Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, The

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 2000 by Eng, Milton

The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. 8 vols. projected. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993-. Vol. 1-aleph: 475 pp., $123.50; vol. 2beth-waw: 660 pp., $123.50; vol. 3-zayin-tet: 424 pp., $150.00; vol. 4-yod-lamed: 642 pp., $150.00.

The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH) under the general editorship of David J. A. Clines is by now no stranger to Hebrew lexicographers and OT scholars alike. The work has been steadily appearing since 1993 with four of a projected eight volumes presently available, covering the letters aleph to lamed. No less than 35 separate reviews of the dictionary have appeared, including a major review by F. I. Andersen with a response by Clines and further response by Andersen (AusBR 43 [1995]: 50-71). Also among these are five reviewers who have made additional comments as further volumes of the Dictionary have appeared. The Dictionary has been variously praised as a "truly momentous event" and the end of a "hundred year famine since BDB in the English-speaking world." On the other hand, it has been severely criticized, some of its principles being labeled "a mistake," "patently false," and "a mirage." At any rate, DCH has been widely and successfully received, judging from the comments in the editor's preface to vols. 3 and 4 alluding to "a very large number of subscribers" (p. 8) and the "extraordinarily positive and enthusiastic" response of the scholarly public (p. 9). Volume 5 is due to appear early in 2001.

A rather lucid description of the project is given by the editor in ZAH 3 (1990): 73-80. The idea of the Dictionary had its beginnings in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield as early as 1983. Actual work on the project began in 1988 with the first volume appearing five years later. Half the Dictionary is now complete and with subsequent volumes appearing every eighteen months, the entire work will be available by the end of 2004. The project has been funded over the years by Sheffield Academic Press (its major support early on) along with such public entities as the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Board. It remains a research project in the Department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield. John Elwolde has been Executive Editor since vol. 1 but future volumes will bear no such editor.

It is generally agreed that the two most innovative features of DCH are (1) its coverage of all written materials in Hebrew from earliest times to about 200 cE and (2) its syntagmatic analysis of each Hebrew word. Choosing not to privilege in any way Biblical Hebrew, this body of all known materials is subdivided into (a) the Hebrew Bible (excluding Aramaic), (b) Ben Sira, (c) non-Biblical materials from Qumran and (d) all ancient Hebrew inscriptions. Thus, the word "Classical" in the title. The extent of the non-Biblical materials was originally reported to have been about 15% of the Hebrew Bible but in a more recent correspondence, Clines reports that the figure for the Qumran materials alone is nearly half that of the MT. The second area in which DCH paves new ground is in its systematic and comprehensive presentation of the syntagmatic relations of each Hebrew lexeme. Thus, for each verb all its subjects and objects are presented and ordered in a rational manner, as well as prepositions and other collocations. So, for example, the well-known observation that Hebrew bard has only God as its subject is not only noted but the reader can easily see that its subjects are specifically Yahweh, Wc)him, Cell, and qdd, as well as where specifically these attestations are to be found. Similarly, for each noun every verb of which it is subject and object is noted, as well as modifying adjectives and other nouns in construct.

For all its innovation, the Dictionary has been severely criticized for its intentional non-inclusion of comparative Semitic data and cognates from other languages, particularly Akkadian and Ugaritic. The editor draws his own fire when he boldly writes in the introduction to vol. 1 that this information is "strictly irrelevant to the Hebrew language" (p. 17, emphasis mine). Clines asserts "we subscribe to the dictum that the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (p. 14). Thus, the first and most important criticism of DCH falls squarely on the issue of methodology and in particular dictionary methodology. The publication of James Barr's now-classic work The Semantics of Biblical Language in 1961 sounded the death-knell for all would-be etymologists, but how does one handle lexemes that occur only once or twice in the entire Hebrew Bible? Modern linguistic approaches presume a living language where lexemes can be analyzed and tested in a variety of sentences and contexts. When approaching a dead language where words cannot be tested and that do not occur frequently, sometimes the Hebraist's only recourse is to refer to cognates in other Semitic languages. Pardee writes poignantly (JNES 57 [1998]: 42):

Last but certainly not least, the "Classical" Hebrew corpus is comparatively small, and it contains a fairly large number of rarely attested words, even hapax legomena; for these, the resort to etymology is sometimes more than a luxury. If the context leaves open the possibility of more than one interpretation, basing one's gloss on a usage in a cognate language is preferable to flipping a coin.