A Reader's Hebrew Bible
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Book Reviews of A Reader's Hebrew Bible
Book Review: Reader's Hebrew Bible
Summary: 5 Stars
Worth every penny! Excellent format. Size is comparable to a study Bible--a little big, but its value surpasses that downside.Book Review: hebrew bible
Summary: 5 Stars
Beautiful. Informative. Need to have a base knowledge of Hebrew to use this book fully.Book Review: An Excellent Work in Progress.
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me say first of all that I have not yet read all of this volume. Furthermore, I have not read any of it extremely carefully and critically. I have quickly and casually read Genesis and I Samuel and portions of other OT books. My comments here pertain to the 1st edition Copyright 2008. Generally I have found this volume to be well typeset, clear, and usable for long hours of reading. While I personally don't care for the practice of using a gray screening to indicate proper nouns in Hebrew and Aramaic "that occur, respectively, less [sic] than 100 and 25 times each," (p. xv) it is logical and generally consistent and therefore useful. The typeface is clear and the accents and cantillation marks are readable.
Let me say right at the outset that despite any critique which I or others may bring, these books are a much needed and the result of a great deal of hard work, generally well done, mostly accurate, and should be a part of every serious student's library. The authors/editors and publishers all deserve praise for their hard work.
The Hebrew And Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament by L. Koehler & W. Baumgartner (HALOT) and especially Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon by Francis Brown, S. Driver, and C. Briggs (BDB) are tools and need to be taken with a grain of salt. One of the problems with the RHB is that the text of HALOT and of more concern BDB, and other 19th century lexical tools seem to be held as sacred. It has been over 100 years since the first publication of BDB (1907) and its definitions and textual readings have often been ameliorated by modern studies in textual criticism in light of new manuscripts and in lexicography in light of ancient languages discovered (e.g. Ugaritic or Eblaite) or deciphered in modern times (e.g. Akkadian or Sumerian).
Works such as "Biblical Hapax Legomena in the Light of Akkadian and Ugaritic" by Harold R. (Chaim) Cohen present a careful analysis of the modern evidence found since the 19th century and can be taken as proof that longstanding lexical difficulties have been solved and these modern works will cause redefinitions in all future scholarly dictionaries and should be reflected in works such as this.
For example a quick check of three passages where new evidence is available today clearly shows that the definitions proffered are still marked uncertain and some suggestions which are most definitely wrong are still printed in slavish reliance on BDB and HALOT. (It may be argued that this is not a lexical undertaking and therefore not the place to redefine words. It is my opinion that this just perpetuates incorrect scholarship/tradition and should be corrected at every opportunity
1 Sam. 9:7 the word ''''' (tshwrh)
marked with footnote 10 shows as possibly being translated with the words "Gift" or "Present" is marked as "uncertain." The words "gift" and "present" are repeated and marked uncertain in the unnecessary second instance as well. Modern scholarship (e.g. Cohen) and the context clearly identifies this as correct so the words "residue" etc. are unnecessary and confusing.
Hos 10:7 the word ''' (qtsph)
is translated as "splinter," "foam," or "broken twig" and marked uncertain when the context and the cognate evidence clearly show that the word here is to be translated "Foam."
Ps. 93:3,4 '''' (dkym)
is footnoted as 7 ''' (dmy) dashing, crushing. This is clearly an error. (Typo?) Assuming the text to be correct, the root is clearly ''' (dkh) and not ''' (dmy) as footnote 7 suggests.
Another clear error can be found in Isa 8:6 where the word '''' (msws) with two 'sins' is incorrectly identified as from the root ''' (mss) with two 'sameks.' This is the kind of error a first year Hebrew student would make when hearing the word spoken or read aloud. This kind of error is especially dangerous to students trying to learn Hebrew because it reinforces the idea that sin and samek are interchangeable in Hebrew because they sound alike.
The root with two 'sameks' (mss --To melt) is correctly identified and translated in Dt. 1:28.
Another error can be found in Gen 17:1 where the Hebrew words for ninety and nine are both footnoted as nine. Although they are based on the same roots the like the english nine and ninety they are not the same. A reader trusting RHB would translate the passage something like "Abram was 9 and 9 (=18?) when..." which would be incorrect. The RHB correctly differentiates ordinal numbers in I Chron 2:14-15.
Dt. 1:3 shows more numerical inconsistency. Here a word for 1 is used and that word followed by a makeph followed by the word for ten is noted in the footnote in combination as 11. This is helpful to students and exactly the same construction found in Gen 11:25 where the ten is not mentioned (because it is a word that occurs more than 100 times and therefore is left untranslated in the footnote) and the footnote that the word here means 9 is confusing and inconsistent with the way the same construction is handled in Deut. 1:3.
It would seem given the nature and purpose of this work that it could omit some of the definitions which are clearly not correct in a given context. It would be more helpful to students to include basic Massoretic notations (the omission of the traditional calculations of chapters and verses at the end of books is especially noteworthy.). Though this point is clearly just my opinion and personal preference.
In summary, these excellent tools are the result of many hours of hard work and will be very helpful to anyone trying to build on a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic, or Greek. However, they should not be used for interpretation or translation of the Bible. The number of major and minor errors I found in a few days of reading suggest that this work is in need of some serious proofreading both for errors and internal consistency.
In order to understand the Bible one must read the Bible --not books about the Bible.
Book Review: A Good Resource with Some Quirks
Summary: 4 Stars
"A Reader's Hebrew Bible" is the sort of book that can provoke strong reactions, both positive and negative. While some will condemn it as a crutch that will hinder learning, many others will find it a useful tool for rapid reading. I have in mind developing students or students whose skills are on the mend.
Consider the mechanics of rapid reading practice (or as I like to term it: "rehearsing text"). You need a Hebrew text, a vocabulary resource, and (usually) an English translation to check yourself. You can actually construct such a tool through the magic of word processors and text exporting, but even at best it's a painfully slow process. An alternative is to figure out a way to incorporate either Armstrong, Busby, and Carr's "Reader's Lexicon" or Owen's "Analytical Key" into your technique, but you're still left with juggling three books just to practice your rapid reading, which is rapidly becoming less rapid. (Some of my peers use software programs such as BibleWorks to get around this issue, but I can't stand that much computer screen time.) This is where "A Reader's Hebrew Bible" really shines; two of those books have been compressed into one.
This is not to say that the format of "A Reader's Hebrew Bible" is perfect. The vocabulary notes are lumped at the bottom of the page rather than arranged in columns, so one has to search to find the gloss for a particular term. The reason for this arrangement is, of course, size; the physical size of "A Reader's Hebrew Bible" is already bigger than 6x9 inches at about 1.75 inches think. I would ideally like a format for the notes that is more easily consulted, but then I also prefer to do my weightlifting at the gym and not while I lug around my book bag.
Quick Pros:
(1) Ready made tool containing words of frequency 100x or less. Sources of glosses are accepted standard lexicons (usually BDB and HALOT).
(2) Personal names are indicated through gray font.
(3) Readable size of text.
(4) Use of text that you will likely see (virtually same as BHS, and the font is similar to BHS).
(5) Nice price point.
Quick Cons:
(1) The physical book is created for a confessional setting (tan faux leather cover, silver edged pages). I'm not sure who made that choice (I suspect it's the publisher), and I don't know what to make of that since it's hard to imagine someone bringing this book to a church or other religious service to follow along when Bible is read.
(2) The execution of the binding is suspect in one way--the boards under the "Italian Duo-Tone" are quite light and take a crease quite readily. Otherwise, it's o.k. (the binding is Smyth sewn and the paper isn't excessively thin; one can see some printing from the other side of the page, but it's not bad).
Personal Gripes:
The authors/editors are unabashedly confessional in their prefaces (with Smith's being the more helpful statement in my estimation; he explains that the process of making the book helped him recover some of his waning Hebrew proficiency). The presence of confessional commitments isn't the issue I'm concerned about in itself. The work of the editors is really the creation and verification of vocabulary notes. I would like to see a commitment on the editors' part to keeping their work accessible to all readers of the Hebrew Bible rather than implicitly driving away those who don't share their commitments. This book could help a lot of people, and it's likely not going to reach those people because teachers in non-confessional (or differently-confessional) environments will bypass the book because of the editors' stated commitments and the physical appearance of the book.
Book Review: Good font and printing, but confusing glossary
Summary: 4 Stars
When I first thought of ordering this book, my primary concern was whether the font size would be large enough to be clearly readable. I am happy to report that the font size is indeed large enough. If you compare the font size to Times New Roman, the text is equivalent to a 12 point font with a 1.5 line spacing. The 1.5 line spacing gives sufficient room for the Hebrew vowel points. I find the text to be clear and easy to read. In addition the paper and binding seem sufficiently heavy and robust. The words that are set in gray are also easy to read.
I also like the very substantial cowhide cover, which has a nice texture and smell that conjure pleasant childhood memories of baseball gloves and leather shop.
The glossary at the back of the book (for the most frequently occurring Hebrew words), however, is somewhat difficult to use. Being a Hebrew text, the book is (of course) printed so that the first page occurs to the far right of the book, with the other pages following in sequence towards the left of the book. For the index as well, the first letters of Hebrew alphabet start on the rightmost page of the index. Each page of the index is arranged in two columns. On the first page of the index, however, words beginning with the letter "Aleph" start on the leftmost column. In every page of the index the first column is on the left, just as it would be in an English textbook or dictionary. It would seem to me that this first column should be positioned on the right hand side of the page instead of on the left hand side of the page, in order to be consistent with the fact that Hebrew text and pages run from right to left. When two pages of the index are open before you, your eye should be able to easily follow the alphabetical listing of Hebrew words by running over the four columns by consistently looking from the right to the left--from one column to the next.