Longman - Strauss - The Baker Compact Dictionary of Biblical Studies

Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018. – 224 p.

ISBN 978-1-4934-1271-6

 

Years have passed since we began our study of the Bible in an academic setting. However, we can remember the excitement of embarking on what has been and continues to be, for both of us, a rewarding and interesting career. After all, our job is basically to study the Word of God all day and to share our insights with others through our teaching and writing. We are both thankful.

 

Our start, though, was not so long ago that we have forgotten the barrage of new methods, scholars, terms, ideas, theories, and more that seemed so hard to remember and master from the time we were first introduced to them: form criticism, deconstruction, typology, revolution model, William Foxwell Albright, merism, colon, pericope, Zoroastrianism, and the list can go on and on. We have written this compact dictionary primarily to help beginning students. But we hope that it can help others as well, particularly pastors and laypeople who want to read and benefit from biblical scholarship.

 

We began our work by choosing the topics to be covered. Not an easy task. As longtime college and seminary professors of the Old (Tremper) and the New (Mark) Testaments, we asked ourselves what topics we expected our students to know about at the end of their first year of study of the Bible in an academic environment.

 

Once we chose the topics, we then wrote brief descriptions of them. We do not provide a detailed and extensive accounting of them but rather what we would expect our first-year students to know. This is a compact dictionary, after all, to be used as a quick-reference guide to the various topics covered here. This guide can be used as an introduction to these topics or as a review.

 

We hope that you find The Baker Compact Dictionary of Biblical Studies helpful in your study, whether you are just beginning or are further along. The Bible is God’s Word and deserves to be not only read but deeply explored.

 

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comparative/contextual method

 

The OT was written in an ancient Near Eastern context. Particularly since the advent of the modern phase of archaeological study (starting around 1800) and the discovery of ancient texts written in Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and other less well-attested languages of the ancient Near East, scholars have studied the OT in the light of related ancient Near Eastern literature. The broad term for such study is the comparative method. In the history of the comparative method, there has been a tendency to overemphasize similarities, leading to what some have called “parallelomania,” and this overemphasis then leads to some downplaying any significance to the ancient Near Eastern background of the text. W. W. Hallo of Yale University (1928–2015) proposed a middle way that found significance not only in similarities but also in the differences between biblical texts and analogues from other ancient Near Eastern cultures. Hallo had a profound influence on other scholars who are working today.

 

Dead Sea Scrolls

 

Between 1946 and 1956 hundreds of fragments and even full texts were discovered in eleven caves on the northwest coast of the Dead Sea, thirty miles from Jerusalem, near the archaeological site of Khirbet Qumran, which is thought to be the location of the community that used these texts. These texts may be dated between the third century BC and the first century AD. The Dead Sea Scrolls include many biblical texts; indeed every book of the OT is attested from the caves with the exception of Esther. Among the greatest finds were nearly complete copies of Isaiah and Psalms. There are also a great number of extrabiblical writings, including commentaries and sectarian writings. Among the most famous of these are the Community Rule (1QS), the War Scroll (1QM), Thanksgiving Hymns (1QH), the Temple Scroll (11Q19), and the Copper Scroll (3Q15). In the siglum identifying each scroll, “Q” stands for “Qumran,” and the number before it indicates the cave in which the scroll was found (documents have been discovered in 11 caves). The biblical texts found at the Dead Sea demonstrated that the Hebrew text had not yet been standardized into a single text type; they also demonstrated, by virtue of a number of texts’ similarity to the Codex Leningradensis, dating to about a millennium later (AD 1009), that reliable transmission of the biblical text over a long time was possible.

 

The scrolls suggest that the community at Qumran arose from a group of priests descended from Zadok, who rejected the present Jerusalem priesthood and withdrew to the Judean wilderness. The Qumran sectarians were led by a charismatic figure known as the Teacher of Righteousness, who had been persecuted by a Jerusalem high priest, identified in the scrolls as the “Wicked Priest.”

 

The Qumran community was eschatological in its perspective, viewing themselves as the “true Israel” and expecting the soon end of the age. Using what has been called a pesher method of interpretation, they applied biblical prophecies to their own situation. In a coming war against the Romans, they expected to join with God’s angels for a great victory over the forces of darkness. The group anticipated two messiahs, or “anointed ones,” a royal messiah descended from David and a priestly messiah from the line of Aaron. Though their fate is shrouded in mystery, the Qumran community was likely wiped out by the Romans in the Jewish revolt of AD 66–74. See also Community Rule (1QS); Damascus Document; Essenes.

 

imprecations

 

Imprecations are curses. In biblical studies, the term is typically applied to sections of lament psalms (for example, Ps. 69:22–28) where the sufferer calls on God to punish the enemy and those around him. Some scholars use the term “imprecatory psalm,” but there are no psalms that are completely devoted to imprecations, though Psalm 109 comes close. Thus it is better to think of imprecations as part of a lament. Jesus’s “woes” against the religious leaders in Matthew 23:13–38 and against the rich and powerful in his sermon in Luke 6:24–26 are also imprecations.