Suggestion: Another Zondervan Bible reference dictionary

Rosie Perera said:

The New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology

Ooh, that sounds cool.  Yes, please!

Ted Hans said:

Why this was not included in the recent
Zondervan bundle beats me! This was included in my old Pradis Zondervan
collection and I would love to see all the books from the Pradis
collection available in Logos.

Zondervan doesn't list The New International Dictionary of
Biblical Archaeology on their site at all.  I assume it's out of
print.

It's time for a new Zondervan bundle!  There are still lots of books
that didn't make the first cut.

• Basics of Biblical Greek (Mounce) (and other Greek textbooks)
• Basics
  of Biblical Hebrew (and other Hebrew textbooks)
• Counterpoints
  series (Three Views, Four Views, etc)
• The Revised Expositor's Bible Commentary
• A Survey of the New
  Testament (Gundry)
• An Introduction to the New Testament (Carson,
  Moo)
• An Introduction to the Old Testament (Longman)
• Genesis - A Commentary (Waltke)
• The Pentateuch as Narrative (Sailhamer)
• The New
  International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology
• Church History
  Volume One: From Christ to
  Pre-Reformation (Everett Ferguson)
• Encyclopedic Dictionary of
  Cults, Sects, and World Religions

[Y][Y]...me too!

[Y] Basics of Biblical Greek (Mounce) (and other Greek textbooks).

Also, Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek by Constantine R. Campbell.

Thanks!

My last reference was to the five-volume  New Encyclopedia of
Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land and to Zondervan's New International
Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology. PAAAHHLEEEEZZZZ Logos?? [:D]

I agree fully on the IES New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, but NOT on the Zondervan New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology. NEAEH (vols 1-4 published in 1993) is a great resource, though without volume 5 (published in 2007) to update and correct the rest it's quite old.

Any archaeological dictionary or similar resource that was published more than about 10 years ago is going to be almost useless except as a very general resource along the lines of Wikipedia. Zondervan's NIDBH was published in 1983, so you'd be missing out on more than 30 years of archaeological investigation (since the actual work was done several years before the final pub date). And those 30 years have seen an absolute revolution in the archaeological of Israel and the surrounding lands.

Having said that, and realizing how quickly archaeological information goes out of date, I wonder if another sort of encyclopedia, along the lines of Wikipedia in that it's constantly updated but where there is strong, professional editorial oversight, is the wave of the future. If it is (as I am convinced), then software like Logos and Accordance are poised to take strong leadership. 

I guess as a biblical archaeology major and one who has keep abreast of the field through the years, I would have to disagree. Certainly, the past thirty years have provided stunning advances in our understanding. That does not, however, negate the value of the volume in question. I recently repurchased the hard cover edition, because its something that I still... after 30 years... regularly consult and from which I can glean valuable info not provided elsewhere. The vast majority of the contents do not significantly involve issues that are controversial in nature or which have been overturned by more modern scholarship (such as references to sites in classical literature, some geographical information... I could go on and on). Other more general dictionaries leave too much of this material out. When a site is in dispute, or the findings, the volume tends to steer clear of controversy  or to very fairly evaluate the alternatives.

Would I appreciate a comparable volume of more modern vintage? Absolutely. But it doesn't as yet exist. The IES volumes are wonderful, but I don't see them being offered by Logos anytime soon. If so, I'd be the first to purchase them... all five volumes. At pretty much whatever price Logos wants to offer them. (Even this set is more limited in focus than the Zondervan title, although having greater depth for what it covers).

But we have to work with what we have. The bottom line is that  there needs to be a starting place of foundational knowledge for students and professionals. From there, one can update one's knowledge based on more recent discoveries. But the only general encyclopedic/dictionary reference covering biblical archaeology in Logos' vast collection, The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, is just as old and far less comprehensive. Perhaps we should lobby Logos to discontinue offering this volume because its "old"? How about ISBE (published 1979-1995)? IVP Reference Dictionaries? (1992... 20 years old now). I'm sure I could cite many more examples from commentaries, dictionaries and encyclopedias that people find EXTREMELY useful, despite not being published only yesterday.

Let's face it... that's the inherent issue with nearly every dictionary/encyclopedia. It's "dated" the moment it's published. They are general works. Any student knows, therefore, that one does not END one's studies with such volumes. Its where one BEGINS. It's foolish and arrogant to claim that modern discoveries negate the value of previous learning. Especially in this field.! How many times have the more "modern" understandings been overturned in light of further evidence that reinforces the previous ones? Often, more modern "discoveries" need the light of time/evaluation to prove their worth or lack thereof. Woe to us if we limit the knowledge we accept to only what is "modern".

I guess I also struggle with the attitude I have frequently encountered when a title is suggested. How MANY of Logos' titles are "old" and outdated, and quite frankly, of VERY little intrinsic worth, yet they get offered and  sucked up so quickly! The recent community pricing title, Archaeology and the Bible, dates to 1918, for heaven's sake! Yet it was deemed worthy enough by Logos' staff to offer it and by Logos customers to purchase it. (I did purchase it as a legacy volume, but its "value" as an archaeological teaching tool is minuscule at best). I continually shake my head at what Logos will offer and what people will buy to add to their book counts, only to then see them turn around and question when others suggest something.

If it's not useful to you, then by all means, don't waste your money on it. For me, and I suspect for many of us working in this area, its a highly useful tool. It already has existed in Pradis, its out of print... it would seem that it would be relatively easy to secure permission to offer the title, and would be minimal in cost. Certainly seems like it would have broader appeal and greater usefulness than a whole lot of the other, more esoteric offerings that frequent the prepub and community pricing pages.

So, my challenge would be... make a prepub or community pricing of this title, and see how fast it enters production!

(Nothing in this rant should be construed as a personal criticism of any individual, group of individuals, Logos staff, or of Logos in general!  [:D]  )

Emile, thanks for your challenge that helped me to think this through a bit. In general I agree with your sentiment that old things are not to be discarded simply because they're old. Old commentaries, for example, frequently contain wonderful insights, though frankly the really good stuff tends to make its way into later commentaries. But I take your point.

I disagree, though, that archaeology is a comparable case, because the new knowledge is so often not a matter of mere changes in scholarly opinion or fashion but of new discoveries and new or refined methods. I could provide so many examples it would take all day to write them. The impact of C14 technology, attention to floral and faunal analysis and to microbial analysis, new methods of petrographical analysis and the application of those methods to the study of pottery, the enormous amount of archaeological survey work conducted in the last 30 years that has revolutionized our understanding of settlement patterns, the development of underwater archaeology and all that has meant for our understand of ancient trade, the whole discipline of iconographic analysis and its application to biblical studies; the list of ways biblical archaeology has changed in the past 30 years would be very long indeed. The archaeology of Israel and its neighbors is no longer the province of "debutantes" (to use William Dever's word), but of professional archaeologists whose training is scientific rather than philological and theological. This gives them their own blind spots, of course, especially in often naïve application of biblical passages, but biblical archaeology must respect the scientific training of archaeologists working in their field of expertise. My assertion that any general work in the archaeology of this region that is older than ten years is virtually useless (which is admittedly a bit of hyperbole, but not by much), is simply what the archaeologists themselves say. 

The new technologies might seem at first glance to make only incremental improvements in the process, but the problem is that quite often they have revolutionary impact on basic tenets held to be true by earlier writers. For example, few people in 1980 questioned the basic outlines of the chronology of Israel and Judah as conceived by Albright ➔ Wright ➔ Bright ➔ Miller. The 10th century was assumed to be a high point in Judah's civilization, and Solomon's building campaigns at Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer were simply assumed to be anchors for discussing the rest of the chronology. They were swayed by the Bible's Judean orientation into thinking of the northern kingdom as a less important offshoot of Judah. In the last 30 years, the pottery has become so much better known, and has been anchored to objective time measurements using C14 and other means, that it's now no longer possible to speak about a Judean heyday in the 10th century. Even those scholars who resist the "low chronology" now acknowledge this as fact. So if a student is doing a Bible study on the Solomon accounts and reads about Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer in an outdated encyclopedia, one would get the impression that pretty much everyone agrees that Solomon built those fortifications. If the point of this student's research wasn't to understand archaeology but to apply archaeological insight to a biblical text, she may very well not look beyond the encyclopedia. If she digs a bit into the more recent archaeological discussion, this may cure itself, but if she stops there then she's just misinformed. Not merely uninformed, but wrongly informed. This is but one (rather prominent) example, but there are many others that could equally illustrate my point.

I understand your point about students and other beginners needing a place to start, which is precisely why I believe in the importance of a encyclopedic resource. But because of the ephemeral nature of archaeological science, I strongly believe that an "archaeological encyclopedia" is just not going to be viable in coming years unless it's electronic in its native structure. 

I really don't mean to rant about the uselessness of such printed works so much as to advocate a new approach to providing basic information to the public. Websites like archaeowiki.org have a lot of potential, but because such efforts rarely count very highly on the "scholarly activity" measure needed for tenure review, they are spotty. What I would love to see is a unified, ongoing work of remunerated scholarship - a well planned effort made by the best scholars in the field, like any good encyclopedia - that provides for constant updating and revision. Perhaps even the history of each article's revision could be archived, like what is done on Wikipedia. With a well designed system, the editor or editorial committee could for example decide, based on important new information that has come out of the ground, that the article on Ramat Rachel needs to be revised. An expert on Ramat Rachel could be engaged to make the revision, and and it would go out as an "update" to people's computer platforms. Instead of having an encyclopedia that one had to assume was outdated on any given point, one could have something that one could be fairly certain reflected something close to the current state of knowledge. Wouldn't that be a huge improvement?