The Dictionary of the North-West Semitic Inscriptions

Rating:
Summary: A Magisterial Work
Review: This dictionary of the vocabulary of the Old Canaanite, Phoenician, Punic, Moabite, Ammonite, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions is a state-of-the-art tool for specialists, yet it is so extraordinarily well organized and its material is so clearly presented that even those with no more than a nodding acquaintance with Semitics will find it easy to use.

And many non-specialists _should_ use this dictionary: they will find it immensely useful. For example, rabbis and pastors will find that when used judiciously it can provide as rich a store of illustrative material for messages on the Hebrew scriptures as Moulton and Milligan's _The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament_ does for sermons from the New Testament.

The dictionary's greatest defect, in my view, is a relatively minor one: the authors' imperfect mastery of English sometimes leads them astray. For instance, the dictionary states that in Imperial Aramaic _bl'd hn_ (I use an apostrophe to represent 'ayin) means "excepted if," an expression which seems to have gone out of fashion among native speakers of English in the sixteenth century. Since the dictionary does not identify the language of an inscription when it quotes it, beginners may complain that it is often difficult for them to know just what they are looking at. But this is probably a virtue, not a defect: those beginners need to be reminded that they are, after all, using a grown-up's tool.

...this two-volume, 1300-page work is a steal. I have wept at its beauties.