A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's.

• Author: Reymond, Eric D.
• Position: Book review

A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum. By MICHAEL SOKOLOFF. Pp. 1 + 1688, CR-ROM. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, and Piscataway, N.J.: GORGIAS PRESS. $149.50.

Although the second edition of Carl Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum (hereafter [LS.sup.2]) has long been a necessary and helpful tool for scholars of Syriac, the dictionary, published between 1923 and 1928, is outdated and suffers from shortcomings obvious to anyone who has ever opened up the dictionary to look up a single word. These include the fact that the Syriac words are translated into Latin, not a modern language; the extreme terseness of the definitions themselves, often consisting of only one or two Latin words; the cramped columns of text that make finding definitions arduous; and the fact that, although each definition is accompanied by one or more references to texts where a given word occurs with a specific meaning, these are hardly ever quoted.

More keen eyes might perceive further deficiencies, including the use of abbreviations in the body of the dictionary whose explanation is lacking in the list of abbreviations located in the appendix; the absence of labels identifying part of speech (e.g., "adjective," "adverb"); inconsistent order of words within individual root entries (verbs are listed first, unless they are classed as denominative, in which case the noun comes first); the rarity of cross-referencing; and the occasional misidentification of word roots and the subsequent placement of words under roots to which they have no etymological connection. All these shortcomings, to which Sokoloff calls attention in his preface (pp. xii-xiii), make the book difficult for most people to use, such that, as Sokoloff also indicates, most scholars rely on Jesse Payne Smith's A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1903) and only "quote [[LS.sup.2]] as a demonstration of their scientific acumen" (p. xii n. 29).

The book under review (henceforth [LS.sup.3]) is a happy corrective to all the shortcomings listed above and will be welcomed by anyone wishing to become more familiar with the Syriac language. It trans-lates the Latin definitions of [LS.sup.2] into English, often expanding on the terse definitions that Brockelmann provided (e.g., sbsts is translated in [LS.sup.2] '[sigma][epsilon][beta][alpha][sigma][tau]oc augustus = imperator', while in [LS.sup.3] it is '1. emperor ... 2. sehastus, a high rank in the Byzantine Empire') and correcting erroneous definitions found in [LS.sup.2] (e.g., the third definition of spyqwt' in [LS.sup.2] is 'satietas'; although Sokoloff translates the Latin word ['sufficiency, abundance'], he notes in brackets next to this translation "delete; v. mng. 6," which is "leisure, abstention [from world]"). Sokoloff's expansion is also less cramped and better organized in terms of each lemma, with definitions in boldface, as well as the labeling of each definition in boldface.

The new work quotes many specific passages and this, it should be stressed, is certainly one of the great improvements of [LS.sup.3] on the second edition. As should be obvious, these quotations allow the reader to gain a sense of how the word is actually used in the language of specific sources, as well as introducing the reader, by the way, to other Syriac words, phrases, and passages. For example, note the quotations in the entry for byr' 'small part', which illustrate how a popular idea or expression develops in later literature; at the beginning of the entry three texts from early authors are quoted that express the idea that humans are "a small part of" God, while a chronologically later text, following these initial three quotations, contains the phrase bsr' hnn mn stir translated by Sokoloff "we are a small part of Satan." Moreover, one can, as I have done, dip in at random and find marvelous pearls of text, as in the entry for shy' 'swimming, swimmer' nht r'yn' 'yk shy' 'md bkth' and translated "the idea descended in books like a diver plunges"; or in the entry for pwh 'to blow, breathe' npwhwn nhwn btl' "the idle will breathe (and) sin."

As an example of how much quoted text has been added, one can compare the entry for the verb 'hd in [LS.sup.2] and [LS.sup.3]. In the second edition there is no quotation from a specific text, while in [LS.sup.3] there are over ninety short phrases and passages quoted, each accompanied by a reference to where the phrase can be...