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Divine Commitment and Human Obligation
Selected Writings of David Noel Freedman
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997) vol. 1: xxix + 545 pp., $45.00 (hardback); vol. 2: xx + 269 pp., $30.00 (hardback)
Ask Bible scholars to name the preeminent figure in their field, and chances are that David Noel Freedman’s name will come up more often than anyone else’s. With a career spanning more than half a century, he is best known as the editor of the prestigious Anchor Bible commentaries and the Anchor Bible Dictionary. This new two-volume set, subtitled Ancient Israelite History and Religion and Poetry and Orthography, collects Freedman’s most significant contributions to journals both scholarly and popular (including BR). Laypeople will find volume one more accessible, unless they thrill to articles titled “The Pronominal Suffixes of the Third Person Singular in Phoenician” and the like. Longtime readers of BR will recognize in volume one “The Nine Commandments,” which is taken directly from these pages (and includes a reference to the Readers Reply section that will mystify other readers), and “The Symmetry of the Hebrew Bible,” which persuasively presents Freedman’s theory of the organization behind much of the Old Testament (which he spelled out for us in a two-part interview in the December 1993 and February 1994 issues; see “How the Hebrew Bible & the Christian Old Testament Differ—An Interview With David Noel Freedman—Part I,” BR 09:06 and “The Undiscovered Symmetry of the Bible—An Interview With David Noel Freedman—Part II,” BR 10:01). Freedman sees both the forest and the trees: He uses massive word counts to note patterns in entire sections of the Bible, and he seizes on syllable discrepancies in parallel lines of poetry to unmask inferior readings.
Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments
Ed. by Ralph P. Martin & Peter H. Davids
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997) xxx + 1,289 pp., $39.99 (hardback)
More than a hundred evangelical scholars contributed to this hefty tome, the third in a series of reference works (after The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels and The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters). This volume covers Acts, the general Epistles, Hebrews, Revelation, the early church fathers and the rise of the Church through 150 A.D. Entries cover individual works, important figures and key concepts. The latter portion of the “J” section, for example, contains Josephus, Joy, Judaism after 70 A.D., Jude and Judgment.
Divine Commitment and Human Obligation
