Apikorus

Hezekiah, another excellent series is the Hermeneia series published by Fortress Press. It is far less complete than the Anchor Bible, and it is even more expensive ($53 per volume from Amazon). But there are two volumes in the series which are particularly outstanding: John Collins' Daniel and Klaus Baltzer's Deutero-Isaiah. Anchor Bible is weaker on both (Hartmann-DiLella's Daniel is fine but Collins is perhaps the greatest living scholar of Jewish apocalyptic literature; McKenzie's AB Second Isaiah is very thin and quite old. Baltzer's thesis that DI is a liturgical drama is brilliant.)

What I'd like to see from Anchor Bible is the rest of Exodus (underway, but still 5 to 10 years off), Deuteronomy (though Weinfeld is ill and he might not finish it), Isaiah 40-66, and new volumes of Genesis, Psalms (Dahood's are old and very idiosyncratic; just as Speiser was overly enamored of Mesopotamian parallels, so was Dahood of Ugaritic parallels) and Chronicles. I am eagerly awaiting Cogan's I Kings (due this October).

hezekiah jones

Excellent; thank you for the recommendation. I picked up Baltzer's Deutero-Isaiah from the library this morning. I have only just flipped through it so far, but I can say that the format is outstanding: extremely clear, and the bibliography frighteningly prodigious.

The Anchor Bible Second Isaiah is one of the volumes I got on ebay for four bucks, in mint condition. I will certainly look for the Hermeneia Daniel. I find it startling that so many christian apologizers have been wilfully ignoring the accepted dating of Daniel ever since Baruch de Spinoza was grinding lenses for the local guildmeisters. What thugs they are.

Man, you are hard core! I appreciate the information. I generally keep a list of the books that are recommended by various posters on these boards, so please feel free to add to it at your leisure.

I am at the Golda Meir Library in Milwaukee nearly every day, which, as its dedication would indicate, has an outstanding collection of related materials, much of which is comprised of considerable bequests from the local Jewish community. (There are also hundreds of volumes in Hebrew and German.)

I have also checked out the second volume of Umberto Cassuto's Genesis commentary, which I expect will be somewhat of an antidote to Speiser. It appears that Cassuto is not as interested in plumbing the niceties of the documentary hypothesis, a practice he refers to as "vivisection" in the Introduction.

Furthermore, he seems more intent to focus on the disparities between the Mosaic and Mesopotamian deluge accounts, rather than the similarities. I assume you are familiar with U. Cassuto?

Anyways, thanks again for the info.

Apikorus

Truth be told I've read very little of Cassuto. I'm most familiar with his commentary on Exodus. He had a fine appreciation of the poetic aspects to the Hebrew Bible, but on the whole I think his criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis are not so trenchant.

I didn't get much out of McKenzie's ABC on Second Isaiah. Incidentally, Blenkinsopp's recent Isaiah 1-39 is outstanding. You might also enjoy his "Introduction to the Pentateuch". Blenkinsopp is more sympathetic to skeptics/minimalists like van Seters than most mainstream scholars, which is sort of refreshing.

Good that you found Baltzer in your library - it was published only recently. Note that he downdates deutero-Isaiah to ca. 400 BCE!

Send me email sometime and we can continue to discuss without clogging up the board.

[ August 02, 2001: Message edited by: Apikorus ]

rodahi

Thanks. I own a copy of the ANET, but it dates to 1950.

rodahi

Apikorus

3rd revised edition with supplements is from 1969.