As readers know, every once in a while some items that we’re working on at Logos Bible Software are in need of a a little push to get them into production. There are hundreds of such items on the Logos website, but these are near and dear to someone like me. I’m hoping that some readers out there looking for a Father’s day present or (early) Christmas present will be able to order these at the low pre-pub price and push them over the edge. They’re all close.

Ancient Near Eastern Studies

  • This bundle has several titles that are just the thing for those who love OT and archaeological research. I’ve used the volumes by Richard and Dever in print, and both are excellent resources.

Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic

  • Don’t let the bundle title fool you. This is a seven volume bundle that contains several volumes that are indispensible if you’re working in Hebrew and care to work in Ugaritic. They include:
    • A Manual of Ugaritic by Pierre Bordreuil and Dennis Pardee. This is the premier reference grammar in Ugaritic
    • Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew: An Introduction by Joshua Blau. In my opinion, there’s no better reference manual for understanding Hebrew morphology.
    • Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew by John A. Cook. John and I went through the UW-Madison doctoral program together. This work is drawn from his dissertation, which was on the Hebrew verbal system. For those who know biblical Hebrew (and if you don’t, you should take it through my MEMRA online Institute), this is the best work on how Hebrew verbs work and should be understood.
    • Biblical Hebrew Grammar Visualized by Francis I. Andersen and A. Dean Forbes. If you use Logos for Hebrew Bible research, you (should) know about the Andersen-Forbes syntax database of the Hebrew Bible. The two men behind that database have since produced this visualized grammar, which illustrates their discussion throughout using screenshots and searches from their database. In short: this book will help you understand their database and their method.

Texts and Studies on Ancient Judaism

  • I hate the title on this bundle. It obscures the fact that one of the three volumes in this set is Stuckenbruck’s critical edition of the Book of the Giants from Qumran. (Yes, it’s scholarly Enochian stuff).  If you can handle Hebrew and Aramaic (and even if you can’t – the discussion of the results of the textual reconstruction of the book’s content is fascinating)
  • The other two works are on the Essene problem related to Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Samaritan Pentateuch.