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Boatwright Memorial Library

Reference Books & Collections

Searching for Books

Tips for Searching Books:

Books related to the Bible can be found by either keyword or subject searching -- note in the examples below the differences in results, depending on how you search.

Other useful terms - Concordance? or Commentar? or literature AND [Bible -- Book in Bible -- Person's name]

Jewish-Christian Relations: Search (judaism OR jew?) and christian?

* or ? are used to truncate a term -- the catalog and ATLA use *

Concordance or Commentary?

A Concordance will help you trace a word -- or a word's usage throughout the Bible. You can also find a passage using keywords if you don't remember the location of the whole passage. Concordances help with primary source research as you are viewing a word or passage within its original context.

A Commentary provides context and analysis of words and passages-- through historical, cultural or other areas of scholarship.  Commentaries are secondary sources to aid in interpretation of the text.

 commentar? and [search term]

It may also be listed as Criticism, Interpretation, etc. as the subject

criticism interpretation [search term]