Customer Reviews

A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This English abridgement of Koehler and Baumgartner's lexicon is perhaps the best reference tool Hebrew students will come across having such usefulness at a reasonable price. It is alphabetically organized and thus quicker than Brown-Driver-Briggs, but it also represents more current scholarship and better linguistic methodology. As well, it is a good size and the entries are generally well-organized. Even if you already have BDB, I would suggest getting Holladay because of the additional information on contextual usage and his more careful use of lexical data from cognate languages.

All the points Mr. Gould gave are exactly right. So I'll just try personal testimonial to sell you this tool. I have owned this book for 20 years, but whenever I see a used one in the bookstore I try to justify buying it again for my son or anyone. It is that useful.

I study the Hebrew of the Bible often, very often and for years, translating words and looking to get the right shade of meaning. Holladay is the first lexicon I reach for. I can literally straighten my elbow right now and pull it off my shelf of hundreds of books and dozens of Hebrew books and aids. This is because not only is all that was mentioned in the other review but it is compact and readable. Only then, after checking Holladay, do I turn to Gesenius, the others and the multivolumes.

If you are a student, a minister who has to keep looking up 'alma (give it up! ;-), or need a quick reminder of a word meaning, I can't believe you don't already have this book!!! Act like "somebody" and get this NOW.

Binding wise, I have to add, that this book has held up very well to constant use without its dustjacket. One minor casuality is the gold ink on the cover---it has faded some and looks more light green than gold. So what!? I should look so good after 20 years!

First, I can really only second the other two reviewers'views on this lexicon. It is as convenient to use as a dictionary, (provided, of course, that you know Hebrew alphabetical order and enough Hebrew to recognize Qal stems of verbs), and quite a bit more informative. The book IS concise, containing just over 400 pages (as against the BDB's 1000+), proper names are listed but not defined, and all instances of every word are not cited. Rather, examples of each sense of the word are usually cited. There are errata listed at the beginning and end of the book. In short, this is very handy, and if you've gone beyond the need for Strong's numbers, and want up to date linguistic information, try this edition!

This book delivers what it promises; "an up-to-date working tool of modest price and compass for the student of biblical Hebrew and Aramaic."

The book quality is superb and two years on is still in excellent condition considered the amount of use. The print quality is excellent and very usable. The Hebrew words are bolded, including their various forms. The basic meaning of each word is also bolded. This makes looking up words and their meanings especially efficient. I've found this excellent for translating biblical texts.

One of the most useful features is that each Hebrew word includes its various forms. As a beginner I've found this useful when parsing Hebrew text.

Proper names do not have their English rendering included. This has caused me to have to refer back to my BDB occasionally. This has been the one major flaw I've found in this work. There are transliterations included for specific usages of the Hebrew words. I found this feature a bit annoying sometimes. I would have found the actual Hebrew text to be much more useful.

This is an ideal book for use in translating biblical texts and its size and format make it extremely usable. However, I would not recommend it for in depth word studies or for those who do not read Hebrew.

I have used Holladay for several years. This lexicon is definitely easier for quick reference than the old standard, Brown-Driver-Briggs A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. It is convenient to take to class or to use at home when reading the Hebrew Scriptures. A particularly handy feature are the lists of the forms of each verb that occur in the Hebrew text, which appear at the beginning of each verb entry.

The only feature that I dislike is that Holladay chose to use transliteration for the Hebrew words within the entries. I realize that he was trying to save space, but I would have preferred Hebrew rather than romanization for the purpose. As it is, one's mind has to continually switch back and forth between the familiar Hebrew alphabet and the alien romanized forms.

Based on a much larger and more exhaustive lexicon, the concise HALOT contains most every word in the Hebrew OT without long, drawn-out definitions. It is my most valued tool for simply "crashing through" parts of the text and I use it every day.

One of the best . . . this is THE highly recommended reference by the Elementary Hebrew profs at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I use HALOT and BDB on my computer software to do the heavy exegetical lifting, but it is nice to have this little one-volume lexicon on the shelf for looking up words when I don't have the software immediately available. Don't get this if you want a lexicon that provides comprehensive (or near comprehensive) citations of the occurrences of a word in the Bible. Holladay just provides a few examples of each category of use. Also, don't get it if you are looking for the work in the cognate languages provided by HALOT. While all the listings are in Hebrew script, some of the (secondary) meanings of words are headed by transliteration, so be sure you know both Hebrew script and the transliteration convention. Other than that, in a day of powerful software tools, it's nice to have this lexicon to do a quick look-up.

This lexicon got me through Hebrew in college and seminary. It is much smaller than most, so it is easy to carry with you, but it still contains enough information to be used at a graduate school level.

This is a "lexicon" due to its references, but it's organized like a dictionary. If you're translating the Hebrew Bible, this is an awesome resource as a Biblical dictionary, but I thought I'd let y'all know that it's very different from the Armstrong Lexicon which organizes by chapter, in order. Thus, if you're working through a few chapters of Bible, in a class or on one's own, then the Armstrong will list the infrequently-used words (i.e. "the hard words!") in order by chapter, so you don't have to look up the words in a dictionary like this one.

In other words, I use both this and the Armstrong. The Holladay I use as a dictionary for a few words here and there, but when working through chapters of Hebrew Bible, the Armstrong Lexicon is more of a time-saving cheat sheet.