The Shorter Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised

The Shorter Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised (2024) is a single volume desk dictionary abridgement of The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised (DCHR) (2018–2028). The Shorter Dictionary is over 825,000 words in length, placing into a single volume 1/6th of the material of the complete DCHR (over 5 million words), and is designed to be a replacement for BDB (the standard 1906 English lexicon of Hebrew).

The Shorter Dictionary contains more than 6,420 Hebrew words not in BDB, and refers to many newly published texts, including 540 Dead Sea Scrolls and 4,000 ancient Hebrew inscriptions, making it the most thorough Hebrew dictionary ever produced.

Every Hebrew word in The Shorter Dictionary is followed immediately by an English translation (except for the variant forms of a word and the byforms), so that The Shorter Dictionary can be easily understood by a person with little or no Hebrew. 

Further features of the dictionary include:

–Scope—The Shorter Dictionary includes not only Biblical Hebrew but also all Classical Hebrew (pre-200 ce), i .e . Ben Sira, Dead Sea Scrolls, inscriptions.

–Syntagmatic analysis—shows examples of subjects and objects of verbs, those of which a noun is subject or object, etc.

–Occurrence statistics—for each word in the four corpora of Classical Hebrew: Hebrew Bible, Ben Sira, Dead Sea Scrolls, Inscriptions—and for each voice (binyan) of a verb.

–Parallels and oppositions. Shows all words used in parallel or opposition in texts.

–A notation of: 4,285 byforms (words with the same meaning and similar form) identified for the first time; 717 verbal nouns (nouns derived from a verb) -with their own articles (not previously shown in Hebrew lexica); 345 denominative verbs (verbs derived from a noun); and the semantic field to which every word belongs (a totally new feature for Hebrew dictionaries).

–An abbreviated version of DCHR’s extensive bibliographies is provided in The Shorter Dictionary.

Not only is The Shorter Dictionary three times longer than The Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (2009)—also The Concise Dictionary is an abbreviation of the original Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (1993–2016), whereas The Shorter Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised contains the improved and expanded approach of DCHR (2018–2028).

The Shorter Dictionary (2024) has always planned to be released during the longer period of publication for the 9 volumes of DCHR. From 2019 to 2022 David J.A. Clines, prior to his final illnesses and death:

–completed every necessary editorial task for the future volumes;

–oversaw the preparation of and collation of most materials;

–and provided the means by which the project Research Associate, David Stec, could collate The Shorter Dictionary as well as bring the remaining DCHR volumes to publication.

List price: £250 / $400 / €300

Scholars’ price: £125 / $200 / €150 (use code ‘scholar’ at checkout)

DCHR 1–9 Subscribers’ price: £100 / $160 / €120 (email: phoenix.bibs@sheffield.ac.uk for further information)