More on the Revision of Brown-Driver-Briggs

I received news from Professor Huehnergard that he and Professor Hackett are indeed working on the revision of BDB. Unfortunately, the project was put on hold shortly after it began four years, but they plan to return to it after they move to UTA and settle in at Austin. He estimated that the project should take five to seven years to complete, and so my guess is that we will not see a finished product until 2015 at the earliest.

In the comments of my previous post on BDB, James Aitken informed us that the 2005 SBL paper given by Huehnergard and Hackett was just published this week in Foundations for Syriac Lexicography III edited by Janet Dyk and Wido van Peursen. Since Professor Huehnergard was also kind enough to send along a PDF of this chapter, I thought I would highlight some of its contents.

Etymology is one of BDB’s strongest areas, yet it is obviously quite dated at the same time. They plan to retain this strong emphasis on etymology in the revision. “A BDB with thoroughly revised and updated etymological information will fulfil a long-felt need and will stand out among all other current lexica” (228). In order to update the cognate section of BDB, Huehnergard and Hackett plan to take advantage of the recently published lexica. I won’t rehearse it here, but the article lists the resources for the following languages/topics: Northwest Semitic Inscriptions; Akkadian; Northwest Semitic Words in Akkadian; Jewish Palestinian, Jewish Babylonian, and Judean Aramaic; Syriac; Ethiopic; Ugaritic; Old South Arabian; Modern South Arabian; Arabic; Eblaite; and Comparative Semitics (see pages 228-30).

As far as the style of the book, they will keep the famous BDB organization based on roots, so that (presumably) future generations can suffer just like we did and those who went before us. They will, however, put the roots on the page headers, rather than the individual words, which should make it easier to locate entries. Also, they will add an alphabetical index containing all the headwords, which will help the user locate their word in BDB much quicker. I guess the future generation won’t suffer as much!

There will also be a number of presentational improvements. Verbal roots will be listed as roots (not Qal 3ms verbs), which will do away with all those bracketed (not attested) forms. English instead of Latin abbreviations will be used, and they will transliterate other scripts (e.g., Arabic). They will also include a bibliography or update existing bibliographies for controversial topics.

Lastly, they remind readers that BDB is a revision of previous lexica and its need for revision is long overdue. The process will consult other lexica and relevant articles. The final product will be roughly the same size as the current BDB.

People interested in lexicography will will want to read the article for themselves, since I just highlighted a portion of its contents.

• Hackett, Jo Ann and John Huehnergard. “On Revising and Updating BDB.” Pages 227-33 in Foundations for Syriac Lexicography III: Colloquia of the International Syriac Language Project. Ed. by Janet Dyk and W. Th. van Peursen. PSL 4. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009.