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.

Jo Ann Hackett and John Huehnergard plan to create a revision of the standard English dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament of F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs (Oxford 1906). While still the most reliable and most frequently used English dictionary of Hebrew, BDB has also been showing its age for many decades in one of the aspects for which it was most noteworthy, namely, the presentation of cognate information in related Semitic languages — the information on which, in part at least, the meaning of the Hebrew roots is based. This is the aspect of the dictionary that Hackett and Huehnergard plan to revise most thoroughly.

As one who uses BDB fairly frequently, I have often wondered why it has taken so long for a good scholarly revision to appear. Many lexica in our field are revised for newer generations (think of the various versions of BDAG or LSJ) and it has been over a century since BDB was first published by Oxford. The appearance of a new edition will be much appreciated especially since there have been major developments in the study of the Hebrew Bible since BDB’s original publication. For starters, the Ugaritic language was discovered which helps lexicographers and biblical scholars better understand the meaning of the Hebrew cognates. Also, the biblical texts from the Qumran which were discovered in the ’40s and ’50s give alternative readings to the Hebrew Bible. Further, the sectarian writings from the Judean Desert give scholars more context to better understand the meanings of Hebrew words much in the same way that the discovery of the papyri shed light on the New Testament lexicography. Of course, students of the HB can always consult the multi-volume HALOT or its abridgement Holladay, but as Goldilocks might say, the amount of information in BDB is usually just right. Clearly a revision of BDB is in order, and I greatly look forward to their work.

If anyone has more information on this, I’d be very interested to learn about it. When is the expected publication date? Will it still be published by Oxford? Will this new edition be affordable? Will it be coded to the Strongs concordance? Just kidding on that last one.

I noticed that Jo Ann Hackett and John Huehnergard gave a paper on this at the Philadelphia SBL in 2005: “Updating the Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew Lexicon.” Unfortunately I missed it and was probably off at some Didache paper instead.

H/T: John Anderson

Update: Charles Halton asks whether a revision of BDB is even necessary. Jim West chimes in as well.