New Bible Dictionary. Edited by J. D. Douglas et al. 3d edition. Downers Grove/Leicester: InterVarsity, 1996, xix + 1298 pp., $39.99.
I have long considered the New Bible Dictionary (NBD) (1st ed., 1962; 2d ed., 1982) to be the best one-volume Bible dictionary available. It was a scholarly treasure-trove of information about almost every conceivable subject relating to the Bible. I have constantly used it for quick reference, as well as to compare information from longer entries in multi-volume Bible encyclopedias. Its list of contributors was a veritable "Who's Who" in evangelicalism of the British Commonwealth.
This third edition follows in the same tradition and it will now occupy the same position of prominence on my shelf as its predecessors. The new edition adds 20 new contributors (including several Americans), yielding a total of 182; the second edition had 165 contributors, but three are dropped in the third edition.
One finds articles on almost every word or concept in the Bible. If not, the helpful index at the back points readers to places within other articles where such information may be found. The articles are written from an informed evangelical viewpoint and traditional interpretations are consistently and ably defended. The articles consistently deliver vast amounts of information in a short, concise space.
As a new, updated work, however, the third edition is somewhat disappointing. The editors' preface states that most of the articles remain unchanged, but that bibliographies are updated. Some revisions in the cultural and archaeological areas are made "wherever possible, subject to the limits imposed by the existing format" (p. vii).
These limitations appear to be rather severe, because in most articles I compared, there were no changes at all. A random sample of articles I checked for which I would have expected some revisions - given advances in scholarship since the second edition, or the nature of the current debate - but found none at all includes "Abraham," "City," "David," "Gospels," "Homosexuality," "Isaiah, Book of," "Jerusalem," "Jesus Christ, Life and Teaching of," "Patriarchal Age," "Pentateuch" and "Philistines." (In the article on the Pentateuch, for example, "contemporary scholars" [p. 897] refers to scholars such as W. F. Albright, C. H. Gordon, O. Kaiser, Y. Kaufmann, H. H. Rowley and J. A. Soggin. In the "David" article, the latest bibliographic entry is from 1960.)
Surprisingly, the lengthy (8 pages) article on "Archaeology" itself is virtually unchanged. For the Hellenistic-Roman period, I could detect no change whatsoever, although a second contributor is listed, and the bibliography is updated somewhat. For archaeology in earlier periods, the same is true, and only three bibliographic entries are added. An example of the lack of updating here is to be found in the uncritical acceptance of Kathleen Kenyon's dating scheme for Jericho; no mention is made of Bryant Wood's recent (and credible) challenge to Kenyon's methods.
The editors do state that "a number of fresh entries have been written for this volume" (p. vii), and this is true. This appears to mean that several entries were re-written (I could find no new entries for which none existed in the second edition, although I may simply have missed them). Examples I found of completely re-written entries, by new authors, include "Chronology of the New Testament," "Clean and Unclean," "Ebla," "Essenes" and "Law." Some articles are updated by a second contributor (e.g. "English Versions of the Bible"). These new and updated entries are well-done, following the same high standards of earlier articles.
I came to this review with the same eager expectations I did in reviewing the NBD's companion volume, the New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition (see JETS 39.1 [March 1996] 149-150). Given the extensive and fine revision that this represented, I had anticipated more for the new NBD, and so I was somewhat disappointed. The new NBD's revisions are much more modest. For those who own the second edition, I'm not sure that the third edition is an indispensable replacement. However, for those who do not own the NBD at all, the third edition certainly is a must. It is a fine reference tool, providing erudite, irenic evangelical scholarship throughout, and it will richly repay those who consult it.
David M. Howard, Jr.
(This article originally appeared in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 42.1 (Mar 1999): 165-66.)