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Lexicons, Lexical Aids, and Parsing Guides
- † Armstrong, T. A., D. L. Busby, and C. F. Carr. A Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989.
- Richmond: PJ4833 .A69 V.1-4; REF BJ 48 A738
- Charlotte: 221.4403 A738R
- Armstrong, Busby, and Carr (aka ABC) is extremely useful for people who want to dive straight into reading the Hebrew text. Moving verse by verse, ABC glosses every word that occurs less than 50 times in the Hebrew Bible, providing extra translation information for extremely rare/difficult words. It is not a tool for serious linguistic research, but if you are an inductive learner, this is an extremely useful tool for daily Hebrew reading.
- † Beall, Todd S., William A. Banks, and Colin Smith. Old Testament Parsing Guide. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000.
- Richmond: REF. BJ 63 B366 2000
- Charlotte: 492.482421 B366 2000
- Verse-by-verse parsing of all the verbs in the Bible.
- Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006.
- Richmond: REF. BJ 48 B877 2006; PJ4833 .B73 2005
- Charlotte: 492.43 B8778B 2006
- The standard lexicon for biblical Hebrew; includes a separate lexicon at the back for the Aramaic texts of the Bible.
- † Holladay, W. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971. (PJ4833 .H6 1971a)
- Richmond: REF. BJ 48 H733; PJ4833 .H65 1988
- Charlotte: REF 221.4403 C748; 221.4403 H733C 1988
- Whereas BDB is organized by root, Holladay lists all Hebrew words alphabetically regardless of root. It's inexpensive and readily available. Useful for quickly looking up words in Hebrew, especially if your grammar and syntax skills are not as sharp as BDB necessitates, but doesn't contain as much useful information as BDB.
- Mitchel, L. A Student's Vocabulary for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017.
- Richmond: PJ4845 .M5 2017
- Charlotte: 221.44 M679S 2017
- This slim paperback volume organizes Hebrew vocabulary lists on the basis of how frequently words occur. It's a useful book to have on your shelf if you want to maintain your vocabulary for future work in Hebrew.
- † Owens, John Joseph. Analytical Key to the Old Testament. 4 volumes. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989.
- Richmond: REF. BJ 42 O97 vols. 1-4
- Charlotte: 221.44 OW2A vols. 1-4
- Goes verse by verse, parsing/identifying each word’s grammatical form and offering a gloss of the word (or, sometimes, phrase).
- Jenni, Ernst, and Claus Westermann. Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament. 3 volumes. Translated by Mark E. Biddle. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997.
- Richmond: REF. BJ 44 J54 E vols. 1-3
- Charlotte: 221.447 T3428XB vols. 1-3
- Full articles analyzing significant portion of OT vocabulary, evaluating each term's theological relevance by clearly describing its actual usage in the language. It makes available many form- and tradition-critical insights hitherto buried in various other scattered resources. Thus the articles serve as concise, well-structured histories of research with conclusions, discussion of controversies, and references to major works in the field of OT scholarship.
- † Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Text series. Baylor University Press, 2009-present.
- All volumes available at the Richmond campus and most available at the Charlotte campus. Please click the link above to search for the particular volume you need and find its call number in the catalog record.
- This series has separate volumes for each biblical book, like a commentary, but it specifically focuses on textual issues, offering a comprehensive guide to the grammar and vocabulary of the book in question. Our faculty regularly recommend this series for students who are preparing to take the exegesis portion of Ordination Exams.
