Scoping the academic literature

The first practical task in writing a literature review is scoping โ€“ a preliminary exploration of resources, including existing reviews, to assess issues of quality and planning. Scoping helps you determine which topics should be included or excluded in your literature search, and guides decisions about the structure of your review. Make a start Begin …

Who wrote the Gospel of Luke?

All the narrative books of the New Testament come to us as unsigned, anonymous documents. The first generation of readers probably knew who the authors of the New Testament books were, but oral tradition was not always passed on in the literary tradition. Scholars speak of โ€œinternalโ€ and โ€œexternalโ€ evidence in support of authorship: clues …

So you want to write a literature review

A literature review locates your original research โ€“ the kind youโ€™d write up in a thesis, dissertation or long essay โ€“ ย within the existing academic literature. What exactly is a literature review? It is a critical account of the most salient and relevant material published on a topic. It analyses and evaluates the literature to …

What is distinctive about Luke’s Gospel?

Each of the four Gospels presents a unique perspective on the life of Jesus. The distinctiveness of Johnโ€™s Gospel is well known. Of the three Synoptic Gospels, Luke shares many similarities with Matthew and Mark, but much is distinctive about Lukeโ€™s portrayal of Jesus. Four points deserve comment. First,ย only Luke explicitly identifies his purpose in …

Seven stanzas for Easter

By John Updike Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cellsโ€™ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers,each soft Spring recurrent;it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddledeyes of the eleven apostles;it was as …