Book Reviews
18-BookReviews JETS 42.3 Page 477 Friday, August 27, 1999 3:58 PM JETS 42/3 (September 1999) 477–555 BOOK REVIEWS Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Edited by Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1998, xxi + 1058, $39.99. Initially one ˜nds some irony in the fact that an inherently left-brained genre—the dictionary—was chosen to promote a right-brained approach to the Bible, the very approach consciously taken by this new and highly touted reference work from Inter- Varsity (henceforth DBI). The book contains a number of attractive features, but it retains signi˜cant weaknesses that may threaten its longevity as “an indispensable reference tool” (in the words of the preface). More on these shortly. According to the editors, the purview of the DBI is “the imagery, metaphors and archetypes of the Bible,” terms for which the introduction gives extensive de˜nitions. There is a wide spectrum of topics, including each book of the Bible, most major Biblical characters, many topics that one would ˜nd in standard Bible dictionaries (e.g. heaven, sacri˜ce), as well as a number with a literary ˘avor (e.g. plot motifs, travel stories). Happily, most of the articles possess an appropriate and readable length. Irksomely, all of them are unsigned (a list of contributors resides at the front), since the editors, we discover in the preface, had to revise “the vast majority” of them and leave their own mark upon many of the entries, sometimes at the expense of the original author’s. The book’s attractive features start with its title.
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