by Nathan Nelson, 4th Year
It is nearing that time of the year where exegetical papers are coming due, and you may be starting to ask yourself, “What am I going to use for all of these required resources?" I remember having to do my first exegetical paper and wondering that. Thankfully, since I was already working here at the library, I had already discovered the many valuable exegetical resources that we have at our disposal here.
On the main floor of the library behind the desk is our waist-high reserve shelves where we have many commentaries ready for your perusal. These include the blue-backed Concordia commentaries as well as other mainstream commentaries for you to utilize. These books cannot be checked out, but that simply means that they will always be sitting here waiting to be picked up.
If not being able to check out a commentary is a problem for you and you really want to be able to take the book home with you, we have an easy solution for that too. We have all of the same commentaries available in our open stacks available to be checked out. You can always peruse our commentary selection online and check them out that way, but I would suggest something else from my own experience. I would just go do to our shelves and see what is available. This at least allowed me to open up the commentaries to see what the focus of their interpretation was, if it was pointing in a similar direction to where I wanted to go with the paper or if they had something completely new to offer. And our selection of commentaries is very easy to find. If you are coming into the library from the fountain side doors and head down the staircase next to the front desk, you will find yourself right in the middle of our selection of commentaries. Where the shelves open into the main aisle on this side of our downstairs is right in the middle of the commentaries on the New Testament epistles. If you want something earlier in the Bible, start walking left and looking through those shelves until you come across the book you want. If you want one of the few books that is later, start looking through the shelves to your right.
I honestly found my exegetical writing itself when I just went down to those shelves in person and started opening up books, so if you are feeling stumped on one of these lengthy and sometimes challenging assignments, hopefully this will help you out.