Customer Reviews

Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures: Numerically Coded to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, with an English Index of M

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a must have in order to study the original Hebrew. If you know how to use it correctly, you can really get the picture of what the original is saying, rather than the grainy, black and white faxed copy of the masterpiece that is the English translation.

Many Spinozistic insights are embedded in Biblical Hebrew words.

Strong's coding numbers allows the Bible student wihout a knowledge of Hebrew to use this classic work to find the precise meaning and connotations of the Hebrew or Aramaic word behind the English word being studied. Being a lexicon, its entries are more exhaustive than those in Strong's Concordance.

Cut your eye teeth on this primary book for anyone wishing to study the Scriptures in Hebrew. Easily becomes your main Lexicon for research. Excellent for beginners and advanced students.

While this lexicon is old, it is still very accurate, & with the Strong's numbering system, it's
easy to use. There is a mistake here or there, but that's the way it is with any book. Another
advantage is that in the Tregelles translation, you get 2 scholars for the price of 1. Tregelles
frequently puts in notes that further clarify the meaning.

Also, Gesenius was not a friend of Christianity & his entries often show his bias, as with
passages in the Hebrew that are prophecies of Christ. For examples, see Strong numbers 433,
1288, 3068, 5959. Tregelles leaves the Gensenius entries intact, but corrects him in the [...]
comments. One of his usual lines is "the authority of the New Testament decides the matter".
I think this is helpful for a "beginner" in the faith. One drawback to this lexicon is the
Genenius entries don't exactly coincide with the Strong's system, so in the back pages some of
the words are out of order. That's one thing, the user must watch out for.

It's helpful to examine more recent lexicons to supplement this one, but if one has only this
one, I don't believe he is handicapped.

Gesenius et al produced an essential Hebrew Grammar. Even though some of its information is proven out of date, due to new discoveries and further study of ancient Semitic languages (and I speak specifically of the misunderstanding of the Pi'el verb family and the incorrect rules of verb subordination, which ALL beginning Hebrew grammars are VERY wrong about!), this is still a necessary text. THe amount of information is positively vast and accurate oveall.

The same can be said of the lexicon, for which one reviewer gave 1 star because it did not have more recent Ugaritic information. Such lack regarding Ugaritic in no way diminishes the need for this reference.

Simply put, the lexicon is still amazing, and amazingly accurate and vast in its information, and no Hebrew scholar, of lay or degreed status, would use only one reference.

For instance, I use Genesius, Wilson, and Waltke & O'Connor, Vine, L. (the yellow dictionary), Richter, Allen Smith, Geoffrey Morrison, Strong's, to name a few, and four Hebrew traditions not to mention those underlying the LXX and the DSS. And as up-to-date as W & O's Syntax text is, it comes up just a little short in it's final understanding of verb subordination. We need these works, even with their occasional shortcomings. Just understand their place in the history of Hebrew study and work around it.

Buy this if you can find one.

Why a lexicon? "In the beginning was the WORD." Word usage is enormously helpful to Biblical understanding. H.W.F. Gesenius (mid 1800's) is acclaimed as the Noah Webster of Old Testament Hebrew lexicons (dictionary). He brings to the Old Testament a wonderful blend of Christian/Jewish background and insight. Be sure to note not only the word you are looking up, but also the words that surround it, for they too often lend very interesting and even uncanny insight (divine providence). See also Spiros Zodhiates' "The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament." e.g. Word 2000 in Zod.: "dangerous, near to falling." Word 2000 in Ges.: "utter destruction." Commentary on Y2K?

This edition of Gesenius' lexicon is utterly out of date. It is a straight reprint of the 1847 edition, written before the decipherment of Babylonian and Assyrian and before the vast amount of work that went into comparative linguistics in the second half on the nineteenth century. Gesenius still has a place, but only in the later, much improved edition of Brown, Driver and Briggs (BDB) published half a century later by Oxford University Press and now also available in a cheaper if flimsier edition by Hendrickson Publishers, or in the later German editions. The Hendrickson edition is useful if you use Strong's Concordance as the numbers have been inserted into the slightly expanded margins. The Oxford edition, however, has been corrected more recently and should be slightly more accurate.

For academic use, however, the latest edition of Koehler and Baumgartner's five-volume The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT) is the standard reference (there is a much cheaper two-volume Study Edition). But the best lexicon to start with is probably Holladay's A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament which is based on the first edition of Koehler and Baumgartner, and which is both affordable and usable.

The biggest immediate difference between BDB and HALOT (or Holladay) is that BDB is in n root order, which makes it a much more difficult for beginners to find words but which allows a more experienced reader to see how words are related to one another.

This book was one I used in Seminary back in 1962-65. It makes no use of any recent discoveries and any of the Urgaritic findings. You'll do much better finding something more up to date.