Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 497-505 Review Essay Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter W. van der Horst. Second Extensively Revised Edition . Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill; Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge , UK: William B. Eerdmans, 1999. Pp. xxxviii + 960. Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev According to a well-known aggadah (Midrash Rabbah on Exod 5:2; cf. Targum Yerushalmi, ad loc), Pharaoh, not knowing the God of Israel, examined his palace archives where the names of the gods of all the nations were listed in order to verify the credentials of the upstart YHWH whom Moses claimed to represent. Were he living in Mesopotamia, he could have asked to see a copy of the great god list An = Anum. If he were alive today, he would certainly request the book under review. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD) is an encyclopedia of all the divine, semi-divine, deified, hypostasized, and no-longerdivine beings mentioned in the Bible. DDD's purpose is to provide convenient , state of the art information and an updated, comprehensive bibliography about every indigenous and foreign deity mentioned in Scripture: both how they were conceived of in their religions of origin and how they are portrayed or function in the Bible. Any deity suspected of being mentioned or alluded to in the Bible even once is included, no matter how obscure , minor or dubious he/she is, whereas gods who are not mentioned in the Bible are excluded from DDD irrespective of their rank and stature in their native habitats. The hefty tome contains over 600 entries, which, when reduced by approximately 150 cross-Jistings, leaves a total of close to 450 separate articles. It is an international effort, with 106 participants from Europe, North America, and Israel, who each contributed anywhere from one to forty-six articles. Each article contains as many as five sections: a discussion of the divine name or title, its meaning, and etymology; a study of the deity outside the Bible, be it in Ancient Near Eastern or classical literature ; the deity in the Hebrew Bible; the deity in Christian Scripture; bibliography . The second edition has twenty-one more entries than the first edition,1 and many entries have been revised, corrected, and updated. For 1 According to the preface to the revised edition there are "some thirty" new articles. A comparison of the tables of entries for each of the two editions gives the 498THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW the purpose of the project, the problematic, controversial concept "Bible" has been given a maximalist definition, making it congruent with the Holy Scriptures of the Orthodox Churches. DDD's Bible thus consists of the Jewish canon, the complete Septuagint including apocryphal and pseudepigraphic books, and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The introduction explains that four types of deities are included: gods still recognized as such by the authors and the audience; gods mentioned in proper nouns; demythologized or decommissioned gods mentioned albeit not in their capacity as gods; and "ghost-gods" whose presence has been posited by individual scholars but whose actual mention in the Bible or in the Ancient Near East remains questionable. Yet these categories do not exhaust the true range of topics covered. Some gods are represented in several articles by their name, the natural phenomenon they are associated with, and certain epithets by which they are known. There are also articles on divine symbols, deified cult objects, divine manifestations, divine attributes, divine titles, and even pejoratives or euphemisms. Gods and other concepts not eligible for separate entries but discussed in passing are registered in an index. To a certain extent, DDD is a dictionary of god-related terms and not gods per se. It parallels to a degree the highly important book by K. L. Tallqvist, Akkadische Götterepitheta (Helsinki, 1938; reprinted 1974) which contains both divine names and divine epithets. DDD is extremely informative and useful. It has been composed competently by experts in the pertinent disciplines, and should be a standard reference work found in every university...