The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. CD-Rom Edition. Leiden: Brill, 2000. $399 (Windows or Macintosh).
Despite its hefty price tag (but that is more than $100 cheaper than the print version), this electronic copy of the third edition of the Koehler and Baumgartner lexicon will be welcomed by all serious students of the Old Testament. The CD I am reviewing contains all four volumes of the Hebrew lexicon, but the latest Brill catalogue has an updated version of the CD that contains the fifth volume (Aramaic) as well.
My previous reviews of the print edition have pointed out that this is the most up-to-date Hebrew lexicon (the famous Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon was last revised in 1913) and takes full advantage of the enormous strides in our understanding of parallel Semitic languages, as well as the fruits of intense philological study on the Hebrew text itself. The translation from the German by M. E. J. Richardson is also of the highest quality. An American lexicon of the Old Testament will be produced by faculty members at Princeton Theological Seminary, but it is many years in the offing.
There are many advantages to the CD Rom:
| Portability. The five volumes of the print version have more than 2,000 pages, making it extremely difficult to use the same set at home and at the office or on the road. Those who have worked with the print edition soon weary of pulling volume after volume off the shelf. |
| The CD version is color-coded: Blue for Hebrew and for English definitions; black for chapter and verse; red for parallel Hebrew expressions; and green for abbreviations. Click on an unknown abbreviation and a pop up box identifies the reference (in case you forget that MAOG is Mitteilungen der Altorientischen Gesellschaft, from Leipzig) . Click on a chapter and verse reference and one is taken to a full English version. One can also highlight words or sentences in an entry with multiple colors. |
| A given entry can be printed for convenient study or copied into a word processor, or the text can be enlarged (good for tired or aging eyes). Or it can be projected on the wall in a seminary classroom. |
| A library browser on the left allows users to find a given word alphabetically, just as one would do with the print edition—only much faster. |
| The dictionary is searchable. Type the English word covenant in the search engine and one is provided with a list of the thirty-six articles in which the English word covenant occurs. That kind of information is unavailable in the print version. Or type the word "Saul" and the list shows fifty-one articles somehow referring to the first king of Israel. Much more sophisticated searches, using the Boolean operators, are also possible. |
| This CD is part of the Logos Library System. Those already familiar with this system will find the standard set of commands and options and can search not only in the lexicon but in other reference tools they have purchased from Logos. |
A hearty "Well Done!" to the folks at Brill.
Ralph W. Klein
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago