dunning’s “Grace, Faith & Holiness” for different perspectives.

OT Theology: I think my favourite is Dumbrell’s “The Faith of Israel”.

NT Theology: Guthrie’s “New Testament Theology” is probably the most useful, but I really like Morris’ “NT Theology”.

History of Israel: I do have Bright’s “History of Israel” and I agree, it is not very useful. My favourite History of Israel would have to be Merrill’s “Kingdom of Priests”.

I think the only thing I would add to the list of “must haves” would be the “4 Views Books”. Every student needs a least a couple of these to see get a good sense of the scope of theological discussion on any given topic. My “4 Views” include: “Eternal Security”, “The Atonement”, “Salvation”, and “Divine Foreknowledge”.

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