The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 102 Reviews Wollach have died prematurely). The translations are "eminently plain and direct" (an ideal for the translation of Homer posited by Matthew Arnold and oddly fitting for this work). When appropriate, wordings and phrasings evoke the frequent biblical exemplars in vivid image, allusion, or diction; other versions in familiar or colloquial language reflect the immediate and direct style of the originals. The translators have caught particularly well the astringent simplicity of Ravikovitch's later style and the biting ironies of Wieseltier. The English poems, as we may properly call them, are often powerful, memorable, touching, and even shocking. Their themes reflect the macrocosm of traumatic national experience from the searing memories of the Holocaust ("the immovable emotional reality" [po 4]) to those of bloodshed, heroism, and mourning haunting all of Israel's wars; and the microcosm of personal preoccupations often standing in stark neurotic contrast to national crises. Most memorable are the highly individual meditations on the rapid and seemingly meaningless flight of life and the ominous presence of death neither glorious nor timely. The impassioned efforts to craft personal poetics and to enshrine therein eternal and universal questions are everywhere apparent among these deeply individual poets. For the reader of English, this anthology is powerful testimony to the maturity of Israeli poetry and to its significance for the moral life of Israel. The co-editors have supplied a thorough list of "Hebrew Sources" for all poems, a bibliography of editions and collections, and "Suggestions for Further Reading," which directs the reader to many other fme collections of Israeli poetry in English translation. Howard Marblestone Lafayette College Easton, PA 18042 THE NEW JEROME BIBLICAL COMMENTARY. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy, eds. Pp. xlviii + 1484. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990. Cloth. The vitality of Scripture studies today is celebrated in the quality and quantity of Bible commentaries, not to mention Bible dictionaries and atlases. One-volume commentaries reflect this vitality and fulfill very spe- Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 103 Reviews cific needs. The NJBC is a welcome addition to this group, and its wealth tantalizes the reader for more. The publication of the first Jerome Biblical Commentary (JBC) more than two decades ago (1968) was a major step for the Catholic Biblical Association, the publishers of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. Coming out of the freedom-empowering Vatican Council, new scriptural studies were then looked upon with suspicion by the Roman Catholic authorities. It was only two decades before, in 1943, that Catholics were allowed to work from an original text rather than St. Jerome's Vulgate. (The three American editors responsible for today's NJBC were then encouraging Catholic scholarship to catch up with Protestants.) Both the JBC of 1968 and the NJBC of 1990 are of the highest quality and reflect the vitality of American Catholic biblical studies. The NJBC is an update of its illustrious predecessor and is touted as "two-thirds new." The Society of Biblical Literature's recent Harper's Bible Commentary (ed. J. L. Mays, 1988) suffers by comparison, for it has half the scriptural information and nowhere near the inventory of bibliographical references of the NJBC. Harper's also has a more religious orientation, while the NJBC is more literary and contextual in its hermeneutics. The JBC and NJBC have been targeted for seminarians, clergy, and lay people. This is the first book that preachers and students should pick up, and it is the right choice. The scholarship is reputable, and the bibliographies are more than sufficient. The format provides for an introduction consisting of dates, composition , theology, an outline of each book, followed by the short commentaries themselves. In addition, there are twenty topical articles for background information. In the back of the volume there is a three-page "Suggested Basic Bibliography," which would be more helpful with fuller annotations. Some of the topical articles are especially noteworthy. These include "Introduction to Prophetic Literature" (the bibliography of the JBC article by Bruce Vawter has been touched-up), "Old Testament Apocalypticism and Eschatology" (by John J. Collins, the author of two classic books on Apocalyptic), "Inspiration" (the JBC title was "Inspiration and Inerrancy"), "Apocrypha...