Biblical Theology Research Seminar Question

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I’m taking a Biblical Theology Research Seminar with Craig Blaising at SWBTS this semester. Our primary textbook is Klink and Lockett’s Understanding Biblical Theology. I will be writing a research paper this semester.

 

He wants me to study William Dumbrell, specifically starting with Chapter 11 in Out of Egypt (Dumbrell’s article which I have), and he wants me to examine Dumbrell’s biblical presentation of salvation history and what Dumbrell is seeing in the biblical text to construct his salvation history and how he argues for supercessionism. He also wants me to determine what he is not seeing in the biblical text in order to argue for a non-supercessionist approach.

 

My research interests are with Blaising’s work in Progressive Dispensationalism and kingdom theology, so he’s using my study of Dumbrell to prepare me for more PhD-dissertation level work.

 

What are some good search strategies in Accordance I can use for this? I can attach a couple of articles as well if that would help. I have a general idea on how to search in Accordance for this, but I'm mainly posting to ensure I'm covering all my basis and being thorough in my research.

 

 

Hope this helps and let me know if I need to clarify anything!

[Solly]

Nathan, I wish you pleasant exploration, successful bibliography construction, and exciting analysis of your topic. It has been a long time since I have done such research, but memories of paper journals and microfiche abound. Just for fun I did a research of my dictionaries/encyclopedias, and commentaries for Dumbrell.  Wow, I wish I had such tools back in the day! Then I often started with footnotes and bibliographies in my texts, along with journal articles that would be a review of the current state of a topic in my field to begin to collect titles that may be of value. Getting the paper product to read would be another adventure. In grad school, indices of the literature began to appear on microfiche, which removed much of the tedium of perusing the index volumes of the appropriate journals.

 

No, I don't have any advice to offer, but I am a bit envious of the powerful tools available today, yet I also feel excitement for you as you do this work. I suspect your biggest initial hurdle will be sorting through the data to determine what is really useful. The wheat and chaff theme does appear often!

 

Best wishes, 

Joseph

[Michael Hunt]

By no means is this a comprehensive strategy (its really just a thought of the top of my head) but I would be recording a reference list of biblical texts Dumbrell uses in the resources you have to support his hypothesis. Alongside this I would make a note against each entry in a Dumbrell notes file giving a summary of what he concludes/how he sees that particular text relating to his hypothesis. This gives you a powerful tool to then postulate a) what texts does he not reference that are relevant to the topic, what parts of the texts he is referencing is he underplaying/overplaying, c) what things is he getting right from his references.

 

Sounds like a ver interesting a potentially fruitful exercise that I wish you all the best with. 

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Thanks everyone for the info. Great strategies, and I will include them in my overall research. So far off to a great start.