Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (The IVP Bible Dictionary Series)

Great resource to have! I purchased for seminary class. It is one of those books I will not sale back. So much good information easily accessible in one place. Really like this book

If you are a Bible student (I am in a masters program in theology), this is a very useful book. Almost essential for serious students. Glad I spent the money.

Thorough and comprehensive. I consult it regularly as a student and Pastor.

Complete and insightful. Higly recommended

I am using this resource for a class on exegesis in the Gospels. This is an amazing and very thorough resource for anyone studying to gospels. Whether you're a scholar or simply interested in learning more about the background or elements in the gospels, this is an indispensable resource. From my understanding, it has been significantly updated since the 1st version and has articles from scholars who range on their theological views. Thus, it is a great snapshot of today's scholarship on the gospels.

but dispite not being Catholic literature, my husband says it has some very good refeences

Unquestionably, a most valuable and welcome update to the original first volume in the so-called IVP "Black Dictionaries" (from their covers/jackets). Just about anything anyone could want to know about Jesus and the Gospels, as well as contemporary studies of the topic, is in this book. Bibliographies to get seminarians pointed to further literature. I have already bought 2 copies--one for our church library as soon as it was released to keep the whole 8 volume series up to date, which we gave to a visiting professor of NT studies because she didn't yet have it, and a replacement for that for our library. A "layperson" could use the book, too, one might be overwhelmed by how much information is actually available! In many of the longer articles, multiple viewpoints are discussed, too.

I found this dictionary to be so comprehensive that I have just been reading it like a book. I love the references to what sources are used for the information. This is a dictionary for bible scholars. I liked it enough to go ahead and purchase the other volumes of the set (total of 8).

Very good book

One of my children is being taught RS A-level by a teacher who is clever, funny and influential, but who is teaching with a personal agenda. His core message is that the Gospels are inherently unreliable, and that their key passages about Jesus' claims to divinity were not written as reasonably contemporary history but were inserted a century or more later, as propaganda to justify a theology which had by then developed. Researching these issues myself, I discovered that it was very difficult to find material which was written without an obvious bias one way or the other. I therefore asked a few academic theologians for recommendations. I wanted something (a) with serious scholarship behind it, and (b) not written with an agenda. This book was the one which they all mentioned, so I got it, and I am very glad that I did. First, it has a good breadth of topics. It does what it says on the label: it's a dictionary. So it is arranged in alphabetical order, by topic. If you want to know about Pontius Pilate, or the genealogy of Jesus, or who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, or whatever, you turn to the relevant place and see what's there. Generally speaking there is always an entry relevant to what you would like to know, and so far there have been very few disappointments (though they do occur - I was surprised to find no separate entry on Judas Iscariot, for example). Second, when you find the relevant entry, the content is really first rate. The books operates by elegant summary: of the historical material (eg what ancient sources say); of the main academic viewpoints; of any controversies and so on. There are extensive references to more detailed works if you want/need to know more (and sometimes you do, because it's only a dictionary and can only do so much, though usually it's more than adequate). The writing is clear, concise and neutral. Third, I greatly value the fact that it manages both to be a detached and academic work, and yet to be written with sympathy to Christianity. It does not proselytise, and it does not shrink from difficulties. But having summarised the difficulties, it will often offer up a short, quiet suggestion of how Christian thought accommodates them. I am finding it invaluable, and am learning a great deal from it.

Authoritative and highly informative articles. Now one of my most valuable reference books

A good reference book