The Baker Compact Dictionary of Biblical Studies - Tremper Lognman III & Mark L. Strauss
It was pretty
interesting to just sit and read through a lot of the information in the book,
to learn a lot of new things and even to glean some extra helpful information
about events, people and places that I already knew a few things about. If I came across something that I've already
become acquainted with I felt sort of reluctant to read those parts, thinking
something along the lines of, "this is just a dictionary, what more could
it tell me about that?" But I was surprised at some of the extra
information I gleaned. For example, I have done a bit of reading on the
"Counsel of Jamnia" but I did not particularly notice before that the
book of Ezekiel was one of the books whose canonicity was debated by the
Jews. Or if I had noticed, I don't
remember understanding why it's validity was up for debate. The dictionary explains that it was because
in the vision given to Ezekiel of the alter it is depicted as having steps
which was something contrary to Mosaic law. Interesting!
At least
one bit of information I came across was quite shocking. I was extremely surprised, when I came to the
summary of who Gerhard Kittel was (editor of The Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament), to find that he had had strong Anti-Semitic viewpoints and
supported the Nazis during World War II!
There is some, in my opinion, pretty useless
information in this dictionary, mainly the detailed information about various
pagan 'gods' , their 'story' and the attributes attributed to them. They don't actually have any attributes, so
why mention them in detail? And I also didn't like how they mentioned how so many scholars think
that The Biblical writers drew inspiration from myths and attributes of other
gods, without countering that
viewpoint. I guess I can sort of
see how that could come in handy for someone who wanted to know which authors not to read, but I wish they would have
countered them in the notes, instead of letting them stand.
All I need to know that it is a pagan god and
therefore not a god at all. The Bible
doesn’t focus its attack on the mythological attributes of the false gods,
rather it deals with the facts. It
points out their ACTUAL attributes of deafness, blindness, dumbness,
irresponsiveness and utter lack of existence at all.
Another thing I
didn't like , and was surprised at, was
the dogmatism in certain places, like where they state that "The Sumerians
invented writing for the first time in human history sometime in the thirty-first
century BC." Oh, really? How do we
know that Noah didn't know how to write already and taught it to his
descendants? How do we know for sure that people didn't know how to write
before the flood?
I was also surprised
that they don't list Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley
and the like in this dictionary. That
just seemed a little weird, as their works are still pretty popular.
Don't get me wrong,
things like the above don't take away from the usefulness of this book. They do have a lot of information, and, when dealing with 'grey areas', for the most
part the editors of this dictionary seem to use phrases along the lines of
"it is believed" or "some
scholars think" when the facts are not certain. And they do give some
quick criticisms to a few of the obviously erroneous viewpoints.
Overall I think that
this still a pretty handy dictionary,
for just about anyone. If you read any
linguistic commentaries on the Scripture, or even just a regular commentary, it
would be handy to have.
Many thanks to the
folks at Baker Books Bloggers for sending me a free review copy of this
book! -
My review did not have to be favorable.
This book may be purchased at Christianbook.com and at Amazon.com
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