The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield (review)

Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 117 Reviews Most scholars are accustomed to using an analytical concordance in which the words are parsed and listed according to root or lexical form, with subsections grouping together instances of the same inflected form of the word. By contrast, a graphic concordance makes no attempt to analyze the form as it occurs in the text. Instead, words are listed according to the first letter that occurs, whether that is a preformative, an inseparable preposition, the definite article, a conjunction, or the first letter of the lexical form of the word. Although the editors describe this manner of organization as "neutral" and "nonintrusive," I would describe it as maddeningly frustrating. To look up occurrences of yom ("day"), one has to look up bywm, hywm, ywm, /cywm, lywm, mywm, plus ymy, and ymym with all their inseparable prefixes. Moreover, yamim = seas is not separated from yamim = days. Trying to locate all the occurrences of a verb is almost certain to produce inaccurate results. Why would anyone produce a graphic concordance? Conceivably, it would be of use in restoring broken texts, where only the first part of a word is preserved. One thinks of Kuhn's Riicklaufiges Hebriiisches Worterbuch, which served an analogous function. But surely, that is not what most scholars need in a concordance. I suspect that the Graphic Concordance was produced because it would be produced easily and quickly through the manipulation of the text base by computer. Most scholars, however, will not want to spend $150.00 for a work of such limited value. More encouragingly , the editors' careful and cautious judgments with the text itself suggests that the forthcoming analytical concordance will be a genuinely useful volume. Carol A. Newsom Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 THE BIBLE IN THREE DIMENSIONS: ESSAYS IN CELEBRATION OF FORTY YEARS OF BIBLICAL STUDIES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD. David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl, and Stanley E. Porter, eds. JSOTSup 87. Pp. 408. Sheffield: JSOT, 1990. Cloth, $50.00. This collection of essays is a Festschrift, of sorts, celebrating forty years of academic biblical studies in the University of Sheffield. Founded by Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 118 Reviews Frederick F. Bruce, late Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at Manchester University, the Department of Biblical History and Literature (now the Department of Biblical Studies) at the University of Sheffield was the first such department in Great Britain to be located in a faculty of arts rather than divinity. From the beginning, the Department's orientation has been toward the academic study of the Bible, "opening up biblical studies to those not theologically or ecclesiastically inclined in traditional ways" (pp. 13-14). In the words of its founder, the Department was conceived and launched with a "self-consciously secular spirit" (p. 27). Although the volume is formally dedicated to David Hill, a member of the Department for twenty-five years, it is also a tribute to Bruce and to his foresight. (F. F. Bruce died on September 11, 1990, at the age of 79, and edited the last of his published works, A Mind for What Matters. Collected Essays. a reflection of his life-long intellectual pursuits.) Long on the forefront of the democratization of biblical studies, the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield has also been on the vanguard methodologically. The eighteen essays here assembled represent three more recent forays by which the Department hopes to extend its methodological hegemony-literary readings of the final form of the biblical text (Part I); explorations of the social world of Israel and early Christianity (Part 2); and queries about the presuppositions and purposes of modem biblical criticism. The volume is prefaced with introductory remarks by the editors and brief historical overviews by Bruce and John W. Rogerson, the current head of the Department. The six literary readings in Part 1 include four on texts from the Hebrew Bible and two concerning the Christian New Testament. David J. A. Clines contributes "Reading Esther from Left to Right: Contemporary Strategies for Reading a Biblical Text"; David M. Gunn, "Reading Right: Reliable and Omniscient Narrator, Omniscient God, and Foolproof Composition in the Hebrew Bible"; Barry G. Webb...