A Question about the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT)

Get it.

AMG's OT is largely plagiarized from TWOT.

-Dan

Reminded me of the best study Bible ever produced:

https://www.christianbook.com/nasb-hebrew-genuine-leather-burgundy-indexed/9781617159886/pd/159880 

Thanks for the information KS4J, it must be noted that while AMG OT Dict. is highly "borrowed" from TWOT but is not identical or as in-depth as TWOT. Here is TWOT for the same word as you shared in you examples. 

2495a תְּהוֹם (tĕhôm) deep, depths, deep places. Modern versions are similar, but sometimes use “springs” or “seas.” The word is used thirty-five times.

A number of times this word is used merely for a large body of water. Isaiah 51:10 and 63:13 refer to the crossing of the Red Sea as does Ps 77:16 [H 17]; 106:9; Ex 15:5 and others. There are other references to the deep waters of the Mediterranean Sea; Jon 2:5 [H 6] is clear, probably also Ezk 26:19; Ps 107:26 and others. There are some references to surface springs as coming from the deep waters below. What concept the Hebrews had of ground water we do not know, but they had the practical knowledge to dig wells and find springs in the valleys: Deut 8:7; Ps 78:15. They probably had not thought of a connection of springs with an underlying ocean because of the simple observable fact that oceans are salt and springs are fresh. Springs are more like the rivers they feed.

Both BDB and GB use this word to foster a strange cosmology. GB list one meaning as “the Ocean, usually united to the great sea on which the earth rests and from where all the water of the earth comes.” They do not note that Job 26:7 says that the earth is suspended on nothing. Passages alleged by GB include Gen 8:2 which simply speaks of sub-oceanic movement; Isa 51:10 and Ezk 26:19 which are not applicable; Ezk 31:4 which refers to ordinary springs and several other verses. They cite Gen 49:25 [H 24] “the deep that lies below,” but the previous line shows that this is the deep that lies below the heavens above, not below the earth. Deuteronomy 33:15 is similar and may be dependent on the Gen poem. In fine, the interpretation of these verses is part of the fallacious cosmology foisted upon the ot by critical scholars and supported by overliteralizing such things as the windows of heaven (better “sluicegates” or “floodgates,” NIV) in the flood account (cf. Harris, R. L., “The Bible and Cosmology,” JETS 5:11–17).

An older treatment of Gen 1:2 found a similarity between tĕhôm of the Gen creation account and the Enuma Elish story in which Tiamat was vanquished by Marduk and from her body earth and heaven were made. It is said that in Gen also there is implied a fight in which the spirit of God rushed on the chaos monster tĕhôm and thus made the ordered universe. Much of this is tendential exegesis. It is now admitted that linguistically tĕhôm cannot be derived from Tiamat because the middle radical, a laryngeal, is lost in Akkadian and would not be manufactured in a borrowed word. Thus, baʿal becomes in Akkadian Bel and is borrowed back in Isa 46:1 as bēl. Actually Tiamat and tĕhôm come from the same root. The root referred merely to deep waters and this meaning was kept in Hebrew as a noun for water in the deep ocean and deep in the ground. But in the animistic thought of Akkadian it became divinized into the goddess of the ocean, Tiamat. In Ugaritic the h is preserved (thm) as in Hebrew and the ocean is sometimes divinized as in Akkadian, though Ugaritic so far shows no creation account (UT 19: no. 2537).

Bibliography: White, W. “Tiamat,” in ZEPB, V, pp. 744–45. For the critical view, cf. May, H. G., “Some Cosmic Connotations of Mayim Rabbim ‘Many Waters’,” JBL 74:9–21.

R.L.H.

BDB Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1905

GB W. Gesenius, F. Buhl, Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 17 ed. 1915

GB W. Gesenius, F. Buhl, Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 17 ed. 1915

GB W. Gesenius, F. Buhl, Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 17 ed. 1915

NIV New International Version of the Bible

JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (formerly Bulletin)

UT C.H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook, 1965 (Grammar cited by chapter and section; texts cited by chap (16) and no. of line. Glossary cited by chap (19) and no. of word)

JBL Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis

R.L.H. HARRIS, R. Laird, Ph.D., Professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri

 R. Laird Harris, “2495 תהם,” ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 965–966.

Quoting from the Rick Mansfield in Accordance forums:

Back in the 90s, AMG paid a hefty sum to Moody Publishers after it was discovered that Zodhiates had plagiarized much of his Hebrew work from The Theological Word Book of the Old Testament. Moody didn't make AMG withdraw the titles that had used the cribbed content (which I believe included both the Key Study Bible and the Complete Word Study Dictionary), but they did have to pay a royalty, and they also had to begin including Moody copyright notices in addition to their own. 

At the time I was working in a Baptist Book Store (now Lifeway) and editions of these works that were already printed began arriving with an insert regarding the additional copyright information. 

Obviously, Zodiates is more well known for his Greek than his Hebrew expertise. His excuse when the plagiarized sections came to light was something along the lines that he didn't have time to research the Hebrew content, and it was just easier to "borrow" it from other sources. Obviously, he's not the first to do so, and he won't be the last.

-dan

You might even consider calling sales and asking them that question.  They do not have a policy of matching hardcover prices AFAIK but it never hurts to ask for a bargain.

Several replies have made points about getting "more" in this volume or that.

But more isn't always better, especially for a non-language specialist. If it was, we'd all own an OED instead of a Webster's. But most folks I know don't consult the OED all that often.

This KISS principle still rules except for special circumstances (like being a language specialist).

KISS--> Keep is Simple Stupid..... Keep it short and sweet....

-dan

EDIT: from wikipedia for historical context...

KISS is an acronym for "Keep it simple, stupid" as a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.

Great comparison... could anybody add Lexham Theological Wordbook entry for the same word ('tehom'), please?

Thanks

Richard J. Ward said:

I'm thinking of buying the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT). Is there something similar to it (in type, price and level) that would be a better buy?

I can't speak or read a single word of Hebrew, yet I use the TWOT all the time. It is excellent, I doubt you'll regret buying it.

Personally, I think it it is good to buy technical books that are one or a few steps higher than your current skill level. Doing this provides an opportunity to go beyond your current comfort zone, creating an opportunity to grow and mature, not simply learn 'new stuff'.

Granted, it might take you a bit of time to learn how to use the new, more advanced tools appropriately, but there are plenty of folk on the forum who can help you do that. With that in mind, go TWOT. :-D