Guide to Pronouncing Biblical Names

Rating:
Summary: Worst reference book I ever picked up
Review: This book uses an author-invented system of pronunciation that is poorly explained and even comical. As a pronunciation guide, it is practically worthless unless you already know how to pronounce the word or a word very similar to it. In his introduction, the author tells us that "[p]rinting the names in phonetic symbols is of little assistance to most of us. . . . I have therefore devised a simple system of respelling. Only letters of our normal alphabet are used." He never tells you which pronunciation of each letter of the alphabet to use. He does explain how to say four of what he calls "unfamiliar combinations." A couple of these are downright funny: "EH for A as in CAPE or ABEL . . . KH for CH as in BACH or MOLOCH." How confusing to have "eh" stand for a long A sound, and too bad if you don't already know how to say, "Bach" or "Moloch." The worst of the book is that, if you don't read the introduction, you will not have even these four clues for deciphering the system.

Take the word "Gath" as an example. The book shows the following pronunciation: GATH'

Only because I read the introduction, I know that this is not pronounced with a long A, because presumably if it were, the pronunciation would have been spelled, "GEHTH." Well, folks, there are at least eight different ways to pronounce the letter "A" in American English, and this book rules out one and only one.

This book can only be used as a guide to syllable stress. Don't waste your money.

Rating:
Summary: Exactly what I needed
Review: What a dandy little book! In only 96 pages, it gives both preferred and permissible pronounciations of about three thousand people and place names taken from the NRSV Old Testament, Apocrypha, and New Testament. T.S.K. Scott-Craig uses a clear, easily comprehensible re-spelling system to indicate pronunciation. There are no phonetic symbols, only accent marks that show the stressed syllables. As well as giving each variant of a name alphabetically, he (she?) lists them all together under the name's main entry. At the end there's a nifty 14-page appendix of foreign terms used in English translations of the Bible--"shibboleth," "ephphatha," "selah," and "mammon," for example. This wonderful compact book will slip right into your pocket. It was a terrific find.