A Reader’s Hebrew Bible: A Review
A Reader’s Hebrew Bible, Philip Brown & Bryan Smith, eds. Grand Rapids, Zondervan: 2008. 1652 pp.
The popularity of A Reader’s Greek New Testament—now in a second edition—led the Zondervan Publishing Company to commission a Hebrew Bible version with a similar concept.
A Reader’s Hebrew Bible [RHB] provides both the Hebrew text and a vocabulary aid on the same page to facilitate reading without the need to dust off your lexicon. The text is the Westminster Leningrad Codex version 4.4 which, in the words of the editors, is “virtually identical” (p. xi) to BHS. An appendix outlines the 27 differences between the texts: most concern variant Qere readings or minor divergences in vocalic and non-vocalic pointing (e.g. In the Qere of Genesis 14:2, BHS contains the plene form צבויים, whereas it is defective, צבוים, in RHB), but canticle differences are not indicated.
The vocabulary aide provides lemma glosses in footnotes from HALOT and BDB for all words, excluding proper nouns, that occur a hundred times or less in the Hebrew portions of the text and 25 times or less in the Aramaic. Each lemma/footnote is numbered consecutively through the entire chapter regardless of page breaks. An appendix provides a comprehensive listing of all Hebrew words more frequent than the century mark; the most frequent Aramaic words are conspicuously absent, however. Also, proper names, but not the abutting particles or suffixes, occurring a hundred times or less are printed in a lighter typeface. Lexemes are listed according to homograph number with non-verbs vocalized in the absolute form and verbs listed by the consonantal root with the appropriate verbal stem (final weak consonantal roots are listed as final he roots). Moreover, the glosses are contextually defined—each gloss follows its corresponding lexigraphic entry in the lexica.
No masorah is included, and Kethiv/Qere readings are listed one after another within the text marked with a superscript K or Q. Similar to BHS open and closed paragraphs designate poetry and prose; verses are not, however, divided into sense units as one frequently finds in the Psalms of BHS, except where a poetic stitch occurs within a narrative frame. The LXX tradition of multipart books, that is, separating Samuel, Kings and Chronicles into two parts, is not followed; the chapter numbers are preserved, but only one heading is used per book.
The physical construction of RHB appears to be superb: the cover is solid and stylish tan leather, and binding is sewn, not glued. The pages are thicker than the average English Bible but still suffer “visual bleeding” from the verso. The font is comparable to the large version of BHS in size, style and readability.
The system of marking the causative stem in the Aramaic portions is puzzling, however. Three overlapping categories (afel, hafel and afel or hafel) are distinguished in the introduction (p. xxviii); however the application of the terms is rather confusing. Whereas one would imagine that if the differentiation of the first two were based on the presence or absence of the he prefix, the third category would then be obsolete. An examination of the usages brings even more confusion: in Ezra 6:5, יהתיכון and תחת are both designated as (H)AF; however, the participle מצלחין of 6:14 is designated as HAF. In spite of the inherent difficulties in defining this stem in Aramaic, such confusion would be avoided if a more general designation or category was employed (such as C for Causative).
Additional remarks could be made with regard to individual lexical items, but in general the editors provide a broad case of definitions erring on the conservative side (in 20 cases no gloss is provided as none is found in the lexica).
Other features provide an intuitive reading experience. The use of grayscale for proper nouns which is, at first, distracting, or even confusing to one who may fail to peruse the “Quick User’s Guide,” in time becomes a fundamental reading aide. Also, in a text chalk full of indexing systems and cross-references, the editors’ use of footnote, verse and chapter numbers are naturally distinguishable, wherein footnotes numbers follow the word, verse numbers proceed, and chapters are encased within concentric square boxes.
Finally, this reviewer would like to see a few additional features and updates with future editions: the addition of an Aramaic appendix of frequent words, the implementation of BHQ textual updates and the indication of noun gender with each gloss.
With any volume of this size one encounters minor typographical errors, RHB is no exception. Two noticeable peccadilloes include:
p. xxi – The Hebrew letter he is mistakenly written “hey”.
p. 1222 – The end of the first verse of chapter 109 a stray raw data entry “F29:” is preserved.
Despite minor flaws, RHB will become a favorite tool of all students of the Hebrew Bible from second-year learners to seasoned veterans.
H. H. Hardy II
The University of Chicago
