Theology on the Web – mid-year Review

ByRob

As the first academic term of the year draws to a close it’s a good time to take a breath and both look back on what has been achieved so far in 2014 and to give a brief preview of what is still to come.

New Material

Journals

Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology appeared on-line for the first time in January, followed by over 880 public domain articles from the Journal of Theological Studies (old series), Christian Brethren Research Fellowship Journal and Christian Brethren Review. Most recently the entire run of Calvary Baptist Theological Journal has been uploaded. On my shelves I have copies of The Expository Times, The Expositor, Palestine Exploration Quarterly and a number of others which I will working on as time permits.

Articles, Books & Monographs

Tyndale House in Cambridge kindly shared a large amount of material that they had scanned but not uploaded to the Web for me to make available. This included the Complete Works of the Rev Charles Simeon, the Works of the Rev John Lightfoot and two primary texts of Origen’s Hexapla, which allowed me to create a new resources page on that subject here. The Schweich Lectureship on Biblical Archaeology has been in existence since 1908 and a number of the earlier volumes are now in the Public Domain. I now have access to almost all of these. As they are uploaded they will be linked from this page on the Biblical Archaeology website.

Bible College Interviews

Perhaps the most interesting development so far in 2014 on the BiblicalStudies Blog has been the series of interviews with staff of Bible Colleges around the world. This was triggered in response to an apparently arbitrary list of “top Bible colleges” appearing online. The interview series gives the opportunity for a wide range of institutions from around the world to set out what they have to offer potential students.

So far these have included Spurgeon’s College [England], The Union Theological College [India], Tilsley College [Scotland], Heritage College & Seminary [Canada], Ridley College [Australia], Trinity Western University [Canada], Columbia Evangelical Seminary [USA], Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary [USA], University of Northwestern – St Paul [USA], Highland Theological College [Scotland], Jamaica Theological Seminary [Jamaica and Dallas Theological Seminary [USA]. The series is set to continue until the end of June. Contributions from other Colleges are most welcome.

Looking Ahead

I don’t think that there has been any period in the 13 years I have been developing Theology on the Web in which I have uploaded so much material. There is every reason to think, however, that once the journals I currently have in hand are completed, new material to digitise will become much harder to find. This is because there are a finite number of journals out there and most have already been made available either for free or via a commercial subscription service. For that reason I am now considering the possibility of digitising more books which are no longer in copyright. As file size is still a key factor in many countries where bandwidth is limited I will be trying to make the resulting PDFs as small as possible.

It has been an encouraging year as far a finance is concerned. Although I have only four regular supporters, this is well up on last year (when I had only one). Also, a recent one-off gift allowed me to purchase volumes of the Schweich lectures (already mentioned above), which I would otherwise been unable to do. If you wish to support the development of the sites, please go here.

So, thank you for your ongoing support and encouragement. I appreciate all the message and comments I get on the blog and via social media and look forward to seeing what the rest of 2014 will bring.