Book Reviews

JETS 48/1 (March 2005) 115–97 BOOK REVIEWS The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance. Vol. 1: The Non-Biblical Texts from Qumran. By Martin G. Abegg, with James E. Bowley and Edward M. Cook, in consultation with Emmanuel Tov. 2 parts. Leiden: Brill, 2003, xvii + 958 pp., $299.00. The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance (DSSC) is marketed as a single volume in two parts. Each part is separately bound resulting in two large, handsome products, as one has come to expect from Brill. Part 1 contains a general introduction (pp. ix–xviii), a key to the sigla (p. xix), and the Hebrew concordance to Qumran non-biblical texts from Aleph to Mem (pp. 1–498). Part 2 contains the Hebrew concordance from Nun–Tav (pp. 499– 771), the Aramaic concordance (pp. 773–946), and the Greek concordance (pp. 947–52). Part 2 also contains two appendices: Appendix I is a concordance of signs for numbers (pp. 953–56) and Appendix II records typographical and transcriptional errors in the text editions (pp. 957–58). This is the first publication of a concordance of all non-biblical Qumran texts (He- brew, Aramaic, Nabatean-Aramaic, and Greek) in one publication. Therefore it serves as an index for all the volumes of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD) series and other publications of Qumran texts. The concordance was independently produced, though it acknowledges careful comparison with all concordances published in individual DJD volumes and Kuhn’s Konkordanz zu den Qumrantexten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960). It has effectively replaced Charlesworth’s Graphic Concordance to the Dead Sea Scrolls (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), which only includes texts published before 1990 and is based on 223 Qumran texts and over 3,500 fragments with over 59,000 entries. The DSSC has by far surpassed that work, as it contains 3,771 Hebrew, 1,930 Aramaic, and 36 Greek words. There are a total of 111,141 entries in Hebrew, 21,628 in Aramaic, and 65 in Greek. In addition, there are 307 number signs for a total of 133,141 entries of extant words in the non-biblical Qumran corpus (p. xi). In addition to DJD entries, the DSSC covers other important editions of texts, such as those of CD, 1QpHab, 1QapGen, 1QS, 1QM, 1QHa, and 11Q19. This volume focuses on non-biblical texts, though biblical quotations, lemmas in pesher texts, and 4QRe- worked Pentateuch (4Q158, 4Q364–4Q367) and 4Q522 22–25 are fully concorded. It also includes forty-one Cave IV texts which have not yet been published in DJD. Also covered are the psalms that are not present in the MT collection of 150 Psalms but included in what might otherwise be categorized as biblical manuscripts (4Q88 VII,14– IX,15; X,4–15; 11Q5 XVIII,1–XIX,18; XXI,11–XXII,15; XXIV,3–17; XXVI,9–15; XXVII,2– 11a; XXVIII,4–14; and 11Q6 4–5, 1–16a; 6,1–2). Also included are the Aramaic targums (4Q156, 4Q157, and 11Q10). Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible (4Q119–4Q122; 7Q1) will be in a future volume, as will texts from other Judean Desert sites. The present volume does include the ostraca published in DJD XXXVII (KhQ1–KhQ3). The Greek concordance covers 7Q2–7Q5, 7Q15, 7Q19, 4Q126, and 4Q127, but not 7Q6–7Q14, 7Q16– 7Q18, 4Q350, and 4Q361, which do not yield identifiable whole words. The Greek concordance represents the text as it appears in DJD; recognizable words are separated by spaces as opposed to the scriptio continua of the texts. Greek and Aramaic number signs are concorded separately in Appendix I. Typographical or transcriptional errors in the text editions are corrected without note in the concordance but are recorded in Appendix II. One Line Long 116 journal of the evangelical theological society 48/1 Words are concorded according to language (with Nabatean-Aramaic manuscripts, 4Q235, and 4Q343 assimilated with Aramaic) in alphabetical order as opposed to root. Each lexeme is introduced by a header consisting of three components: key word (in- cluding any variant orthographical forms), part of speech, and gloss (with homograph number where applicable). For example, ds,j, is listed with English glosses provided in bold print for easy accessibility (lovingkindness, mercy, graciousness) and is followed by the part of speech (noun). It is then followed by the (pointed) word in Hebrew. After this heading comes the list of references with Qumran references in the left column and the unpointed, boldface Hebrew word with some Hebrew context in the right-hand column. There are no transliterations in these volumes. Glosses are loosely dependent on the lexicons of Koehler/Baumgartner, BDB, Jastrow, and Sokiloff. This concordance is the first of a projected series of three. Future volumes will con- sist of concordances to the biblical texts from Qumran and to the texts from other sites in the Judean Desert. The DSSC is comparable only to recent electronic editions of the scrolls, such as Timothy Lim (in consultation with P. Alexander), The Dead Sea Scrolls- Electronic Reference Library 1 (3 discs; Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Reference Library 1; Oxford: Oxford University Press; Leiden: Brill, 1997) (about $600, containing all of the scrolls from Qumran as well as photos of the material that was discovered at Masada, Wadi Murabbat, and Nahal Hever) and Emmanuel Tov, The Dead Sea Scrolls Database (Non-Biblical Texts) (The Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Reference Library, vol. 2; prepared by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies [FARMS]; Leiden: Brill, 1999) (about $250, containing only non-biblical material; see also http://orion.mscc. huji.ac.il. With a price 20% more than that of the 1999 electronic version, it would be difficult to justify purchasing the DSSC rather than the electronic edition for private research. Yet for those of us who still prefer book versions to electronic, the DSSC is remarkably comprehensive and a vital resource for serious work in the Scrolls. Abegg and his team have put us in their debt for making the scrolls so much more accessible. With this volume, David L. Washburn’s A Catalog of Biblical Passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta: SBL, 2002), and the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (ed. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar; 2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, 1998), scholars have unprecedented access to these enormously important documents. Daniel M. Gurtner St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews, Scotland A Biblical History of Israel. By Iain Provan, V. Phillips Long, and Tremper Longman III. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003, xiv + 426 pp., $24.95 paper. Any reader who dismisses A Biblical History of Israel (hereafter BHI) as another typi- cal “cookie-cutter” rehash of OT history from conservatives has done the book a serious injustice. Instead, the authors raise the bar in the current debate by offering both de- sign and product. They begin by developing an incisive rationale for a text-driven history of Israel. The historical survey that then follows implements the claims of their premise. The first one-third of the volume presents a philosophical approach to historiography. While the authors critique the work of those who have pronounced biblical history “dead,” their primary intent is to construct a positive schema taking the biblical text seriously as testimony. BHI explains how these “revisionist” (p. 78) historians arbitrarily favor the ambiguous witness of social sciences to Israelite history over Scripture’s testimony. In this conflict of ideologies, the revisionists continue to apply a “scientific” approach based on positivism and a rejection of tradition. One Line Long march 2005 book reviews 117 Recent trends in the field discount the validity of this mechanistic, post-Enlighten- ment stance. The past is not static, Provan asserts, and is far too complex for such rigid reductionism. Instead, many historians have moved “away from the notion that history is a science and back toward the notion that history is an art” (p. 42). A more accurate epistemology, according to BHI, recognizes the legitimate role of testimony (“storytell- ing”). Provan also exposes Troeltsch’s “principle of analogy” as an inadequate standard for historiography. Present experience cannot suffice as the sole benchmark for past realities. A nomothetic approach to the past is likewise insufficient to account for the complex variables of a world subject to theistic and metaphysical intervention. How- ever, testimony and tradition, rationally read and understood, can offer reliable information about the past. Therefore, BHI contends that Scripture’s testimony to history deserves the benefit of the doubt; the burden of proof lies with the revisionists to dem- onstrate its falsity. The value of this testimony to a truthful view of the past, however, depends on a correct reading of narrative history in Scripture. Long offers a summary treatment of narrative poetics, stressing that history and narrative are complementary. He likens the biblical writers to portrait artists; they do not create history but simply depict it through their individual perspectives and skills. Thus historiography is both an art and a science: it communicates true data about the past but is “artfully presented” (p. 88). In chapter 5, a key section linking this philosophy to the historical survey that follows, Provan candidly opens a window into the authors’ world view. Although they rep- resent a theistic mindset, he affirms, the three are not writing “propaganda” imposed by their beliefs. “Our task is only to offer an interpretation of the biblical testimony about Israel’s past, set within the broader context of the past as it may be established from other sources of information, such that the reader will better understand both the testimony and the past” (p.

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