Using the Dictionary of New Testament Background in Practice
I've had a dog-eared copy of the Dictionary of New Testament Background from the IVP Bible Dictionary Series on my shelf for years, and honestly it earns its place more often than most of the heavier reference works I own. The series was edited by Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter, and the volume itself is structured around cultural, historical, and social topics rather than individual book-by-book commentary. That choice matters when you're trying to quickly understand a concept like purity laws, Roman patronage, or first-century household codes. The way I actually use this book is different from how most people approach biblical reference works. I don't look up verses in it. I look up concepts. When I'm preparing material on something like the Sermon on the Mount and I keep hitting a wall trying to understand what "salt of the earth" was supposed to mean to someone in first-century Galilee, I go straight to the relevant entry. The book has separate essays on things like agriculture, food, and social structures that give you the actual context rather than a surface-level definition. It usually takes me about five to eight minutes to find the right entry and pull out something usable. One thing that catches people off guard is the depth of the archaeological and historical sourcing. These aren't casual references. The contributors are serious scholars and they cite primary sources, inscriptional evidence, and second Temple period literature throughout. If you're writing something academic or even just doing deep personal study, having access to that level of sourcing in a single volume saves you from scattering across multiple books and databases. I've found it cuts my research time for background questions from maybe two hours down to fifteen minutes, depending on how obscure the topic is.
Here's a specific problem I ran into that shows where this resource falls short. I was working on a project involving the term "exousia" and how it functioned in Pauline literature versus the Gospels. The dictionary has entries on authority and political structures, but they're broad and thematic. They don't do word studies. I ended up needing to supplement with a biblical theology dictionary and some journal articles on Pauline political language because this volume simply wasn't built for lexical analysis. It's a background reference, not a theology or linguistics reference. That's a distinction people sometimes miss. Another counter-intuitive thing about this book: the organization by topic rather than by biblical book is actually one of its greatest strengths, but it requires you to know what you're looking for before you open it. If you flip through randomly, it feels scattered. I learned early on to read the table of contents carefully and also to check the index before deciding a topic isn't covered. The index alone is worth the price of the book. I once spent twenty minutes searching for an essay on Jewish messianic expectations before realizing the discussion was filed under "Messiah and the Messiah" in the main entries. The indexing can be a bit inconsistent across entries, which is a minor frustration. The contributors include names like John K. Goodrich, Ben Witherington III, and Richard S. Ascough, among others. Each essay is written at a graduate level but stays accessible enough for a well-read layperson. If your background is strictly devotional and you've never encountered terms like "pseudepigrapha" or "Hellenistic synagogue," some of the language will feel dense at first. That's not a flaw in the book, it's just the reality of the scholarship. You get out of it what you bring to it.
If you want a digital copy, the IVP Academic website and platforms like Amazon carry the ebook edition. The print version is still the more readable format for reference work because you can spread it open and page through easily. At roughly 672 pages, it's substantial but manageable on a shelf next to your other commentaries. I'd estimate it's priced around forty dollars for the hardcover, which is reasonable for a one-volume reference of this caliber. The main limitation worth noting upfront is that the book reflects scholarship current to its publication date, which was around 2017. Some archaeological findings and scholarly debates have moved forward since then. If you're dealing with a particularly contested historical question, you'll want to check for newer journal articles or companion volumes. The IVP series has updated some entries in later printings, but don't assume every mention of current consensus in the text is still uncontested in 2026. For most people buying or using this, the practical approach is to treat it as a first stop for contextual questions, not a final authority on every detail. It gives you the landscape. Then you drill down from there with more specialized resources when the question demands it. That's how I use it and it works well.
