RECENSIONES David J.A. CLINES (Ed.). the Dictionary Of
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
RECENSIONES David J.A. CLINES (ed.). The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Volume V -Sheffield, Aca .מ-נ :(ed. D. STEC with J. ELWOLDE & D. BHAYRO) demic Press, 2001. (19×24), 957 p. ISBN 1-84127-217-5. £110.00 In the period since the previous volume of the Dictionary was published in August 1998 the project has faced serious financial problems and for a time the future of the Dictionary was in question. These difficulties have now been re- solved and the completion of the project is now envisaged by the end of the year 2005. The innovative character of the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH) should be well known by now. There are two main characteristics that distinguish it from its predecessors. Unlike previous dictionaries of ancient Hebrew, this work does not restrict itself to the texts of the Hebrew Bible. It systematically records the language of all texts written in Hebrew from the earliest times down to the second century of the common era. For this purpose, the texts have been divided into four corpora: the Hebrew Bible, Ben Sirach, the Qumran documents, inscriptions. Secondly, unlike previous dictionaries DCH is characterised by its use of modern linguistics and its synchronic approach. It does not search for ety- mologies nor for a diachronic analysis of the meaning of a word, including refer- ences to other languages. It studies each word in its context. A further feature which occurs ,מן deserves special mention. With the exception of the preposition more than 9000 times, every word is treated exhaustively. For each word, every place it occurs in Classical Hebrew has been cited and every occurrence has been analysed. In the fifth volume the principles and procedures followed in the previous vol- umes have been continued. One minor change is noted in the Introduction. From this volume onwards a closer definition of “new” words has been adopted. A “new” word is a word that did not appear in Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon in 1907. These words are marked with an asterisk (*). For an example we may refer (II mark. The bibliography mentions Driver’s article in Biblica 32 (1951 [נֵר]* to 185. The meaning of the square brackets is not immediately obvious. The sign is not taken up in the introductory list of Abbreviations and Signs (pp. 93-95). It is to be found, however, in the Introduction to the first volume: “If the noun does not actually occur in the extant texts in the singular absolute, the lemma is placed II is נֵר .”within square brackets to indicate that the form has been reconstructed said to occur only once, in Prov 21,4, and then only in some mss; the further mark of, L is the נִר comment is somewhat cryptic. In between brackets it says: L siglum for Codex Leningradensis. The user is left wondering whether this means that L is the only ms with this reading. In addition, he/she will look in vain for an II נֵר mark of. In the translation of Prov 21:4 under the lemma נִיר or נִר entry with mark, one finds “the lamp of the wicked is sin”, and not “the mark of the wicked is sin”. Beginning with the second volume of the Dictionary, the longer entries have been provided with a table of contents. We illustrate this with an example. The -I is given 13 pages or 26 columns (758-770). The index or table of con נשׂא verb tents is rather detailed and helpful. Under the qal-stem of the verb it lists 18 RECENSIONES 185 meanings, each time with an indication of the column in which this meaning is discussed. Similar indications are given for the other stems of the verb. The sta- tistics give three figures: the first mentions 659 attestations of the verb in the Tenach, the second 27 occurrences in Ben Sirach and the third 68 in the Qumran literature. The morphological section then lists all the forms of the main word that exist in the texts. The semantic analysis forms the body of the article. Here the “senses” of the word are analysed. The first meaning (1) of the qal-stem is “lift up”; in subdivision 1b we find “lift hand”; on p. 761a. “lift hand” is said to mean “to bless people”, “to swear oath”, “to show power”, “awe, reverence”, “prayer”, or to be used “as signal”. For each of these meanings all available oc- currences are listed. Let us have a look at the listing under “to swear oath”. Here we find Ex 6,8; Num 14,30; Dt 32,20: Ezek 20,5+6t; 36,7; 44,12; 47,14; Ps 106,26; Neh 9,15. According to the list of abbreviations and signs, the siglum “t” in Ezek 20,5+6t means “times”. It takes the reader some time to figure out that “+6t” then means that the expression occurs “6 more times in chapter 20”, that is: once more in 20,5, and five times in verses 6.15.23.28.42. So far so good. The interpretation of the expression in these occurrences is more questionable. Does it really refer to an oath? The translation of the Septuagint in Ezek 20:5.6 pleads against it. The expression implies rather an active divine intervention (see J. LUST, The Raised Hand of the Lord in Deut 32:40 according to MT, 4QDeutq, and LXX, in Textus 18, 1995, 33-45). The Lord lifts up his hand to show his power (compare Ps 10,12 where He is asked to lift up his hand). The comment further within the expression “lift נשׂא displays the syntagmatic relationships of the verb hand”, listing all possible “subjects” and “objects” thereof together with the “prepositions” it employs. Here one might object that a listing of all possible objects is rather meaningless, since it has to be “hand”. The English notion -A further dis .יד and כף :hand”, however, can have two Hebrew counterparts“ tinction should perhaps been made between the plural “hands” and the singular “hand”. This would have made it clear, for instance, that the meaning “prayer” always implies the plural, whereas the meaning “to swear an oath”, or better, “divine intervention”, always implies the singular. Under the header “Coll” (miscellaneous collocations), the comment then notes the synonyms or antonyms of the word in question that are attested at that point in the text. It may be rel- lift (hand)” is concerned, that one finds verbs such as“ נשׂא (יד) evant, in as far as .”swear“ שׁבע lift up”, but never“ רום For text-critical purposes, the Dictionary is helpful in several ways. First of all it often notes textual variants and emendations. For an example we refer to the ;”covering“ ֶמ ַכ ֵסּה noun, masculine, “covering” and , ִמ ְכ ֶסה entries dealing with in the comment to the first entry one finds: your ִמ ַכ ֵסּך .be Ezek 27:7 (if em היה <of ship (Ezek 27:7 [if em.; see Subj.]), <SUBJ .(your covering ִמ ְכ ֶסך covering to The comment to the second entry looks pretty much the same: ְֶמ ַכ ֵסּך .be Ezek 27:7 (if em היה <awning of ship (Ezek 27:7 [if em.; see Subj.]), <SUBJ .(your covering ִמ ְכ ֶסה your covering to To find out what is going on here, one has to consult the major commentaries according ;כסה a piel participle of , ִמ ַכ ֵסְּך on Ezekiel. They explain that MT reads to Zimmerli, the parallels in Gen 8,13 and elsewhere suggest that the reading substantive) should be preferred. Other commentaries, such as Greenberg) ִמ ְכ ֶסה 186 RECENSIONES Ezekiel, disagree. Most often, DCH offers another interesting help to the reader in search of text-critical information: it lists the bibliographical items in which the emendations or variants are proposed or discussed. For an example we may re- II mark, where reference is made to Driver’s [נֵר]* mind the reader of the entry on article in Biblica 32 (1951) 185. The examples should make it clear that the Dic- tionary does not intend to be directive. It simply signals the data and leaves the decisions to the user. We may conclude that the authors of this innovative dictionary provide us with a helpful tool. Its main new features are the inclusiveness of its source material and its ordering of the data inspired by the new linguistic methods. Several of its features provide the text-critically oriented scholar with stimulating incentives. J. LUST R. ALBERTZ – B. BECKING (eds.). Yahwism after the Exile. (Studies in Theology and Religion, 5.) Assen, Royal Van Gorcum, 2003. (16× 25), XXI-300 p. ISBN 90-232-3880-X. / 67,50. The papers in this volume were read at a seminar that took place during the first meeting of the European Association for Biblical Studies held at Utrecht in August 2000. They endeavour to answer questions concerning the role of religion in the emergence and final identity of the Yahwistic community in Yehud in the Persian period. The following lines present a survey of the collected contributions in a slightly re-arranged order. ALBERTZ opens the debate with an analysis of the political structures in Yehud. His investigation leads to the conclusion that they were oriented towards a restoration, not of the monarchic institutions, but of the pre-state institutions of the pre-exilic times. He presents a realistic picture of the price that was to be paid for the liberty that the Persians granted the upper classes: the chronic impoverishment of the poor, a deep split within Judaean so- ciety and a loss of solidarity.