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A lot goes into writing in biblical studies.1 And any number of tools can help you marshal your research into strong prose. For instance, Logos can give you access to hundreds of shelves’ worth of resources, Zotero can help you manage and cite this literature, and Word can give you a place to craft your arguments. But there’s another application that’s vastly more important than all of these combined. ...

One feature with some substantial upgrades in Zotero 7 is the built-in PDF viewer and annotator.((Header image provided by Zotero via Twitter.)) For a long time, I’ve not used this feature. But seeing the updates that it’s gotten, I decided to give it a try, and I really do like what the developers have done with it. ...

Zotero is an incredibly helpful research tool.1 But it’s only as useful as the information it contains. So, the more you improve what your Zotero library contains—whether by adding or correcting contents—the more useful the tool will become. There are multiple ways to add additional resources to Zotero. Several of them allow Zotero to automatically input information from various places. But if the information you import is itself incorrect or just doesn’t import properly, Zotero won’t be able to use that information as it should. So, especially when you automatically import resources into Zotero, it’s well worth proofreading briefly what you’ve imported. ...

Zotero has been undergoing a major overhaul.((Header image provided by Zotero via Twitter.)) In May 2023, Zotero announced the public beta for the popular research platform.((Dan Stillman, “Announcing the Zotero 7 Beta,” Zotero Forums, 20 May 2023.)) Since that time, the beta version for Zotero 7 has received scores of updates. ...

Macrium Reflect is a wonderful backup tool. It does have a missing feature, but thankfully, a comparable solution is available.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you’re lost when you’re looking at stepping out into a career in biblical studies.((Header image provided by Katja Anokhina.)) The content of biblical studies is one thing—the manuscripts, texts, traditions, languages, and literature. All of that is why you set out to join this discipline in the first place. But you keep hearing how bleak prospects are, how hard everything is. And you’re not sure where it all leads. ...

There’s so much material available to support your research. You just have to know where to go and how to look for it.

In biblical studies as in other knowledge work fields, email is everywhere.((Header image provided by Joanna Kosinska.)) But it’s prominence and frequency far outstrip its importance. Because of this, email and similar tools have a distinctive capacity to pull you away from more essential activities into less essential ones. Thankfully, however, you can minimize email’s downsides while you maximize its value for cases where you can’t readily avoid it. So, needing to email a journal editor about publishing an article needn’t leave you paying excess “email tax.” ...

By itself, τὲ καί can’t indicate who Paul was writing to in Romans. But the phrase puts on the table important pieces to the puzzle.

Style manuals often require that footnotes have a blank line between them. There are two common mistakes about how to get this blank line.

Email is easy, cheap, and flexible.((Header image provided by Proton.)) Those factors make it a persuasive default for how coordination happens in knowledge work. The only problem is that these same factors sometimes make email even more a liability than it is an asset. But the fact that email creates such liabilities doesn’t mean there aren’t clear ways to reduce them. ...

Faith Comes by Hearing has a selection of free audio Bibles, including the English Standard Version. Registration requires both an email and a physical address.

Email is a deeply entrenched protocol within biblical studies. Partly for that reason, it presents a constant choice of which problem with it is better.

Biblical studies isn’t a matter of “(s)he who writes the most email wins.” But that obvious truth that can still get obscured all too easily.

For all its benefits, email presents definite challenges. But those challenges are mainly ones of degree rather than kind.

Email can be a useful tool, and sometimes a necessary one. But you need to be careful with using it so you don’t end up being used by it.

Citation managers like Zotero can simplify how you reference series. But what a citation manager puts out is only as good as what you put into it.

Microsoft Word’s language list can be helpful for multilingual documents. A few simple steps will set it right again if it gets messy.

Zotero can do a lot of work, including giving your citations the proper case. With non-English sources, two features are especially helpful.

Dark mode isn’t magic. But if you find it helpful like I do, then you can enable it in Zotero in either of two ways.

Sometimes, even just what’s important can be too much. When it is, these 4 strategies can particularly help you cope.

V.M.L. … is a two-year-old U.S. citizen child currently being held incommunicado … at an unknown location … in the Alexandria[, Louisiana,] area. … On or around April 22, 2025, around 8:30am, V.M.L.’s mother[, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela,] attended a scheduled check-in at the New Orleans [Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP)] office with V.M.L. and her eleven-year-old sister. [ISAP required V.M.L.’s mother to bring both of her daughters to her check-ins, which V.M.L.’s mother had been regularly attending for almost four years. At] that appointment, ICE officers apprehended V.M.L.’s mother and the two girls. ...

The term “evangelical” has varied and sometimes conflicting definitions. Add your voice to the discussion in a new research initiative.

Critical biblical scholarship is irreplaceable. But even when you do this, there are 12 reasons you still need to read your Bible.

Biblical studies software can be a helpful tool—sometimes too helpful. Here are 5 steps to help you read original languages in Logos without cheating.

SBL style has a specific way to cite individually paginated articles from electronic journals. But Zotero can handle those citations too.

The sooner something matters, the greater its urgency. The greater the urgency, the more whatever situation will press upon you.

Deciding what gets priority can be tricky. But a classic decision matrix can bring clarity and guide the kinds of actions you take.

If you never make time for your research, your project will go nowhere. But making time starts with deciding when you won’t do research.

Being good at taking time away is part of the craft of biblical scholarship. With 8 steps, you can take this time better and enjoy it more.