Williams’ Hebrew Syntax (review)

Reviewed by: Williams’ Hebrew Syntax Robert D. Holmstedt (bio) Ronald J. Williams. Williams’ Hebrew Syntax. 3rd ed. Revised and expanded by John C. Beckman. University of Toronto Press. xvi, 248. $24.95 After thirty years, Ronald J. Williams’s Hebrew Syntaxhas received a thorough revision by John C. Beckman. At just over twice as many pages as the first (1967) or second (1976) editions, the new Williams’ Hebrew Syntaxrevised and expanded by Beckman initially struck this reviewer as a much-needed overhaul of the ‘outline’ first produced over forty years ago. As I worked through the body of the work, keeping in mind the stated focus on syntax and stated goal of providing a one-semester textbook for intermediate students, I began to wonder if this third edition had a clear raison d’être. The book is laid out in four sections: (1) the syntax of nominals, (2) the syntax of verbs, (3) the syntax of particles, and (4) the syntax of clauses. [End Page 156]Each major section has multiple subsections and sub-subsections. The organization as well as the clear table of contents and thorough indices (passages, subjects, and Hebrew words) make the book easy to use. Moreover, the print, for both English and Hebrew, is clear and much gentler on the eyes than that of the previous editions. Hebrew examples and notes of clarification are indented and printed with a smaller font, allowing the eye to discern the major structure of each paragraph without much difficulty. However, the indented subsection (e.g., A Number) and sub-subsection (e.g., Singular) headings are obscure and easily missed; additionally, the use of bullets for the examples and notes is more distracting than helpful. Perhaps the greatest strength of this edition lies in the footnotes and bibliography. Whereas Williams inserted few references to other works, Beckman has done the student the significant favour of including for each topic numerous footnotes pointing to the standard Hebrew reference grammars in English. Whereas Williams’s bibliography is noticeably thin, Beckman’s is excellent. Both the footnotes and the bibliography will serve the serious and inquisitive Hebrew student well. But in the opinion of this reviewer, here ends the strengths of this book. Williams’s first two editions were roundly criticized for not adequately addressing the very issues Williams stated it would (i.e., word order) and for a lack of focus (see the reviews by James Barr [ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies32.3 (1969): 599–601] and Dennis Pardee [ Journal of Near Eastern Studies38.2 (1979): 148]. How does Beckman’s revision fare? It suffers similarly. First, Beckman perpetuates Williams’s confusion between syntax and semantics by including in the ‘Syntax of Verbs’ an extensive discussion of verbal semantics (i.e., stem, voice, and tense-aspect-mood). Only towards the end does the description actually start addressing syntax, and even then it leaves much to be desired (where is a discussion of the types of complements that verbs may take, such as direct objects, indirect objects, or prepositional phrases?). Unfortunately, the majority of section 2 is irrelevant to a syntacticdescription of biblical Hebrew. Second, in addition to the lack of syntactic focus, Beckman often obscures the difference between describing Hebrew syntax and providing English translation equivalents. For instance, the Hebrew conjunction wə- joins phrasal or clausal constituents; in doing so, it marks the boundaries between the conjoined constituents – this is a proper syntacticdescription of the wə-. Other apparent meanings do not belong to the lexical entry for the conjunction or a description of its syntactic behaviour; rather, similarity to English glosses like but, or, namely, with, asis due to the implicationof the juxtaposition of the phrases or clauses joined by the wə-. Instead of teaching students that the relationship between items joined by wə- must be contextually determined, Beckman’s description will lead students to [End Page 157]think that the conjunction wə- has more than a dozen different meanings (which, by the way, has little to do with syntax). Third, Beckman’s presentation on word order is woefully inadequate. Although students struggle with the word order variation in the Bible...

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