★★★★★ 5
An Exceptional Resource.
Format: Hardcover
I learned Greek and Hebrew in my graduate studies and anyone who has done that knows the great joy it is to be able to read the original languages of scripture. With the footnotes, though, getting through the text becomes much easier than if you simply have an NA28 or BHS. To echo what other reviewers have said, I also think that the new binding is a big plus over the previous edition - the book is so large that with a leather or trutone binding it can be a bit cumbersome. With the cloth over board, it fits well in your hands, feels more durable, and in my view is an improvement. However, one might say that calling it a "second edition" was not really necessary since the actual text is essentially the same as the previous - just the binding and the material used for the pages is different (as far as I can tell). The font is a good size as well. Any bigger and the book really would have been exceptionally large. But any smaller and it would be too hard to read. So I feel like they struck a good balance here.
One thing that they could have done better in making this was include the BHQ texts of the Hebrew books that have already been released as of 2020 (Ruth, Proverbs, Deuteronomy, the 12 Minor Prophets, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Judges, and Ezra-Nehemiah) rather than the BHS that was in the previous edition. All of those BHQ texts had been released as of the time that this was being produced, so they could have easily updated these books and made it a true "second edition" with some significant updates that have come from recent years of scholarship on these books. All of the BHQ Old Testament will probably not be out until 2030 or so, but those particular books have been available for a while. I assume that there was a reason for this, and perhaps Zondervan was not allowed to use the BHQ texts in this volume since the BHQ texts are so new, but that is really the only area for improvement that I can think of.
It would be a great addition to anyone's library who has at least two semesters of the languages.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2020
