Works of Van Til - No page numbers???

Cheryl Sexton

Hi, all.

I just purchased the 39 vol. Works of Cornelius Van Til package, only to find out that none of the works have page numbers. As a scholar, this makes the module essentially useless. This prevents me from citing anything! Are there plans in the works to rectify this? Or am I doing something wrong?

Mark Barnes

I just purchased the 39 vol. Works of Cornelius Van Til package, only to find out that none of the works have page numbers. As a scholar, this makes the module essentially useless. This prevents me from citing anything! Are there plans in the works to rectify this? Or am I doing something wrong?

You're doing nothing wrong.

The Van Till collection is a group of published and unpublished works, brought together electronically. Some of the resources don't exist in print form and therefore could be given page numbers. The original electronic publishers chose to publish this entire electronic edition without page numbers.

Although that can make citations a little awkward, your style guide will have instructions for citing electronic documents. You will still be able to cite the works. For example the SBL style guide says "Since e-reader formats do not have stable page numbers, it is preferable to cite the print edition. However, if an alternative format is consulted, in lieu of a page number, include a chapter or section number in the citation". It gives the example:

Henning Graf Reventlow, From the Old Testament to Origen. Vol. 1 of History of Biblical Interpretation, trans. Leo G. Perdue (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), Nook edition, ch. 1.3.