HarperCollins Bible Dictionary - Revised & Updated Review

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HarperCollins Bible Dictionary - Revised & Updated ReviewThis is the Third Edition (2011) of the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, developed in cooperation with the Society of Biblical Literature and with a new editor, Lutheran professor of Theology, Mark Allan Powell. The editor has promised several important changes. Since most people who are reading this review may already own a copy of the Second Edition, the question is whether the new edition is worth the $30 bucks. This is especially true since the older version was often considered the best single volume Encyclopedic reference to the Bible.
The first thing I checked was that all biblical quotes are from the NRSV (1989), while the 2nd edition quotes were from the RSV (1946 - 1952). Score points there. Next, all Associate Editors are new, including Amy-Jill Levine. But there are no OT specialists to replace Michael Fishbane. Editor Powell states that there are more references to scripture in the articles. For that and for other matters, I compared the old and new articles on Pontius Pilate, who appears in all four Gospels. The old version was written by Francisco O. Garcia-Treto. The new version retains the original author's credit, with credit to Powell for revising the article. It is plain that Powell kept much of the original text, however the original article was two columns long and the revised version was about three columns long. The first difference I spot is that the new edition cites exact references to Pilate in the works of Philo and Josephus. The older edition simply mentions those references. Most of the additional length is in the section titled "In the Gospel Accounts". In the original version, the author seems more careful than in Powell's revision in summarizing the differences in the way Pilate is treated in the Gospels, but Powell makes up for it by providing lots of detail about the differences between the Synoptics and John. Powell also does not make the mistake of saying that Pilate appears to be a pawn in the hands of the Jews in John. One can interpret Pilate's "business" to be more judicious than the Jews, at the same time respectful of their customs in addition to the rights of the prisoner. (Pilate does show some anxiety near the end, but he gets his pound of flesh from the Jews, when they swear allegiance to Caesar.) Powell's additions certainly have more passage citations than the original.
Dear to my heart is Bibliographies. Here, the new edition is a clear winner. In the article on "Romans", the new edition has four new sources, all of which are considered leading contributions on the letter, including James Dunn's 2 volume commentary (1988), which was oddly excluded from the second edition (1996). The story with the Gospel of John is similar, with seven references (six new references) compared to five references in the second edition. The earlier article was written by Dwight Moody. The later article was rewritten by Powell, adding a table comparing John to the Synoptics (from Powell's NT book). Powell's version, including new table, is longer than Moody's article. So why does John begin on page 533 in the old edition, and on 479 in the new edition?
Comparing the beginning of "A", I found some reasons. First, the entries for the letters, such as "A" are removed. This is not trivial, since "A" and "B" are abbreviations for identifying two major codices of the Greek Bible. I also notice several lesser articles, especially on OT and geography, to be unchanged from the older edition. I also noticed additional cross-reference entries in the new edition, not in the old. However, some cross references in the old, such as "sergeants" was missing from the new. In the newer edition, articles with numbered sections are typeset so it is much easier to see the numbers, as they each begin a new paragraph, and numbers are in bold. At page 15, I found what may be the principle reason for the shrinkage. A three column article on "African Americans and the Bible" was deleted. I have mixed feelings about this. My first thought is that the article was out of place in a reference book about the Bible itself. But when I read the second edition article, I discovered one could say that black contextual theologizing began in the late 18th century, and not in the 1960s, when James Cone wrote his first book. In the end, I suspect that the editors thought the subject had expanded so much in the last 16 years that it outgrew its relevance to straight biblical interpretation. A less controversial deletion would be the long articles (12+ pages) on Sociology in the OT and NT. A fair trade for that deletion would be the expansion of the article on "The Sermon on the Mount" from one column to three pages, a six-fold increase, written by Powell, with a Bibliography, missing from the original.
In the article on "agape" by Powell, I find a major improvement over the earlier anonymous article. Powell states the best modern interpretation of the Greek word as a synonym for "philos" and other Greek words for love. The small article on "agora" shows some of the added biblical citations. Older version had one, the newer version had four. I have not found any evidence of a large number of added maps. However, there are numerous added tables. For example the new edition adds a full page table to the article on "Jerusalem" on the centrality of Jerusalem in Luke-Acts (also from Powell's book, but he did not write the "Jerusalem" article.) The old article on "homosexuality" was edited and enlarged by Powell, ending in a far more balanced view of Paul's references to the subject than was in the original. Some OT articles are a bit shorter, such as the article on "copper". Very small articles, such as one for "cor" lost a line by omitting the pronunciation and replacing words for numbers, such as "60" for "sixty".
The glossy colored illustration sections in the middle and the colored map sections at the end are identical. (Other reviewsers neglected to actually look at the color sections and count pages.)
If the volume is to be used by children, especially if there are few other biblical reference books around, I suggest replacing the old with the new. If you don't have the old, get the new instead of the less expensive older edition. If you have several biblical reference books, the old will probably do fine, until it falls apart from use.
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