Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 42:1 (Mar 1999)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament: Vol. 7 (ליחּ־כּ). Edited by G. J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren and H.-J. Fabry. Translated by D. E. Green. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995, xxv + 552 pp., $45.00; Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament: Vol. 8 (מֹר־לָכַד). Edited by G. J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren and H.-J. Fabry. Translated by D. W. Stott. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, xxiv + 560 pp., $45.00.

This standard reference tool (known as TDOT) continues to appear by fits and starts, following the German edition by several years. By now, readers of this Journal will be well acquainted with this series (see the reviews of vol. 1 in JETS 18.3 [1975] 203-205 and of vol. 6 in JETS 38.2 [1995] 253-254), and vols. 7 and 8 bring no major surprises. The quality of the articles remains consistently high. The series also retains its non-evangelical stance on critical issues (although it appears that a few more evangelical works appear in the bibliographies—and even in the articles themselves—than previously). The editorial quality control is remarkably consistent for a series that first began appearing in English in 1974, although inevitably individual articles focus now on one aspect of a word (e.g. ancient Near Eastern backgrounds) and now on another (e.g. on semantic fields). The troublesome early transliteration system, whereby צ was represented by “ts” (not ) and שׁ by “sh” (not ), etc., happily was dropped with the appearance of vol. 5 in 1986. Volume 7 has 75 articles by 43 different contributors, while vol. 8 has 76 articles by 44 contributors; 27 scholars have contributions in both volumes. By comparison, vols. 1–3 average 56 articles by 38 contributors. This difference is primarily because of the longer length of the later volumes; the selectivity has not changed appreciably.

As before, the articles here consider the etymology of words, but they do not lean overly much on etymology to ascertain meaning. Attention occasionally is paid to the LXX translations, and more attention is devoted to the usage of words in the Dead Sea Scrolls; however, pseudepigraphical and rabbinic literature is almost completely ignored (a notable exception is the article on “Leviathan”).

Articles fall into three categories: (1) Those that are devoted to single words or lexemes (e.g. kābâ “extinguish”; kōaḥ “strength, power”; kḥd “conceal, destroy”); (2) those treating groupings of words derived from ...

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