Theology Degrees Online put out a list this week of “100 Exceptional Web Sites for Christian Theologians“. The site sorts 100 blogs into four categories, Christian Leadership (28 sites), “Arts, Music and Literature” (24 sites), Bible Study (10 sites), and General Christianity (39 sites). According to the email I received, these sites were “selected through a rigorous campaign of research and nomination-seeking.”
Reading Acts was listed at #22 under General Christianity. What is “General Christianity?” The site explains, “These sites have a lot to offer for someone looking to learn something new about Christianity, but they aren’t quite sure what. The massive amount of scholarly research that has been published on Christianity makes it hard to know where to start, and these sites are more approachable and fun to read.”
I see that there are a few other BiblioBlog participants on the list as well. BiblicalStudies.org.uk, BibleX, and BLT under Bible study, and Jim West, Tom Verrena, Bob Cargill (XKV8TR), Scotteriology, and Remnants of Giants are on the list. It is somewhat tragic that Mark Goodacre’s NT Blog is listed at #39 in that section, and last on the list overall. The NT Blog is the grandfather of all Bibliblogs and provides some of the best material for scholarship on the Internet. Perhaps the fact that it is not updated as frequently as others is the reason it was listed last.
The list looks pretty good, and there are a few other “lists” on the site of interest to theology students on the web. Lists are always good traffic generators, and Theology Degrees Online is of course trying to generate traffic for Liberty or Grand Canyon online learning.
Would you recommend this list of blogs as legitimate/scholarly resources for online or traditional students? Does the list work “unfiltered”, or is more discernment required?
Discernment is always required. But looking over the biblical studies, there were a number of people that I regularly read and find stimulating. There are some that are rather thin, but that is because they are about less rigorous topics, or maybe nebulous topics is the better description. (“Leadership” and “coaching” for example, are never going to be “scholarly” by the nature of the subject.) I would say Mark Goodacre’s blog, for example, has been a standout resource for serious online scholarship for over 8 years now. Most of the others I looked at were at least up-to-date and informative on the chosen topic.
Should the NTBlog (or Reading Acts for that matter) be cited in a scholarly, college or seminary paper? Probably not, but this list is better than googling a topic and grabbing the first thing that comes up. (or worse, researching a topic through StumbleUpon…!) I guess the use of the resources in a classroom is up to the professor.