Bibliography of the Septuagint/Bibliographie de la Septante (1970-1993).

• Author: Gentry, Peter J.

Bibliographical research is obviously fundamental to serious scholarship and, especially, in a field such as Septuagint studies which covers so many diverse disciplines, each specific and technical in itself. Therefore, all whose research touches the Septuagint in any way will welcome this volume - another essential tool from the French school founded by Marguerite Harl which has already given us an excellent introduction to the Septuagint.

Dogniez intends her work to be an extension of S. P. Brock, C. T. Fritsch and S. Jellicoe, A Classified Bibliography of the Septuagint, Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums, 6 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973). Although she has followed the same basic organization - making her volume at once familiar to the users of BFJ - she has reduced the forty-one categories of her predecessors to thirty-one. Some categories have been amalgamated under broader headings, some have been eliminated, as the literature of a particular debate is no longer in vogue, and two new categories have been introduced: "Collections" and "The LXX and Computers." The former is perhaps redundant, since the individual articles of the collections are classified and listed separately, but the latter is a relevant new category.

While the bibliography of BFJ covers ca. 1900-69, the fact that Dogniez has produced a volume of similar size (excluding repetitions) for 1970-93 reveals the tremendous growth in Septuagint studies in just over two decades.

Like her predecessors, Dogniez provides English or German translations of titles in lesser-read languages, such as Armenian, Hebrew, Finnish, or Dutch. She also lists (sometimes large numbers of) reviews for significant works, although not consistently. Several features constitute improvements over the work of her predecessors. She lists parts of the LXX covered in an article/book/manuscript in parentheses when such parts are not specified by the title of the work (not consistently, but far more so than BFJ). The Dissertation Abstracts International numbers for dissertations are also handy, but are not given consistently. Instead of using the cumbersome cross-reference system of BFJ, items are repeated in every category that applies. Thus "D. Barthelemy, Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament, 1: Josue, Juges, Ruth, Samuel, Rois, Chroniques, Esdras, Nehemie, Esther (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982)" appears in eight sections...