IEJ 46 (1996): 291
BOOK NOTES 291
Bienkowski summarizes what is known of The Biblical Encyclopaedia Library Series, them east of the Jordan, primarily in the under the general editorship of Shmuel Edomite homeland. These are followed by Ahituv, continues to present to the Hebrew reading public excellent and useful books. two chapters in the non-material dimension: These two volumes obviously fill lacunae in 'Edom: The Social and Economic History', secondary literature available in the Hebrew by E.A. Knauf-Belleri, and 'Edomite language, but also may be recommended Religion: A Survey and an Examination to anyone seeking concise, up-to-date and of some Recent Contributions', by A. readable grammars of Ugaritic and Biblical Dearman. The volume concludes with a Aramaic. valuable study of the Edomite script and Both books analyse in detail the language by D. Vanderhooft. phonology and morphology of the respective I am not certain that I understand the languages. Neither has a chapter devoted reasons for dividing the biblical evidence to syntax, although comments concerning into 'Prophetical' and 'Nonprophetical', nor syntax may be found within the sections on do I find the sequence of chapters entirely morphology (e.g. functions of the different verb forms are described briefly). Both logical. These are, however, but minor faults. volumes refer freely to previous studies, thus After all, correlating biblical writings with what is otherwise known about Edom and allowing the reader to explore a given subject in further detail. the Edomites requires a greater degree of D. Sivan presents the Ugaritic material speculation than is required for evaluating transliterated into Latin script; throughout datable, ancient finds. Bearing this particular the book, each form is accompanied by a difficulty in mind, Bartlett and Knauf-Belleri reconstructed pronounciation presented in have provided a balanced view. brackets. The value of such reconstructions Of course, all of the contributors had to may be questioned, and frankly, I found take biblical evidence into account, and they them to be 'in the way' most of the did so systematically, whether dealing with time. They slow the reader down, especially since the transliterations and the suggested religion, language, or any other aspect of pronounciations are in the same font, and history or culture. It is encouraging, at a they do not allow for a clear presentation of time when the historical value of the Hebrew the paradigms. It would have been preferable Bible is being disdained, to observe how to relegate all such attempts to reconstruct serious investigators factor biblical data into the actual pronounciation of Ugaritic to an their overall analysis. More studies of this appendix. The book concludes with two sort, and of this quality, are needed in higher appendices: one is a selection of 24 Ugaritic education. texts with comments to guide the learner; Baruch A. Levine the other is a lexicon of words appearing in the selected texts. Daniel Sivan: Ugaritic Grammar (The By contrast, E. Qimron's numerous Biblical Encyclopaedia Library IX), Bialik paradigms of the various parts of speech Press and Ben-Gurion University of the are clearly presented and aid the reader Negev Press, Jerusalem ? Beersheba, 1993. immensely. The volume includes the entire xiv + 213 pages (Hebrew). corpus of Biblical Aramaic texts according to the Aleppo Codex (ed. M. Breuer), Elisha Qimron: Biblical Aramaic (The selections of Daniel with Babylonian Biblical Encyclopaedia Library X), Bialik vocalisation, and Qumran fragments of Press, Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion University Daniel. A complete vocabulary of Biblical Aramaic closes the volume. of the Negev Press, 1993. xiv + 213 pages (Hebrew). Gary A. Rendsburg
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