Corpus and Concordance ancient

Those interested in ancient Hebrew inscriptions and lexicography will welcome the publication of this long-awaited volume by Davies, professor of Old Testament studies at the University of Cambridge. The first volume appeared in 1991 and contained approximately fourteen hundred inscriptions dating from before 200 B.C. This volume includes 750 inscriptions from the Old Testament period, most of which were published between 1990 and 2000. The inscriptions come from approximately thirty sites and include seals and seal-impressions, royal stamps, stamps and coins, and inscribed weights. The entry for each inscription includes its approximate date, selected bibliographical data, and the text in transliterated form. In at least two cases Davies includes a revised text of an inscription published in the earlier volume.

The concordance (pp. 125–229) lists in alphabetical order all words found in the inscriptions, including proper names, inseparable prepositions, and the conjunction waw. Each entry is labeled by its part of speech (personal names dominate), but no glosses are given. Each entry also includes the total number of times the word appears in the inscriptions and includes for each attested text the surrounding context in transliterated form.

Davies also includes a list of additions and corrections to the first volume and “synopses of collections of inscriptions.” The latter correlates the corpus as arranged by Davies with the reference works of Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Röllig (Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik) and of Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass (Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals).