J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling. Dictionary of the North-West Semitic
Inscriptions. 2 vols. Handbuch der Orientalistik, part 1: Nahe und der
Mittlere Osten, 21.1-2. Leiden/New York/Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1995. ISBN:
90-04-09817-8. Pp. 1266. US $406.00.
1. In 1960, E. J. Brill began publishing its landmark Dictionnaire des
inscriptions sŽmitiques de l'ouest (DISO), ably edited by Jacob Hoftijzer
and the late Charles F. Jean. Fascicles I/II appeared in 1960, fascicle III
in 1962, and fascicles IV/V in 1965. Being a product of the
pre-word-processor era, DISO suffered several drawbacks. For example,
lexemes from texts published after the completion of fascicles I and II
never made it into the later fascicles. And since there has been a virtual
explosion of new material since 1960, DISO has become more and more outdated
with the publication of every new inscription.
2. Aware of this problem for some time, Hoftijzer and Jongeling have been
working hard to remedy this situation. Their long-awaited update to DISO is
a careful, thorough, state-of-the-art reference tool, something which should
meet the needs of biblical scholars, epigraphers, textual critics, and
lexicographers for years to come. As in DISO, each word in DNWSI is
subdivided into two broad categories: (1) an enumeration of the term's
various grammatical forms, conveniently grouped by language (and sometimes
dialect); and (2) a one-word translation, offered after giving special
attention to contextual data (and often even cross-referenced to other
lexical forms in DNWSI).
3. The languages referenced by this dictionary include the following: Old
Canaanite (including the glosses found in the El Amarna tablets and other
texts); Phoenician (including Official Phoenician, Byblos Phoenician, the
magical texts from Arslan Tash, some Cyprus texts, and a few Phoenician
texts from Egypt); Punic (including texts written in non-Semitic script, and
even a few Punic words attested in some literary Greek and Latin texts);
Moabite (the Mesha and Kerak inscriptions plus various inscriptional
fragments and seal inscriptions); Ammonite (the Tell Siran bottle
inscription plus various ostraca and seal inscriptions); Hebrew (the Lachish
letters, the Gezer calendar, the Samaria ostraca and all other relevant
epigraphical evidence up to c. 300 CE); Deir Alla (the plaster texts about
Balaam bar Beor, whose idiosyncratic dialect "is neither strictly Canaanite
nor strictly Aramaic" [p. xii]; formerly Hoftijzer held the Deir Alla texts
to be Aramaic [J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij, Aramaic Texts from Deir
Alla (Leiden: Brill, 1976): 300-302]).
4. Other languages include Samalian (based on three texts whose linguistic
peculiarities, while similar to Aramaic, set them apart from Old Aramaic
texts); Old Aramaic (including the Tell Fekheriye inscription, Sefire,
Zakkur, and other Aramaic inscriptions prior to 700 BCE); Official Aramaic
(everything else in Aramaic up to 300 CE, including the syllabic cuneiform
text from Warka, the Hermopolis papyri, and the Aramaic ideograms found in
Parthian, Pehlevic, Sogdian, and Chwarezmian texts); Nabatean (all Aramaic
texts written in some form of Nabatean script); Palmyrenean (all Aramaic
texts written in some form of Palmyrenean script); Hatra (all texts from
Hatra, as well as later Aramaic texts from Assur); Waw (selected early
Syriac terms from an important collection of amulets); and Jewish Aramaic
(including the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine and all other known Jewish
Aramaic epigraphical texts).
5. As in DISO, DNWSI omits divine names, personal names, and geographical
names. Syriac epigraphical material is, with a few exceptions, excluded from
consideration, and no attempt is made to include material from Qumran,
Ugarit, or rabbinic Jewish sources, since dictionaries and concordances for
each of these well-worked areas are already in print. An unavoidable, yet
unfortunate, problem is that no material published since 1991 is included in
this dictionary. Therefore, no reference is made to the recently-discovered
9th-8th century Aramaic inscription from Tel Dan, with its haphel use of
mlk (line 4, [A. Biran and J. Naveh, Israel Exploration Journal
45 (1995): 12], attested elsewhere only in the Zakkur inscription [KAI
202A.3]), its predilection for the so-called "short imperfect" verb form
(lines 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9) and its clear reference to the House of David
(line 9, bytdwd; cf. also the phrase )r)l dwdh on the
Mesha inscription, which should now probably be read, with J. C. L. Gibson,
as "lion of David" [Syrian Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971)
I.76, line 12]).
6. Text critics will be especially grateful for this reference tool. One
example of its utility is its applicability to the famous textual crux in
Ruth 2:7. Morphological discussion of this passage usually centers on the
problem of what to do with $bth. MT $ib:t.fh. can be
parsed as Qal inf + 3rd fem sg suff of yf$ab, "to sit"; thus
zeh $ib:t.fh. might be translated something like "this, her
sitting." It can also be parsed as the segholate noun $ebet + 3rd
fem sg suff, and translated "her ceasing." Or similarly, the consonantal
text can conceivably be repointed $fb:tfh and parsed as a Qal
perf 3rd fem sg of $fbat, "to stop, cease," translating "she has
ceased."
7. All of these possibilities find support in the versions. The Targ
(dytb)) reads a Peal fem ptc + prefixed particle d of
ytb, "to sit." The OG (ou) kate/pausen) reads a Qal
perf 3rd fem sg of $bt, "to cease," then reads the zh
preceding it as a negative (or simply inserts a negative and ignores
zh). The Vg (reversa est) reads a Qal perf 3rd fem sg
of $wb, "to return."
8. The underlying problem, of course, is how to define terms composed of the
Hebrew radicals $[w]b[h/t]. DNWSI provides immediate access to
pertinent examples of this same problem in the inscriptional data. In the
Karatepe inscription, for example (KAI 26 ii 7-8, 13; cited in DNWSI, p.
473), Azitiwada recounts several reasons why a Cilician city ought to be
named after him. One of these reasons is his ability to give its inhabitants
a "pleasant dwelling" ($bt n(mt). DNWSI, citing this reference
under the root y$b, lists the possibility that the Phoenician
term should be derived from $bt, "to cease, rest," as well as
y$b, "to sit, reside." In other words, $bt at Karatepe
poses the same morphological and semantic ambiguities in its context as does
$bth in Ruth 2:7. Seeing polysemantic ambivalence at Karatepe
therefore better helps explain the versional options and strengthens the
possibility that polysemantic variability might also be occurring in Ruth
2:7.
9. Biblical scholars, textual scholars, epigraphers, and lexicographers
everywhere should be very grateful to Hoftijzer and Jongeling for producing
such a fine reference work. The fact that they chose to produce it in
English is an added plus to English-speaking readers!
© TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 1996.
Michael S. Moore
Fuller Seminary Southwest