Peer Reviews

The following are extracts from peer reviews in response to an application for a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (emphasis is ours).

Review 1

… By its coverage of all the evidence, both that contained in the Old Testaments and that provided by the newly discovered sources (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls), its use of modern methods and insights in semantics, its systematic attempt to cover all relevant comparative evidence, including the renderings of the ancient versions and comparative philological data, and its systematic trawl through the secondary literature, the project will enormously improve and enhance the resources available to scholars who have any concern with Ancient Hebrew. While much of the evidence is available scattered through innumerable publications, there is no comparable resource in existence that brings all the evidence together and treats it with modern methods. The database that will be produced as the outcome of the project is likely to be used intensively by scholars worldwide concerned with the translation and interpretation of the writings of the Old Testament, with the Dead Sea Scrolls, or with the inscriptions, ostraca etc. that have been discovered in the area in which Ancient Hebrew and related dialects were used. The value of the resource will be enormously enhanced by virtue of it being in database form, and the resource is likely to stimulate further higher quality research in these areas.

Review 2

The project seeks to fill a problematic gap in the scholarly infrastructure of Hebrew and Old Testament studies. The problem is that, despite the intensity with which the Hebrew Bible has been studied, there is no comprehensive database either in printed or electronic form, which allows a researcher to navigate scholarly views on important and unimportant lexemes. … The filling of this gap would be of immense value to the research community. Usage of the database in its electronic form can be expected to be intense, simply because it will make it possible to check and better understand choices of interpretation which are currently glossed over for lack of time. Further, this availability of the primary argumentation is certain to lead to a far more critical attitude on the part of Hebrew and Old Testament scholars to the "received" meaning and translations. … It follows that the new database will be an important stimulus to research in coming decades.