Eerdmans Bible Commentaries

Pitts acquires a large collection of biblical commentaries as ebooks

Pitts Theology Library has just purchased online access to a collection of dozens of biblical commentaries from Eerdmans. This acquisition brings valuable resources that have long been appreciated in the library’s print collection to an online audience.

The collection includes ebooks curated for New Testament and Old Testament research, which range from standby foundational works to recently-published scholarship in these areas. 

The New Testament collection features the Pillar New Testament Commentary and the Two Horizons New Testament Commentary, while the Old Testament collection includes the International Theological Commentary and Illuminations Commentary series. The New International Commentary, Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, Eerdmans Critical Commentary, and the Two Horizons Commentary contain works on both the New and Old Testaments. 

In addition to providing access for current Emory students, Pitts has also added these resources to Emory’s collection of research databases for alumni, meaning that all Emory alumni can access them as well. Alumni who haven’t used alumni research databases yet should contact the Emory Alumni Association for access. Current Emory students should make sure to join the Alumni Association before graduating for the easiest way to maintain access to these library resources after they graduate.

This new content is located on the Theology and Religion Online (TARO) platform, which is also the home of the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary and Commentaries. Current Emory students, faculty, and staff can access the full TARO collection directly here, or they can search for individual titles in the library catalog


When using these resources, don’t be afraid to think beyond exegesis papers! These commentaries include material intended for work in systematic theology, biblical archaeology, and preaching, as well as historical and textual criticism. To help you get the most out of them, our reference librarians are available for individual consultations. Schedule a time to meet with Dee Roberts or Brady Beard for a 30-minute session tailored to your specific research project.

By Caitlin Soma, Acquisitions & Periodicals Coordinator

Pitts acquires a Franciscan manual for late medieval preachers

Pitts recently added to its growing collection of incunables (books printed before 1501) a 1479 lexical manual for preachers and clergy. The Latin book, titled Mammotrectus super Bibliam (“Nourisher on the Bible”), printed by Nicolas Jensen in Venice, contains etymological and grammatical explanations of words found in the Bible, along with the liturgical hours, arranged in the order of the Bible and the church year. Its author, John Marchesinus, was a Franciscan friar in Italy, likely living in the late 13th or early 14th century, who lamented the lack of education amongst clergy and the poor quality of preaching that resulted from it.

The first word in the title, mammotrectus, denotes “mother’s milk” (i.e. nourishment regarding the Bible), and the term had been used by Augustine in his commentary on the Psalms. Marchesinus himself explains the term to mean “led by a pedagogue.” This work would become one of the most important Franciscan books of the late Middle Ages.

Are you interested in seeing this and other rare books in the Pitts Special Collections? You can make an appointment any time the reading room is open. You can also learn about the Pitts incunable collection by checking out the Spring 2023 exhibition, “This Sacred Art,” curated by Pitts’ Head of Special Collections Brandon Wason.

By Armin Siedlecki, Head of Cataloging and Rare Book Cataloger

Pitts supports Open Access publishing

Open Access publishing follows several practices to make academic research more accessible to more people. As you might expect, publishing has costs, and in the most common form of academic publishing, those costs fall on the institutions and individuals who hold subscriptions. In other words, while scholars can publish their works without charge, readers pay to read the scholarship. Over the last several decades, Open Access (OA) advocates have pushed for new ways of investing in and supporting academic research. Some solutions include charging publishing fees to authors to offset publishing costs and a variety of access structures that may allow for individuals to read but not share Open Access publications. Pitts staff prefer the Gold OA model. In Gold OA, institutions and individuals pay article processing fees (APCs) through various means (including grant funding, endowments, funders, etc.) to provide access and licenses through Creative Commons.

As part of Pitts Library’s dedication to supporting Open Access publishing, the library recently partnered with the journal AABNER (Advances in Ancient, Biblical, and Near Eastern Research) to support their Open Access publishing model and expand access to this scholarship. All patrons can find all articles published with AABNER on their website, and if you look carefully, you will spot the Pitts Theology Library logo there as well. AABNER is indexed by Index Theologicus, ensuring that researchers can find AABNER articles. Be sure to consult AABNER for your next Bible and ancient world project! You can find other Open Access journals at The Directory of Open Access Journals and on the Pitts Online Resources for Research LibGuide.

Written by Brady Beard, Reference & Instruction Librarian

Don’t reshelve those books! Missing books and why Pitts wants to do the work for you

The Pitts staff and student workers are well-versed in magic, but magic isn’t how we find books when they go missing from the stacks.

A Pitts reshelving cart on the first floor, where patrons have (properly!) placed books when they were finished with them.

When a patron cannot find a book where the online catalog says it should be, the Pitts staff and student workers undertake four official searches, spaced across varying time intervals – one, seven, twenty-eight, and fifty-six days – to find the missing book. Over time, we have learned the most common reasons a book ends up somewhere it shouldn’t be, and we use that knowledge to search efficiently. Often an item is missing due to its being misshelved in the wrong place. Someone may have stashed away material for their work, or someone may have misread a call number when putting a book back. We assume the latter when first searching the stacks, and we try to reconstruct the error in a logical way. For example, errors in shelving might result from swapping an s for a 5, reading HC as HG or HQ, dropping numbers from long sequences of numbers in the case of BS1575.568, or some other understandable mistake. So, for example, if we can’t find a book with a call number HM851 .B3645, we may start our search in the HN851 section.

Student workers use charts to report the progress in searching for books reported missing.

To maintain shelving accuracy and catch misplaced books before our patrons do, our circulation student workers are perpetually checking the order of the material on the shelves, and they are regularly reviewing the shelving done by their peers. As a library patron, you can help too! Please support our efforts to keep books where they belong by putting items you remove from the shelves on a reshelving cart, which are spread throughout the library, rather than returning it to the shelf. It’s always possible that the book may not belong in the gap you found. By leaving the books on the reshelving carts you provide staff with material to hone our shelving skills, and you also provide us with accurate data on the use of our materials. So even though you may want to help us out by reshelving the books, you actually help us more by placing them on the reshelving carts and letting the Pitts experts take it from there!

By Yasmine Green, Collection Management Coordinator

The whiteboard in the circulation office guides student workers through the process of finding a missing book.

2024 Pitts Annual Friends of the Library Book Sale

Pitts’ Annual Friends of the Library Book Sale returns this year with some big changes! This year we’re offering $15 cartons for EmoryCard holders ($30 for non-Emory) to fill with whatever will fit (estimated 20-25 books per carton). A la carte options are also available—$2 for paperback and $3 for hardcover. Lastly, complete sets will be featured at discounted prices.

As always, thousands of books are available for purchase on a range of topics including biblical studies, church history, ethics, ministry, and more.

DATES
Tuesday, February 27th, 2024: 8am-11am (EmoryCard holders only), 11am-4pm (Open to General Public)

Wednesday, February 28th, 2024: 8am-4pm (Open to General Public)

LOCATION
CST 360

PAYMENTS ACCEPTED
Credit Card Only!

Questions? Email theologyref@emory.edu. We look forward to seeing you at the sale!