The Annals of Bibliographic Science

Transcription

1 Matthew Baldwin presents. The Annals of Bibliographic Science Selected examples of careful citation methods Volume 1, Issue 3 April 21st, 2008 Welcome back to our continuing quest to find good secondary sources, and to use and cite them accurately and well. We are still working on a paper on Paul s second proof from Galatians (Gal 3:6 14). 1

2 The source we want to use in this issue is the Oxford Companion to the Bible. The Oxford Companion to the Bible is a scholarly and relatively conservative reference tool which contains over 700 different signed articles by different authors. It is thus like many encyclopedias or dictionaries, such as the Anchor Bible Dictionary. But it has only one volume. Also, the Oxford Companion to the Bible is easy to use! It is available on-line. You can search it like a database. You can instantly find any article in it that uses or mentions any word or phrase you choose. 2

3 To use the Oxford Companion, we start at the Renfro library web page. The Oxford Companion is a part of Oxford Reference Online, which is an electronic resource. So we click on the Electronic Resources button. We use the pull-down menu to select the correct resource. 3

4 We use the pull-down menu to select the correct resource. At this point, one of two different things happens. If we are on-campus, the next screen you see will be the Oxford Reference Online home page. If we are off-campus, the next screen you see will be a login screen. We ll assume for the moment we are off-campus and have to log-in to use the database. 4

5 At the moment, this is the login-screen you see. The current username is: marshillcollege The current password is: serahubu But this will change. (It does every summer). Get the current password from your Librarian. This is the Oxford Reference Online home page. If you are on-campus you can also get here directly. Simply type this URL into the address bar: 5

6 Oxford Reference Online is a collection of electronic versions of printed reference books. Here is a picture of some of the books. There are over 175 books in this database. All the books are published by Oxford University Press, a highly respected English publishing house. The reference tools in this collection span a long list of subjects. 6

7 Scroll down the screen to see the full list of the subject areas. These are links. From here, you can select any subject and look at the books contained in that subject. Let s click on religion and philosophy. This page contains a list of the books in this subject area. From here you can search the entire subject area! Or, you can select one of the books, and search within that book. Let s select Oxford Companion to the Bible. 7

8 Here we are! From here you can choose to search this entire book, all 700 articles. You can also browse through the articles to get an idea of what it contains. But let s search. First, try Galatians. The search for Galatians turned up one article, called Galatians, the Letter of Paul to the. That sounds good! Let s look at it. The title is a link. 8

9 Here is the article on Galatians. As you can see, it s a substantial article. The name of the author appears at the end. Let s scroll to the bottom of the page to see. Here is the author name: F. F. Bruce Bruce is a respected elder scholar in the field of New Testament studies, author of a number of books on Paul (try a search for his name on Google). 9

10 One of the beautiful things about Oxford Reference Online is that they always provide all the citation information for you. Here it is! Here s a closer look at the citation information. Note the cross references to other articles! 10

11 When it comes to writing your bibliography or citing this article, the citation information given on Oxford Reference Online is always helpful. But don t cut and paste! You will have to REFORMAT it, because it contains too much information, in a weird style. The little purple words at the bottom contain all the info we need. Author: F. F. Bruce Title: Galatians, The Letter of Paul to the Source: Oxford Companion to the Bible Editors: Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan City: Oxford (note: we just happen to know this city name) Publisher: Oxford University Press Date: 1993 Accessed via: Oxford Reference Online URL: Note: I don t need the full URL or all the info about Mars Hill College and Renfro Library / Harris Media Center, because nobody needs this information to find the article. We also don t need to give any of the information that REPEATS, such as the publisher data. We also don t need to give the date of access, because this isn t a regular webpage that changes every day. It hasn t changed from the 1993 version found in the print edition. 11

12 So, here s the bibliography style of citation for this article: Bruce, F. F. Galatians, the Letter of Paul to the. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Available from Oxford Reference Online. Later, when we are writing, we decide to quote Bruce s great comment on the authenticity of Galatians: Galatians was most certainly written by the apostle Paul. In his article for the Oxford Companion to the Bible, F. F. Bruce states that [n]one of the letters bearing Paul s name is so indubitably his as Galatians. Galatians is, indeed, the criterion by which the authenticity of other letters ascribed to him is gauged. 11 I used a blockquotation format to give this longish quote from Bruce. I felt like using the whole quote because of its clever tone and style. Next we need to write the footnote, our first for Bruce. 12

13 The Here s bibliography the footnote: format we used earlier won t work for footnotes. Here is a footnote style citation: 11. F. F. Bruce, Galatians, the Letter of Paul to the, in The Oxford Companion to 11. the F. Bible F. Bruce, (Bruce Galatians, M. Metzger the and Letter Michael of Paul D. Coogan, to the, in eds; The Oxford: Oxford Companion to the University Bible (Bruce Press, M. 1993); Metzger downloaded and Michael from D. Oxford Coogan, Reference eds; Oxford: Online Oxford at University Press, 1993); downloaded from Oxford Reference Online at No page numbers are necessary. Footnote style uses the natural order of the author name, and uses Unfortunately, commas, semicolons, an interested colons, reader and checking parentheses out the to punctuate accuracy of a citation our quote entry will as just a single have to sentence. find where it is themselves. Because this is an on-line resource, we don t need page numbers. They could Whoever always search looks for the our webpage quote will with just their have browser! to search. Subsequent notes are easier. The opponents against whom Paul battles at Galatia have been called judaizing intruders. 12 This is because they came into the congregations Paul had started, and, at a minimum, advocated circumcision, and perhaps also other aspects of Torah observance for Gentile believers. We ve already given the full citation for Bruce. So the footnote for this one, and subsequent notes also, will have a short form: 12. Bruce, Galatians. I didn t use Bruce s name above, even though I quoted him. That s because this phrase is a fairly common one for the opponents, as Bruce s article makes clear. 13

14 There are lots of other articles we could use from the Oxford Companion. This has been only one example. At the top of the page is a search bar. I can select the radio button to search only in Oxford Companion. Ideas for search terms to try include: Gal. 3 Abraham Justification Faith Redemption, Paul, and more. 14