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HALOT / NIDOTTE


Battlesman

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HALOT is a standard lexicon that lists all OT words and provides a range of definition and usage. NIDOTTE is a theological lexicon and offers more discussion about theological importance and ANE background, but doesn't cover every word in OT. NIDOTTE also includes some introductory essays on OT theology and exegesis as well as a topical dictionary section (comprised both of sometimes lengthy discussions of topics and links to lexical entries). I'd use HALOT as a default lexicon, but both are great tools and complement each other rather than replacing each other.

Edited by JonathanHuber
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I personally looked into HALOT a few months ago and found it not right for me. If a choice between the two of them is up I would hazard to guess that NIDOTTE will be more useful. HALOT is a decent lexicon but very brief from what I saw looking at it. This is just my opinion but wanted you to give you my opinion for what it is worth (lay user).

 

-Dan

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isn't the HALOT like the BDAG of the Old Testament?

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isn't the HALOT like the BDAG of the Old Testament?

 

 

Yes

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Boy, that was a fast answer! lol

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HALOT is arguably the best general OT Lexicon. Different category from NIDOTTE which will focus on "important" words.

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My husband and I are currently taking pre-Hebrew (Hebrew For the Rest of Us). I asked the prof about lexicons. He said HALOT (only he called it Koehler & Baumgartner) is the best lexicon for Hebrew. Word books, like NIDOTTE, fall into a different category and serve a different purpose. Most of us would like to have both. NIDOTTE is out of our budget so we use it at the college library.

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As Jonathan, Julie, and others have noted, HALOT (also known as Kohler-Baumgartner after its German editors) is a standard lexicon, while NIDOTTE is more similar to other word studies such as TWOT. Choosing between the two depends on your needs; if you're learning the language, then I would definitely recommend HALOT (or DCH). If you're already familiar with the language and are more interested in usage, then something like NIDOTTE might work for you.

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What place would BDB (complete) have among the available lexicons? Would it be useful to have alongside HALOT?

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BDB is still valuable in some respects, but at this point it has been largely superseded by HALOT and DCH. If you're beginning your study of Hebrew and don't plan to study it extensively, then BDB may be sufficient for you. (I used it in my introductory classes in divinity school.) If you want to learn the language more thoroughly, then you need more recent resources, which means you need HALOT or DCH. For advanced students, BDB is valuable primarily as an indication of how our understanding of the vocabulary has developed from the early twentieth century to the present.

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For me it would be more than nice if Accordance sells the original!

 

Or the newer Versions

 

Nidotte: http://www.weltbild.de/3/19022273-1/ebook/theologisches-begriffslexikon-zum-neuen-testament.html

 

BDAG: http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/59046?rskey=Qd6vlE&result=2 also as e-text available now.

 

Also OakTree I'm waiting :( !!!

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Hi Matthew,

 

Thanks for this info. I already have HALOT, but would it also be useful to invest in DCH? Is their complementarity worth the price?

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Anthony, most people find CH overwhelming. It is a hugely detailed work. Some think overly speculative in its conclusions (though I personally find it helpful).

 

Plus it is not focussed on Aramaic at all. HALOT or BDB are your best bet IMHO, though HALOT is 100 years newer. DCH compact is quite good too, but again focussed only on Hebrew.

 

I would go NIDOTTE before DCH because it is very helpfully complementary IMHO.

Edited by Ken Simpson
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Hi Anthony,

 

First, let me give a brief disclaimer... I don't own the complete DCH in Accordance. However, I do own the concise DCH, and I've used the print volumes extensively.

 

That being said, I think the answer to your question depends on your interests. If you're more interested in advanced academic study, particularly with texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (which aren't fully covered in BDB or HALOT), then I would highly recommend DCH. While some of its definitions may seem speculative, the bibliography should guide you to additional resources explaining when and how scholars proposed those definitions. I find this feature extremely helpful. (As an example, see Judges 5:7 in the NRSV, which uses a definition of the verb hadal not proposed in BDB or HALOT.) On the other hand, if you're more interested in word studies, particularly from an evangelical theological perspective, then you might prefer NIDOTTE.

 

Personally, I think that HALOT and DCH complement one another nicely.

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Anthony, as far as the price, it's not cheap, but probably fair, given how much work has gone into it. I guess the question is how often you are doing lexical studies where you need more detail than HALOT provides. If you are regularly doing Hebrew research at the word level, I'd say go for it, if you can. But if you're preaching/teaching or doing research that doesn't involve as much at the word level, I'd think HALOT could do just fine.

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Anthony: so as to not make a super-long reply here, I'll just offer you this link, where I wrote more about DCH, including a screenshot comparison of the same word in DCH and Concise DCH in Accordance.

 

See also John Hobbins on DCH, interacting in-depth with some of the entries.

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And... to see a fairly critical review of DCH, see Francis I. Andersen (using James Barr for a lens) here. I haven't taken the time to analyze how fair I think Andersen's criticisms are, but they are at least worth noting.

 

I disagree with Prof. Andersen about "the rarity of typographical errors"--I have seen a noticeable number of them in the print edition, unfortunately. *Disclaimer: I added pages numbers to the last half or so of DCH in Accordance, and we cleaned up some typos (that still appear in print) in the process, so it's actually a cleaner text in Accordance than in print!

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Some information on this thread is misleading. I think Abram K-J's links to his and John Hobbins' blogs provide reliable information. I'll undo some misinformation and get back to the initial question at the end of this response.

 

HALOT is not 100 years newer than BDB. Nor is it THE standard Hebrew lexicon. BDB (1906) is a translation and (slight) revision of Robinson's (18th?) edition of Gesenius' Handwörterbuch and it still enjoys #1 status as THE top Hebrew-English lexicon in many places around the world. HALOT is Stamm's translation of the German-Hebrew lexicon known as Köhler-Baumgarnter which has been worked over by many editors in its German version (not just Köhler and Baumgartner). The completed translation gives HALOT a year 2000 publication date, but that does not make the lexicon 100 years younger than BDB. The work of HALOT, the majority of which is still there, began in the 1950's (so maybe 50 years younger, but not 100). Also, HALOT and BDB both share the philological method of Gesenius. IMHO, HALOT exercises Gesenius' philological method much more faithfully to the way Gesenius did it than does BDB. Also, Gesenius abhorred lexica listed by root instead of alphabet and that is still a common complaint against BDB. Thirdly, I find HALOT preferable because it contains comparative Semitic information (Ugaritic and Akkadian stuff) not available to the creators of BDB. So in that sense, it is an update, but for the most part I've found BDB and HALOT to be remarkably similar.

 

DCH is a great step forward (into the 1980's) for lexicography. While HALOT is the epitome of philological lexicography in biblical Hebrew, DCH is the epitome of structuralist lexicography in BH (which is simultaneously its greatest strength and weakness). DCH is great because it gives one quick access to syntagmatic and paradigmatic contexts for BH words, and if this was still the 1980's I would find that useful. But for me, there's nothing recorded in DCH that I can't find quicker with an Accordance search. Like HALOT, I find DCH to be a great idea when the work on it started. Unfortunately, technology lapped it before it finished. But I'm still gonna buy one for my Accordance library cause I like lexica.

 

Now what about NIDOTTE? The main difference is in the title: Theology. BDB, HALOT, and DCH have nothing to do with theology other than how users use them. NIDOTTE on the other hand offers a theological view that more-or-less goes well with the NIV's theology (however there are significant places where NIDOTTE criticizes the NIV). For example, if you look up אלהים (elohiym) "gods/God" in BDB, HALOT, or DCH you'll see info about how this is a Hebrew word for divinity. There will be many examples, morphological variations (DCH will have every single one), BDB and HALOT will cite similar phonemes in related Semitic languages, and you'll see English glosses like "god", "God", and "gods". However if you looked up the same word in NIDOTTE, you get an article that, among other things, includes discussion on Trinitarian theology and whether or not אלהים in the OT is commensurate with Trinitarian theology.

 

My view: theological reference works like NIDOTTE use lexical reference works like BDB, HALOT, and DCH to make their articles. I don't see how one can effectively use NIDOTTE unless one can first use a lexicon like BDB or HALOT.

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Hi guys,

 

Thank you very, very much for all this information and articles. Expert advice like these is really one of the great things we young Bible scholars can and ought to take advantage of in this forum. :)

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