Sources for Biblical Exegesis: Find Commentaries

Finding Biblical Commentaries & Criticism in the Online Catalog

The best way to find biblical commentaries and criticism is to use the Classic Catalog, not the default search in QuickSearch. This section will instruct you how to find biblical commentaries and criticism using the Classic Catalog.

Step 1: Finding the Correct Library of Congress Subject Heading for a Biblical Book

To search for biblical commentaries and criticism in the Classic Catalog, you need to first find the correct Library of Congress subject heading for the biblical book you are interested in. On the right of the screen is a box in which you can find correct headings. You can find four different sorts of headings:

• General
• Old Testament
• New Testament
• Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical

Once you find the correct heading, write it down, or copy it to paste it into the search box in the Classic Catalog. By the way, for this kind of search to work, you must use a correct Library of Congress subject heading.

Step 2: Getting to the Classic Catalog

To get to the Classic Catalog Search screen from this screen, just click the blue button directly below.

If you are starting from the Gumberg Library homepage, click on the "QuickSearch" link on the menu on the left side of the screen.

On the next screen, click on the "Classic Catalog" link.

Step 3: Doing a Search

Once you are on the Classic Catalog Search Search screen, enter the Library of Congress subject heading for your biblical book into the Search box. Then change the menu in front of the Search box to "Subject" and the click the Search button. This will cause the Classic Catalog to run a Subject Search using your subject heading, bringing up everything in the catalog under that subject.

Your Search Result

In your search result you will have conveniently laid out before you everything on the biblical book you are interested in, subdivided to get you more quickly to the specific material you need. For those doing biblical exegesis, some of the more useful subdivisions are:

• Commentaries
• Criticism, Interpretation, Etc.

The number of items under a subdivision is found on the far right side of the line. Point to the subdivison you are interested and click on it and you will be taken to a list of those titles. In the example above, if we click on "Bible Matthew Commentaries," we would be taken to all commentaries on the entire Gospel of Matthew.