From time to time pastors and Sunday school teachers ask me to recommend helpful commentaries or exegetical works on various books of the Old Testament. I usually suggest a few and the pastor or teacher thanks me and we end the conversation. Afterwards, I inevitably remember a great commentary or book that would have been very helpful but which I forgot to mention. I usually plan to call the individual back up to tell them about this other resource they could use. But you know what happens. I forget, or get distracted, or misplaced their telephone number (if I got it in the first place).
Just this happened to me last semester. A local pastor emailed me to ask about some recommendations on Genesis. He planned to preach a series of messages to his congregation on the first book of the Bible. I happened to be teaching a seminar to the OT PhD students on Genesis, so I was really pumped up and excited to suggest some good books on the subject. Well, I gave him a few ideas and then promptly forget to add some other good commentaries. I remember suggesting three good commentaries, a text on preaching from Genesis, and one dictionary as very helpful.
Then somebody else called me with basically the same question. Unfortunately, I could not find the email I sent the first pastor. So I figured out that there out to be a better way to recommend books where I can make an easy list, add to it when I want, and delete the ones I change my mind on later.
This is where the Internet comes to the rescue—well, more specifically, Amazon.com and our blog. To see how this works click the link below:
This will take you to a list of books, works, and other media on Genesis. You don’t have to purchase any of the suggestions from Amazon. But if you click on the icon, you will be able to see all the publication data on the selected work. Amazon has pretty good deals.
But the point is that I can update this hyperlink at anytime and anyplace and add and subtract books and commentaries. It will even let me list the books according to category. That way I can refer questions to this blog and I don’t have to look around to find an email or the scrap of paper on which I wrote down some ideas for the person who called me last time on the subject.
In fact, what we can also do is list the recommended books and commentaries under our Pages sidebar Essential Books! So, if you are looking for good books on the Old Testament check there from time to time. Drs. Hearson, Watson, and I will start putting up our suggestions. We think this will help our teaching and ministry and that it will help you as well.
Good reading!