Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From c stirling bartholomew 
<cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net> =====
>Suppose you are an OT translation
>consultant and you work at an office complex which has  Koehler-Baumgartner
>in the library. Would you want to purchase the K-B (either hard copy or
>e-text) for your office so you didn't need to go to the library?

Depends on how far away the library is, but if I'm consulting as a Hebrew 
expert (as opposed to the target language), I'd want it pretty handy.
>
>Is K-B critical to your work? Can you live without it? Do you use it only
>occasionally so a trip to the library isn't a problem?

Now that I have it, it's the first thing I reach for. I don't see how anyone 
can do serious OT work for publication without at least BDB and HALOT. You 
might be able to get by with picking up a used copy of Holladay's abridgement 
of the previous edition. You could compare that with BDB and go to the 
library 
to check HALOT where something looks suspicious. But for the price and size, 
I 
think it's worth every penny. (Even though their glosses sometimes 
mistranslate the German.)
>
>
>Would be nice to get a few more responses from working professionals.
>Statements like "it is up to date" really don't tell me if you can live
>without if and not suffer any loss of quality in your work.

I don't see how you could keep from losing quality without it. I'm not a 
working professional, but I am a working grad student with frequent 
translation assignments. We can't even get through a class session without 
referring to it several times.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics