Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kirk Lowery <klowery AT wts.edu>]

Dave Washburn wrote:
> OK, I wanted to be sure I understood correctly.  I don't have a
> copy of KBS, but I make extensive use of Holladay's lexicon which
> is supposed to be based on it.  I virtually never use BDB any more
> because finding specific words in it is too much like running a
> maze at times.  What do you think of Holladay in terms of structure
> and the way he sets up entries?

He follows -- so far I can tell -- the lemmatization of KBS (2nd
edition). It's a translation of that edition, and we're into the 3rd
edition of the German original. Not recommended for academic citation
or use. Use the latest edition for that.

>> As a practical matter, the solution is to choose a procedure,
>> stick to it, and map BDB and KBS lemmas to your own lemma scheme.
>> That's a lot of work, though...
>
>
> And being more of a grammarian than a lexicographer, I'm not even
> sure how to proceed!

It depends on your purpose. If you are adding lemmas to a database (as
we do here), then there is the question of spelling, the question of
part of speech, and the question of placing an occurance in the same
dictionary entry (i.e., we might derive a word from a different lemma
than KBS). These are the major classes of variance between the
dictionaries and oneself. So a map would be a file that lists
equivalent lemmas, POS and assignment of occurances in columns, one
column for each "authority." Those on the same row are "equivalent."

>> [A footnote to this discussion: bear in mind that the popular
>> Strong's lemma numbering is based upon Gensenius' early 19th
>> century lemmatization scheme, and there have been BIG changes in
>> Hebrew lexicography and lemmas since then.]
>
>
> Yes.  And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't BDB based on Gesenius
> as well?

Well, it can be said that *all* modern lexicons are "based" on
Gesenius. BDB built on Gesenius with comparative semitic information,
including Arabic, Akkadian, etc. But the Ugaritic discoveries came
after BDB, same with DSS, Elba, and other discoveries and there is
continued work in Akkadian, Aramaic, etc. KBS arguably is the most
current. Sheffield is another, but incomplete as of yet.

Blessings,

Kirk
--
Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D.
Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
Adjunct Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiss und nichts klappt.
Praxis ist, wenn alles klappt und keiner weiss warum.
Bei uns sind Theorie und Praxis vereint:
nichts klappt und keiner weiss warum!