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Beyond Babel
A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages
John Kaltner
SBL Press, 2002

Beyond Babel provides a general introduction to and overview of the languages that are significant for the study of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel. Included are essays on biblical and inscriptional Hebrew, Akkadian, Northwest Semitic dialects (Ammonite, Edomite, and Moabite), Arabic, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hittite, Phoenician, postbiblical Hebrew, and Ugaritic.

Each chapter in the volume shares a common format, including an overview of the language, a discussion of its significance for the Hebrew Bible, and a list of ancient sources and modern resources for further study of the language. A general introduction by John Huehnergard discusses the importance of the study of Near Eastern languages for biblical scholarship, helping to make the volume an ideal resource for persons beginning an in-depth study of the Hebrew Bible.

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The Bible in Greek
Translation, Transmission, and Theology of the Septuagint
Siegfried Kreuzer
SBL Press, 2015
Essential reading for scholars and students

This volume presents English and German papers that give an overview on important stages, developments, and problems of the Septuagint and the research related to it. Four sections deal with the cultural and theological background and beginnings of the Septuagint, the Old Greek and recensions of the text, the Septuagint and New Testament quotations, and a discussion of Papyrus 967 and Codex Vaticanus.

Features:

  • A complete list of Kreuzer’s publications on the text and textual history of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint
  • Criteria for analysis of the Antiochene/Lucianic Text and the Kaige-Recension
  • A close examination of the origins and development of the Septuagint in the context of Alexandrian and early Jewish culture and learning
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Building Your Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary
Learning Words by Frequency and Cognate
George M. Landes
SBL Press, 2001

A classic resource for beginning Hebrew students

First published over thirty years ago under the title A Student's Vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew, this classic work has been completely revised, updated, and expanded by the author to assist a new generation of students in naturally developing a basic Biblical Hebrew vocabulary. Designed to help beginning Hebrew readers acquire vocabulary quickly, this valuable teaching tool focuses on words that occur most frequently in the Hebrew Bible, while arranging them by roots and cognates allowing students to naturally expand their working vocabulary. Vocabulary lists have been kept to a manageable size; extensive cross-references document when words appear frequently with different meanings, and an index allows rapid location of every word encountered. As a result, students who master this volume will remember words more easily, consult a lexicon less frequently but more intelligently, and translate the Hebrew Bible at sight more readily and enjoyably.

Features

  • Vocabulary groupings based on frequency, roots, and cognates
  • Separate listing for nouns without verbal roots in the Hebrew Bible
  • Appendices including proper names and the forms and meanings of pronominal suffixes
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Building Your New Testament Greek Vocabulary, Third Edition
Robert E. Van Voorst
SBL Press, 2022
Building Your New Testament Greek Vocabulary, now in its third edition, provides students a user-friendly introduction to the vocabulary of New Testament Greek. Van Voorst helps the student to move away from rote memorization toward better long-term vocabulary learning based on how Greek words are built and related to each other. He provides students with easy-to-remember English derivatives, lists the number of occurrences for each word learned, provides lists that are easily learned in a single vocabulary-learning session and, most importantly, organizes the book on the basis of word families and frequency. New to this edition are a comprehensive list of proper nouns and a section to help students understand particular Greek words. Definitions of Greek words have been revised where necessary according to the new, third edition of the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament edited by Frederick Danker.
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The Coming of the King James Gospels
A Collection of the Translators’ Work-in-Progress
Ward S. Allen
University of Arkansas Press, 1994

The Coming of the King James Gospels is a primary publication exploring the handwritten annotations of the Oxford New Testament Company, made as members completed Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Their original edited pages, gathered into one binding as the Bodleian Bishops’ Bible ([1602] b.1), offer us the only known surviving record of their monumental work.

Ward Allen’s painstakingly produced collation of this Bishops’ Bible is available for the first time in acessible visual layout. It allows a reader to study simultaneously the three texts, that of the original Bishops’ Bible, the revisions suggested for the 1602 text, and the final King James version of the Gospels. Rejected readings reveal the reasoning which led to the wording of the final text. Beautifully produced, The Coming of the King James Gospels is now a prime resource for all students of the Bible and the English language.

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Commentary on the Old Greek and Peshitta of Isaiah 1–25
Ronald L. Troxel
SBL Press, 2020

The first thorough commentary on the Old Greek and Peshitta of Isaiah

Ronald L. Troxel’s new textual commentary on Isaiah focuses on the book’s Greek and Syriac translations and seeks to recover, as much as possible, the Hebrew texts on which these early translations relied. Troxel treats the Greek and Syriac together in order to present a detailed analysis of their relationship, devoting particular attention to whether the Syriac was directly or indirectly influenced by the Greek. This comparison sheds light on both the shared and distinct approaches that the translators took in rendering lexemes, phrases, verses, and even passages. In addition Troxel presents observations about the literary structures the translators created that differ from those implicit in their source texts (as we understand them), to produce coherent discourse in the target language.

Features:

  • Textual commentary on the life of the text of Isaiah 1–25
  • Use of the Dead Sea Scrolls to shed light on particular issues
  • Detailed comparison of the Masoretic Text, the Old Greek, and the Peshitta
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The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
Frederick William Danker
University of Chicago Press, 2009

Frederick William Danker, a world-renowned scholar of New Testament Greek, is widely acclaimed for his 2000 revision of Walter Bauer’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. With more than a quarter of a million copies in print, it is considered the finest dictionary of its kind.

Danker’s Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament will prove to be similarly invaluable to ministers, seminarians, translators, and students of biblical Greek. Unlike other lexica of the Greek New Testament, which give only brief glosses for headwords, The Concise Greek-English Lexicon offers extended definitions or explanations in idiomatic English for all Greek terms.

Each entry includes basic etymological information, short renderings, information on usage, and plentiful biblical references. Greek terms that could have different English definitions, depending on context, are thoughtfully keyed to the appropriate passages. An overarching aim of The Concise Greek-English Lexicon is to assist the reader in recognizing the broad linguistic and cultural context for New Testament usage of words.

The Concise Greek-English Lexicon retains all the acclaimed features of A Greek-English Lexicon in a succinct and affordable handbook, perfect for specialists and nonspecialists alike.

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Discourse Markers in Early Koine Greek
Cognitive-Functional Analysis and LXX Translation Technique
Christopher J. Fresch
SBL Press, 2023

Using a cognitive-functional linguistic framework and cross-linguistic research on discourse markers, Christopher J. Fresch investigates the use of five discourse markers in the documentary papyri of the third to first centuries BCE and the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible. Through this analysis, Fresch proposes linguistically grounded descriptions for how each discourse marker uniquely functions to guide readers in how they process and comprehend the text. Based on these descriptions, he examines the instances of these discourse markers in the Greek translation of the Minor Prophets and how the translator used them to render the Hebrew text. Fresch presents a picture of a translator who selected discourse markers based on their own understanding of the structure, flow, and meaning of the underlying Hebrew text. Their use attests to a translator who was contextually aware and who desired to produce a translation in idiomatic Koine.

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The Exegetical Value of the Masoretic Pointing
Jan Joosten
SBL Press, 2020

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The Genesis of Lachmann's Method
Sebastiano Timpanaro
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Until the modern period, the reproduction of written texts required manual transcription from earlier versions. This cumbersome process inevitably created errors and made it increasingly difficult to identify the original readings among multiple copies. Lachmann's method—associated with German classicist Karl Lachmann (1793-1851)—aimed to provide scholars with a scientific, systematic procedure to standardize the transmission of ancient texts. Although these guidelines for analysis were frequently challenged, they retained a paradigmatic value in philology for many years. In 1963, Italian philologist Sebastiano Timpanaro became the first to analyze in depth the history and limits of Lachmann's widely established theory with his publication, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann.

This important work, which brought Timpanaro international repute, now appears in its first English translation. The Genesis of Lachmann's Method examines the origin, development, and validity of Lachmann's model as well as its association with Lachmann himself. It remains a fundamental work on the history and methods of philology, and Glenn W. Most's translation makes this seminal study available to an English-speaking audience. Revealing Timpanaro's extraordinary talent as a textual critic and world-class scholar, this book will be indispensable to classicists, textual critics, biblical scholars, historians of science, and literary theorists.
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A Grammar of Ugaritic
John Screnock
SBL Press, 2022
A Grammar of Ugaritic is an accessible yet academically rigorous textbook for first-year students of Ugaritic. Eight digestible lessons include more than 150 exercises to strengthen readers’ understanding through translation and composition of not only vocalized Ugaritic but also transcribed texts and cuneiform script—strategies that develop language skills and provide a sound basis for classroom teaching. Short stories interspersed among the lessons help students consolidate their knowledge and bolster recognition of forms. An introduction to the language and its historical context, glossaries, paradigms, and a bibliography and guide for further learning supplement the lessons. Students who work through the grammar in the classroom or individually will be rewarded with the ability to read real Ugaritic texts in cuneiform.
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Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
Edited by Robert W. Funk
University of Chicago Press, 1961
This work was created by Friedrich Blass, professor of classical philology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, and was continued after his death by Albert Debrunner, professor of Indo-European and classical philology at the University of Bern until his retirement in 1954. The grammar has passed through ten editions from 1896 to 1960.

Robert W. Funk, in translating this long-established classic, has also revised it and, in doing so, has incorporated the notes which Professor Debrunner had prepared for a new German edition on which he was working at the time of his death in 1958. Dr. Funk has also had the co-operation of leading British, Continental, and American scholars. The translation places in the hands of English-speaking students a book that belongs in their libraries and in the libraries of every theologian, philologist and pastor alongside the Gingrich-Danker Greek-English Lexicon.

This grammar sets the Greek of the New Testament in the context of Hellenistic Greek and compares and contrasts it with the classical norms. It relates to the New Testament language to its Semitic background, to Greek dialects, and to Latin and has been kept fully abreast of latest developments and manuscript discoveries. It is at no point exclusively dependent on modern editions of the Greek New Testament text but considers variant readings wherever they are significant. It is designed to compress the greatest amount of information into the smallest amount of space consistent with clarity. There are subsections discussing difficult or disputed points and copious citations of primary texts in addition to generous bibliographies for those who wish to pursue specific items further.
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A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
Walter Bauer
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Described as an "invaluable reference work" (Classical Philology) and "a tool indispensable for the study of early Christian literature" (Religious Studies Review) in its previous edition, this new updated American edition of Walter Bauer's Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments builds on its predecessor's staggering deposit of extraordinary erudition relating to Greek literature from all periods. Including entries for many more words, the new edition also lists more than 25,000 additional references to classical, intertestamental, Early Christian, and modern literature.

In this edition, Frederick W. Danker's broad knowledge of Greco-Roman literature, as well as papyri and epigraphs, provides a more panoramic view of the world of Jesus and the New Testament. Danker has also introduced a more consistent mode of reference citation, and has provided a composite list of abbreviations to facilitate easy access to this wealth of information.

Perhaps the single most important lexical innovation of Danker's edition is its inclusion of extended definitions for Greek terms. For instance, a key meaning of "episkopos" was defined in the second American edition as overseer; Danker defines it as "one who has the responsibility of safeguarding or seeing to it that something is done in the correct way, guardian." Such extended definitions give a fuller sense of the word in question, which will help avoid both anachronisms and confusion among users of the lexicon who may not be native speakers of English.

Danker's edition of Bauer's Wörterbuch will be an indispensable guide for Biblical and classical scholars, ministers, seminarians, and translators.
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Hebrew for Biblical Interpretation
Arthur W. Walker-Jones
SBL Press, 2003
Hebrew for Biblical Interpretation teaches elementary Hebrew with a specific focus on the tasks of biblical exegesis. This innovative textbook combines the features of a traditional grammar with exercises in reading and interpreting the Hebrew Bible. Grammatical descriptions are clear, concise, and systematic, and vocabulary is introduced in descending order of frequency. All words occurring more than 100 times in the Hebrew Bible are taught, and attention to grammatical indicators reduces the need for rote memorization of paradigms. The integration of grammar and exegesis helps to motivate students and makes the textbook well-suited to seminary courses, while those who teach in university settings will find the textbook useful because the focus is on scholarly biblical exegesis, not theological interpretation.
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Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Steps Toward an Integrated Approach
Robert Rezetko
SBL Press, 2014

A philologically robust approach to the history of ancient Hebrew

In this book the authors work toward constructing an approach to the history of ancient Hebrew that overcomes the chasm of academic specialization. The authors illustrate how cross-textual variable analysis and variation analysis advance research on Biblical Hebrew and correct theories based on extra-linguistic assumptions, intuitions, and ideologies by focusing on variation of forms/uses in the Masoretic text and variation between the Masoretic text and other textual traditions.

Features:

  • A unique approach that examines the nature of the sources and the description of their language together
  • Extensive bibliography for further research
  • Tables of linguistic variables and parallels
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Intermediate Biblical Hebrew Grammar
A Student's Guide to Phonology and Morphology
Eric D. Reymond
SBL Press, 2018

A unique grammar for intermediate or advanced students of Hebrew

This grammar is intended for students of Hebrew who wish to learn more about the history of the Hebrew language, specifically its phonology and morphology. Reymond focuses on aspects of Hebrew that will encourage a student to better remember the words and their inflection as well as those that will reinforce general principles of the language. Specific examples for memorization are outlined at the end of each chapter. The book also serves as a resource for students wishing to remind themselves of the relative frequency of certain phenomena. The book provides students with a full picture of the language's morphology.

Features:

  • Tables of nouns and adjectives illustrating the absolute and construct, singular and plural forms, as well as all the forms with suffixes
  • Tables include forms not found in the Masoretic Text
  • Additional tables that set similar verbal inflections side by side
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Introduction to Classical and New Testament Greek
A Unified Approach
Michael Boler
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
The defining feature of this textbook is the treatment of classical and New Testament Greek as one language using primary sources. All the example sentences the students will translate are real Greek sentences, half of which are taken from classical literature and philosophy and half of which are directly from the New Testament. The advantage of this approach is that it highlights the linguistic, literary, and historical connections between classical Greece and early Christianity. Rather than having students memorize isolated tables and artificial sentences, Michael Boler spent years combing through thousands of pages of literature, philosophy, and scripture to find short, powerful sentences that not only teach the grammatical concepts in each chapter, but also contain seeds of wisdom that will spark wonder and discussion. Introduction to New Testament and Classical Greek is born out of classroom experience in a Catholic liberal arts university whose students were disappointed to be forced to choose between textbooks that taught classical Greek in isolation and ones that focused exclusively on the New Testament. By the end of this book, students will have read over 200 lines of scripture and an equal amount of ancient literature from Homer to Aristotle. They will also have the grammatical knowledge to continue to read classical and New Testament Greek. Each chapter contains a section at the end that delves deeply into the etymology and background of the words and passages encountered in the respective chapter. Professors will thus be able to use these chapters as a bridge to philosophical, theological, historical, and literary topics that will enrich the class.
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The Invention of Hebrew
Seth L. Sanders
University of Illinois Press, 2011
The Invention of Hebrew is the first book to approach the Bible in light of recent epigraphic discoveries on the extreme antiquity of the alphabet and its use as a deliberate and meaningful choice. Hebrew was more than just a way of transmitting information; it was a vehicle of political symbolism and self-representation.

Seth L. Sanders connects the Bible's distinctive linguistic form--writing down a local spoken language--to a cultural desire to speak directly to people, summoning them to join a new community that the text itself helped call into being. Addressing the people of Israel through a vernacular literature, Hebrew texts reimagined their audience as a public. By comparing Biblical documents with related ancient texts in Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Babylonian, this book shows Hebrew's distinctiveness as a self-conscious political language. Illuminating the enduring stakes of Biblical writing, Sanders demonstrates how Hebrew assumed and promoted a source of power previously unknown in written literature: "the people" as the protagonist of religion and politics.

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A Latin-Greek Index of the Vulgate New Testament
Theodore A. Bergren
SBL Press, 2003
“Scholars who work with Latin materials that have been or might have been translated from Greek originals are often frustrated by the lack of reference tools that can aid in determining accurately translational equivalences between the two languages. Greek-Latin or Latin-Greek lexica are inadequate, for they tend to give ‘ideal’ translational equivalences rather than ones actually attested in some text. The problem is acute, for example, in the study of the Vulgate New Testament, for which no reference tool has existed by which one could determine quickly the entire range of Greek translational equivalents for a given Latin word. The present work is intended to go some distance toward fulfilling this need.” — from the introduction
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The Life of Adam and Eve in Greek
A Critical Edition
Johannes Tromp
SBL Press, 2016

A Brill classic now in paperback from SBL Press

This critical edition of the Life of Adam and Eve in Greek is based on all available manuscripts. In the introduction the history of previous research is summarized, and the extant manuscripts are presented. Next comes a description of the grammatical characteristics of the manuscripts’ texts, followed by a detailed study of the genealogical relationships between them, resulting in a reconstruction of the writing’s history of transmission in Greek. On the basis of all this information, the Greek text of the Life of Adam and Eve in its earliest attainable stage, is established.

Features:

  • Illustrations of textual relationships and variants
  • Indices for subjects, passages, words in the text, variants, and additions and revisions
  • Full critical apparatus with relevant evidence from the manuscripts
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L'influence de l'arameen sur les traducteurs de la LXX principalement sur les traducteurs grecs poste
Anne-Françoise Loiseau
SBL Press, 2016

Further your understanding of the methods and peculiarities of the ancient Greek translators and revisers of the Hebrew Bible

Loiseau presents examples of Greek translations of verses from the Hebrew Bible that clearly illustrate the influence of Aramaic or Late Hebrew on the semantics of the Septuagint translators. The author postulates that the Greek translators based their translations on Hebrew-Aramaic equivalents maintained as lists or even on proto-targumim such as those found at Qumran, both predecessors of the later Aramaic targumic translations. Loiseau's examples provide convincing explanations for different coincidences occurring between the Greek translations and the interpretative traditions found in the targumim and help elucidate a number of puzzling translations where two Aramaic words that are very similar graphically or phonetically were erroneously interchanged.

Features

  • Unique insight into ancient Jewish exegesis
  • English summary
  • The first extensive illustration of the influence of the Aramaic or Late Hebrew on the Septuagint
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LXX Isaiah 24
1-26:6 as Interpretation and Translation: A Methodological Discussion
Wilson de Angelo Cunha
SBL Press, 2014

Explore how interpretation affects translation

In this volume Cunha argues that the differences found between the Septuagint text of Isaiah and the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text must be weighed against the literary context in which they are found. The author demonstrates that LXX Isa 24:1–26:6 can be seen as a coherent ideological composition that differs greatly from the way scholars have interpreted MT Isa 24:1–26:6. This coherence comes across through the use of certain lexemes and conjunctions throughout the passage. The book lays the case that a scribe or translator already had an interpretation before he started the process of translation that shaped his translation of the Hebrew text into Greek.

Features:

  • An introduction sketching the history of research on LXX Isa 24:1–26:6
  • A focused comparision of the Masoretic Text to the Septuagint
  • A thorough discussion of the coherence of LXX Isa 24:1–26:6
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A New Approach to Textual Criticism
An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method
Tommy Wasserman
SBL Press, 2017

An essential introduction for scholars and students of New Testament Greek

With the publication of the widely used 28th edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece and the 5th edition of the United Bible Society Greek New Testament, a computer-assisted method known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) was used for the first time to determine the most valuable witnesses and establish the initial text. This book offers the first full-length, student-friendly introduction to this important new method. After setting out the method’s history, separate chapters clarify its key concepts, including genealogical coherence, textual flow diagrams, and the global stemma. Examples from across the New Testament are used to show how the method works in practice. The result is an essential introduction that will be of interest to students, translators, commentators, and anyone else who studies the Greek New Testament.

Features

  • A clear explanation of how and why the text of the Greek New Testament is changing
  • Step-by-step guidance on how to use the CBGM in textual criticism
  • Diagrams, illustrations, and glossary of key terms
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New Testament Greek Workbook
An Inductive Study of the Complete Text of the Gospel of John
James Arthur Walther
University of Chicago Press, 1981
In this new edition, the Greek text of the United Bible Societies is used throughout. The beginning student is involved at once in reading Greek and learns grammar and syntax as he encounters them in the text. Each unit of the workbook contains three parts—vocabulary, study notes, and end-of-unit quizzes. The vocabulary is introduced as it occurs in the text. Study notes are designed to aid the student in translating the text and to supplement the teacher's help. End-of-unit questions help the student consolidate what he has learned.
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Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy
John William Wevers
SBL Press, 1995
This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Deuteronomy. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Deuteronomy, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.
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Notes on the Greek Text of Exodus
John William Wevers
SBL Press, 1990
A result of John Wevers’s twenty-five-year association with the Göttingen LXX, this work records his textual notes on the Greek Exodus. The Greek text of Exodus departs in places radically from the Hebrew of the Masoretic tradition. These Notes presuppose that the Hebrew parent text was not all that different from the Masoretic tradition text and that the Greek translator throughout tried to formulate an understanding of the Hebrew from an Alexandrian-Jewish perspective. Included in the Notes are assessments of major textual variants by later readers. This volume is intended for serious students interested in using the LXX text, rather than for the professional LXX scholar.
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Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis
John William Wevers
SBL Press, 1993
This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Genesis. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Genesis, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.
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Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus
John William Wevers
SBL Press, 1997
This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Levitcus. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Leviticus, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.
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Notes on the Greek Text of Numbers
John William Wevers
SBL Press, 1998
This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Numbers. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Numbers, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.
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The Old Greek of Isaiah
An Analysis of Its Pluses and Minuses
Mirjam van der Vorm-Croughs
SBL Press, 2014

A concise study of a large number of examples of pluses and minus providing insight into translation from Hebrew to Greek

Van der Vorm-Croughs focuses this translation study on the processes leading to pluses and minuses including linguistic and stylistic aspects (i.e., cases in which elements have been added or omitted for the sake of a proper use of the Greek language), literary aspects (additions and omissions meant to embellish the Greek text), translation technical aspects (e.g., the avoidance of redundancy), and contextual and intertextual exegesis and harmonization. This work also covers the relation between the Greek Isaiah and its possible Hebrew Vorlage to try to determine which pluses and minuses may have been the result of the translator’s use of a different Hebrew text.

Features:

  • Eleven categories for the pluses and minuses of the Greek Isaiah
  • Examination of translation techniques and translator errors
  • Use of Joseph Ziegler’s critical edition
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The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs
Early Communication with Your Infant
Leann Sebrey
Gallaudet University Press, 2009

Experienced ASL instructor Leann Sebrey champions two-way sign communication between parents and their infants who are just months old as a way to bond more closely and reduce frustration, while also maximizing the children’s intelligence and emotional quotients.

Sebrey’s book The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs: Early Communication with Your Infant lays out an easy, step-by-step process that will instill confidence in parents who have never signed before. She begins by explaining why ASL is best for all children, both deaf and hearing. Sebrey also recognizes the different ways young children learn, encouraging parents and caregivers to sign with infants at all times as a natural part of their interaction. She reveals the first indications of when a baby is ready to communicate, and includes a list of signs to provide parents with a good starting point. Sebrey discusses the moments when infants are most receptive to learn signs and outlines numerous practical techniques with plenty of helpful hints to speed the process. She describes the pleasure of seeing a baby’s first sign, and tells parents how to interpret baby signs, including what to do when a baby uses the wrong signs. Full of easy-to-grasp illustrations of child and family-oriented signs, The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs is the best how-to book for parents, caregivers, and educators to teach early communication to infants.

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Postclassical Greek and Septuagint Lexicography
William A. Ross
SBL Press, 2022
A long-standing tradition within biblical scholarship sets the Greek text of the Septuagint constantly in relationship with its supposed Hebrew or Aramaic Vorlage, examining the two together in terms of their grammatical alignment as a standard. Yet another tradition frames the discussion in different terms, preferring instead to address the Septuagint first of all in light of its contemporary Greek linguistic environment and only then attempting to describe its language and style as a text. It is this latter approach that William A. Ross employs in this textually based study of the Greek versions of Judges, a so-called double text in the textual history of the Septuagint. The results of his study offer a window into the Old Greek translation and its later revision, two distinct stages of Greek Judges with numerous instances of divergent vocabulary choices that reflect deliberateness in both the original selection and the subsequent change within the textual development of the book. Ross’s study illustrates the practicalities and payoff of a Greek-oriented lexicographical method that situates the language of the Septuagint squarely within its contemporary historical and linguistic context.

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Proverbs
An Eclectic Edition with Introduction and Textual Commentary
Michael V. Fox
SBL Press, 2015

A new critical text for Proverbs drawing from many manuscripts

This first volume of The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition series, features a critical text of Proverbs with extensive text-critical introductions and commentaries. This and future HBCE volumes bring together a scholar’s critical decisions into a single text. construct an eclectic text, drawing from many manuscripts or placing entirely variant texts side by side. A common approach for critical editions of other ancient books, including the New Testament, the eclectic approach and scope used in the HBCE is a first of its kind for the Hebrew Bible.

Features:

  • Emendations set in context rather than singly and marginally
  • Introduction that sets out the method and purpose of the volume
  • Extensive list of abbreviations and sigla
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A Restless Search
A History of Persian Translations of the Bible
Kenneth J. Thomas
SBL Press, 2015

A literary detective story, a historical survey, and an important contribution to translation studies

This book from Kenneth J. Thomas is both a philological and linguistic analysis of Persian translations and a call for interfaith cooperation. Thomas appraises biblical translation efforts from the fifth to the twenty-first centuries of Persian history when successive translators and groups of translators, sometimes of different faiths, worked to reshape and refine versions of the Bible in the supple Persian language of their times. Restless, impelled, and wide-ranging, this is a story of translations commissioned by shahs, undertaken by Christian and Jewish communities, and produced by teams working outside the country.

Features

  • Demonstration of the effects of the lack of a standard Persian vocabulary for key biblical terms on literary style and word choice
  • Technical analyses and overviews of Persian biblical translations
  • A careful examination of sixteen centuries' worth of Bible translations
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The SBL Commentary on the Septuagint
An Introduction
Dirk Büchner
SBL Press, 2017

Explore the groundwork for a new commentary series from SBL Press

This book contains verse by verse commentary on selections from the Greek text of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint. Each chapter is from a different bible book, for which there will eventually be a full commentary published in the Society of Biblical Literature Commentary on the Septuagint. The commentary series focuses on the actual process of translation, so its authors try to describe and explain the kinds of decisions the ancient Alexandrian translators made about how to render Hebrew into Greek.

Features

  • Translations from and commentary on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Esther, Job, and Psalms
  • Contributions from eight experts on the Septuagint
  • Guidelines and procedures used in the production of the translations in the series
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front cover of Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament
Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament
Edited by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick William Danker
University of Chicago Press, 1983
This one-volume digest provides easy access to reliable and brief definitions, interpretations of most variants, and many of the conjugational and declensional forms that frustrate readers of the New Testament. Danker's revision demonstrates his concern for the needs of students as well as those of ministers and scholars.

"[The Shorter Lexicon] is by far superior to other New Testament 'dictionaries' of comparable size."—Robert Hoerber, Classical World
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front cover of Signing Fun
Signing Fun
American Sign Language Vocabulary, Phrases, Games, and Activities
Penny Warner
Gallaudet University Press, 2006
Here’s a great book for every young adult age 11 up, Signing Fun: American Sign Language Vocabulary, Phrases, Games, and Activities. Signing is visual, easy to learn, and fun to use. Author Penny Warner offers 441 useful signs on a variety of favorite topics: activities, animals, fashion, food, holidays, home, outdoors, parties, people, places, play, emotions, school, shopping, travel, plus extra fun signs for especially popular words. Each chapter includes practice sentences using everyday phrases to help new signers learn in a fun way.

Signing Fun provides dozens of entertaining games and activities, too, such as Alphabet Sign, Finger Fun Gesture Guess, Match Signs, Mime and Sign, Oppo-Sign, Picture Hand, Secret Sign, Sign-A-Gories, Signo Bingo, Snap and Sign, and Truth or Sign. It also features a list of tips on how to sign, including how to fingerspell, use numbers, and communicate with deaf people. Whimsical drawings clearly illustrate all of the signs, and a full index lists all of their English meanings for quick reference. Signing Fun is a terrific first book for learning sign while having a great time.
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Spanish Memory Book
A New Approach to Vocabulary Building, Junior Edition
By William F. Harrison and Dorothy Winters Welker
University of Texas Press, 1990

Mnemonics is an age-old technique for remembering names, numbers, and many other things. In Spanish Memory Book, Junior Edition, William Harrison and Dorothy Welker offer onginal mnemonic rimes appropriate in subject matter and skill level for junior high and high school students to help them acquire and remember Spanish vocabulary.

Included are mnemonic jingles for several hundred of the 2,000 most commonly used Spanish words. Each jingle contains both the sound of the Spanish word and its English meaning. The authors have also included a general pronunciation guide to Spanish vowels and consonants.

This innovative approach, which the authors have used successfully with their own students, is simple, effective, and entertaining. In the words of one student, "This book teaches me not only Spanish words but English words as well."

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front cover of Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible
Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible
Ronald Hendel
SBL Press, 2016

Understand the purpose and background of the new The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition project

Our understanding of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible has been transformed in the wake of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hendel explores and refines this new knowledge and formulates a rationale for a new edition of the Hebrew Bible. The chapters situate The Hebrew Bible; A Critical Edition project in a broad historical context, from the beginnings of textual criticism in late antiquity and the Renaissance to the controversies in contemporary theory and practice. This book combines close analysis with broad synthesis, yielding new perspectives on the text of the Hebrew Bible.

Features
  • Theory and practice of textual criticism
  • Textual history of the Hebrew Bible
  • History of text-critical scholarship
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front cover of Studies in the History of the Greek Text of the Apocalypse
Studies in the History of the Greek Text of the Apocalypse
The Ancient Stems
Josef Schmid
SBL Press, 2018

Now available in English

Josef Schmid's landmark publication, Studien zur Geschichte des Griechischen Apokalypse-Textes, has been the standard work for understanding Revelation's Greek manuscript tradition and textual history for more than sixty years. Despite the fact that most major studies on the book are based on Schmid's work, the work itself has long been out of print, making it difficult for the broader scholarly community to reassess Schmid's conclusions in light of recent manuscript discoveries and technological advances. This new translation of the work makes Schmid's detailed review of the history of textual scholarship; his comprehensive examination of the origin, history, and development of the Greek manuscripts of the book of Revelation; and his assessment of John's peculiar linguistic writing style accessible to a new generation of scholars.

Features

  • A critical introduction that places Schmid's work in its historical and theoretical context
  • Definitions and explanations of Schmid's text-critical terms and categories used in his construction of Revelation's Greek manuscript tradition
  • The latest available information used to correct, update, and supplement Schmid's Greek manuscript data and historical and text-critical conclusions
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front cover of Vertical Grammar of Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew
Vertical Grammar of Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew
David Toshio Tsumura
SBL Press, 2023

An essential resource for sound exegesis of biblical poetry

While previous books on parallelism have focused almost exclusively on semantic classification, in his new book David Toshio Tsumura focuses on the grammatical and phonetic aspects as well. In particular, he defines and illustrates the vertical grammatical relationship between parallel lines. Readers will master how to read Biblical Hebrew poetry effectively by focusing on the basic linguistic features of word order, parallelistic structure, and rhetorical devices. For the benefit of nonspecialists, all Hebrew poems are given in accessible transliteration. This book is an indispensable companion to the Hebrew Bible for both beginners and experienced scholars.

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front cover of Where Is Baby?
Where Is Baby?
A Lift-the-Flap Sign Language Book
Michelle Cryan
Gallaudet University Press, 2007

Here’s a fun, interactive way to teach youngsters ages 1- 4 basic American Sign Language signs. Where Is Baby? A Lift-the-Flap Sign Language Book features 12 basic questions in ASL with English translations. Little ones can find the answer for each question by lifting the flap on the opposite page to reveal a charming, full-color illustration. The questions and answers engage children with everyday subjects of high interest to them: Where is the airplane, train, bug, cat, elephant, shoe, pizza, Mama, Daddy, sister, and of course, Baby.

By introducing young children to sign language, Where Is Baby? can help them strengthen their vocabulary, grammar, and other language skills while also allowing them to communicate their needs and feelings at an earlier age. This sturdy book offers an enjoyable, instructive way for parents, teachers, and other caregivers to begin reading and signing together with children at a wonderful age for learning.

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