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Download Hastings, James - Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (2 vols)

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Author:
James Hastings

theWord Version:
3.x - 4.x

Tab Name:
ChristGospels

2 Volume Homiletical Dictionary about Christ and the Gospels
From the Preface: "The Purpose of this Dictionary is to account for everything relating to CHRIST—His Person, Life, Work, and Teaching. This is, first of all, a preacher’s Dictionary." (See here for Hastings' traditional Dictionary.)

The more than 100 authors who wrote articles were chosen not just because of their scholarship but also because they were actual preachers. The work includes a substantial amount of Greek and Hebrew word analysis, yet very usable material for any preacher.

"It is called a Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, because it includes everything the Gospels contain, whether directly related to Christ or not. Its range, however, is far greater than that of the Gospels. It seeks to cover all that relates to Christ throughout the Bible and in the life and literature of the world. The work includes articles on the Patristic estimate of Jesus, the Mediaeval estimate, the Reformation and Modern estimates. The work also includes articles on Christ in the Jewish writings and in the Muslim literature. Much attention has been given to modern thought, whether Christian or anti-Christian. Every aspect of modern life, in so far as it touches or is touched by Christ, is described under its proper title.

Still, the Gospels are the main source of our knowledge of Christ, and it will be found that the contents of the Gospels, especially their spiritual contents, have never before been so thoroughly investigated and set forth.

There are three classes of topics, each of which contributes something towards the distinction of this work. There are topics, like Authority of Christ, which are wholly new. There are topics which may or may not be wholly new, like Attraction (which is new) and Atonement (which is not), but which have a wider range than any topics in the Dictionary of the Bible. And there are topics, like Angels, which have a narrower range, having no occasion to go beyond the limits of the Gospels, but within that range are fuller, and of more practical value for the preacher."

The scope of discussion is not limited to what the Bible says about itself—the extra-biblical testimony to their origin and their history is likewise dealt with, as articles like those on Aristion, Ebionism, Papias and others indicate. It is obvious that, unless the whole history of Gospel-criticism were included, a line had to he drawn.

TheWord Version
The two volumes, with appendix, have been consolidated into one theWord module and the contents arranged alphabetically. Implicit references have been made explicit for tooltipping purposes. Footnotes are rendered as in-line, grey text.

The module contains about 1,600 topics with about 22 megabytes of text, when uncompressed. The module does not contain images.

I would personally categorize this as a Christ-centered dictionary, with everything you ever wanted to know about Christ, even an in depth study of all the questions he answered and asked. I learned a lot about what extra-Biblical resources say about Christ, of which I knew little prior to this module.

Much of the scholarship is conservative, but I would classify some of articles dealing with textual criticism as being more "liberal". This is the way Hastings compiled all of his dictionaries.